Gender Equality: It's time

This brief provides a summary of UN Women's work in Ukraine, which focuses on increasing women's leadership and participation, ending violence against women and girls, engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes, and making gender equality central to national and local development planning and budgeting in Ukraine. 

Ukraine faces unprecedented challenges affecting gender equality and the enjoyment of equal rights and opportunites by women, particularly those facing multiple forms of discrimination. Structural discrimination of women persists in both the public and private spheres to varying extents in the country. The roots can be found in patriarchal attitudes and stereotypes, as well as deeply entrenched systemic gaps. Among these are the weak rule of law, low capacity of the institutional mechanisms for gender equality, lack of political will and low awareness of international and national gender equality commitments , chronic underinvestment in gender equality, lack of access to data and the inability of policy makers to analyse it to inform policies, reforms, plans and budgets, as well as lack of a meaningful engagement with civil society.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine and the ensuing socio-economic crisis have exacerbated these challenges and created new problems, including violations of women’s human rights, thus increasing gender discrimination, women’s poverty and security risks.