By Bj?rg Sandkj?r, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ DESA
8 October 2026 - Back when I was in Norway, caught many people by surprise when it was first published. It found that women¡¯s participation in the labour market has contributed more to the country¡¯s overall wealth and tax revenues than all of its petroleum production.
Oil is finite; one day the wells will run dry. The work that women do as part of the labour force, once you enable it ¨C through childcare, parental leave, equal pay, changing social norms ¨C keeps paying dividends year after year.
In that sense, is an endlessly renewable resource.
I think about that research study often in my current role, because the data now let us ask the same question at a global scale: what happens to development when women hold real power, not just a seat near it?
This year¡¯s , a joint publication by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Women and Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ DESA, gives us evidence to answer that question across all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And it¡¯s a compelling one.
In Rwanda, where 64 per cent of parliamentarians are women, gender equality is now embedded across school curricula, and students show real, measurable awareness of it.
In India¡¯s West Bengal, quotas that brought women into village councils helped close the gender gap in how long adolescents stay in school.
Globally, countries with more than 20 per cent women in parliament have childhood immunisation rates up to 12 percentage points higher than countries without.
None of this is coincidence. When the people making decisions reflect the people living with their consequences, the decisions change. And they tend to change for the better, for everyone.
That¡¯s a case for optimism.
But the report is also a warning, and I don¡¯t want to soften it.
At the current pace, gender equality is 171 years away. Not one target under Goal 5 is on track to be met by 2030.
Six in seven countries are led by men. More than eight in ten finance ministers are men.
Women are largely absent from rooms where the vision for a country¡¯s future is articulated, where taxing and spending are decided.
And it¡¯s not static: one in three national gender equality mechanisms ¨C the institutions meant to turn commitments into budgets and laws ¨C has lost institutional power in the past two years.
I¡¯m convinced that the lesson from Norway holds up globally. The McKinsey Global Institute has estimated that advancing women¡¯s economic equality could .
That is not a marginal gain. It is roughly the size of a major economy, sitting unrealised because half the population is still structurally distant from fully participating in the decisions and markets that shape not just their own lives, but also outcomes for entire societies.
So when I hear people describe gender equality as a ¡°soft¡± issue, I beg to differ. Not only is gender equality a human right.
Nobody would suggest a country neglect a resource that is valuable.
Yet that is, in effect, what happens every time a woman is kept out of a cabinet post, a boardroom, or a village council with a real budget.
The good news is that unlike oil, this potential isn¡¯t depleting or even polluting ¨C it¡¯s simply undervalued. Closing the gender gap isn¡¯t a side issue for the 2030 Agenda. It¡¯s one of the fastest ways we have left to deliver on all of it.
ASG Sandkj?r previously served as the Deputy Minister for International Development at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.