Name: Elevating girls' and women's leadership: Bringing Beijing to life
Start: 2025-03-11T12:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-03-11T14:00:00-04:00
Location: The Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission

GWL Voices and WAGGGS are joining forces to amplify the voices of young women and advocate for an intergenerational approach to leadership.
About this Event

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 2025 provides a critical platform to advance gender equality and strengthen commitments to women’s leadership and participation in decision-making. This year's session is particularly significant as it marks Beijing+30, the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a landmark commitment to gender equality.

Despite progress and thirty years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action, girls and women still face significant barriers to leadership and representation at all levels—local, national, regional, and global. Today, only 26 countries are led by women, and 113 nations have never had a female head of state. Similar disparities persist in legislative bodies, multinational corporations, and global institutions.

While progress has been made in advancing girls’ rights, challenges remain. 122 million girls are still out of school, and many continue to face systemic barriers due to the intersection of age and gender. Moreover, there is an increasing pushback against girls' and young women’s aspirations to step into leadership and decision-making spaces.

How can women and girls come together to demand greater representation and access to decision-making roles worldwide? What policies and structural changes are needed to build a sustainable pipeline for female leadership? How can we support girls to not only develop but also sustain their leadership in the long term?

GWL Voices, a network of female global leaders, and WAGGGS, the world’s largest voluntary movement dedicated to empowering girls and young women, are joining forces to amplify the voices of young women and advocate for an intergenerational approach to leadership.

Join GWL Voices and the World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) for an intergenerational discussion on the state of female leadership today, the barriers women and girls continue to face, and the opportunities to drive lasting change.