Women’s Rights and Gender Equality: A Global Index to Monitor Government Action

Health Hum Rights. 2026 Jun;28(1):71-84.

ABSTRACT

Globally, gender inequality is deepening, with nearly 40% of countries experiencing regression between 2019 and 2022 and significant backlash against women’s rights in 2025. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) provides a legally binding framework for accountability, yet the potential of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women-the body that monitors state compliance with CEDAW-is constrained by the absence of systematic monitoring tools. This paper introduces the CEDAW Index, an artificial intelligence-supported digital dashboard designed to strengthen accountability by consolidating state reports, civil society shadow reports, and committee concluding observations. The current pilot focuses on recommendations regarding gender-based violence, with a framework designed to be extended across the full scope of CEDAW. We describe how the CEDAW Index assigns implementation status to each recommendation; tracks variables such as region, income group, and humanitarian crisis context; and integrates civil society perspectives to counterbalance government reporting. Pilot analyses of the most recent CEDAW reviews from 117 countries between 1997 and 2020 informed the dashboard’s design and identified 423 laws that governments implemented or amended in response to law-related recommendations, representing 46% of such recommendations made by the committee during those reviews. We examine challenges associated with government opacity, artificial intelligence, and oversimplification, while arguing that the index offers a novel pathway to enhance transparency, amplify advocacy, and reinforce women’s rights implementation globally.

PMID:42441170 | PMC:PMC13334706