Perspective: This is the time to reinforce—not retreat—on equity and inclusion

By Sarah Manengo Nutumanya, GESI Theme Coordinator and Alison Rusinow, Global Theme Lead Governance and Institutions

Women and girls make up nearly half the world, yet they are disproportionately represented among those living in extreme poverty. And marginalisation runs deep, shaped by the intersections of geography, age, sexuality, disability, race, and the unequal distribution of power and resources. While the case for inclusion is well-established, recent shifts suggest a quiet deprioritisation among certain actors. Between 2019–20 and 2021–22, the share of bilateral aid supporting gender equality fell from 45% to 42%. In humanitarian aid, this figure fell as low as 17%.

Meanwhile, the potential is undeniable.

In agriculture for example, if women had the same access to resources and the same decision-making power as men, total agricultural output in lower- and middle-income countries could increase by up to 4%, potentially reducing hunger by nearly a fifth of current rates. Zooming out too, the data confirms this trend. Countries with stronger female political representation—still only 27% of parliamentary seats globally—consistently show more inclusive governance and better outcomes. Simultaneously, closing gender gaps in labour force participation could boost global GDP by $7 trillion.

That these facts still require emphasis in 2025 is a signal in itself. At a time when commitment is wavering, the responsibility is to reinforce, not retreat, on working towards a more equitable world.

While the global case is compelling, it is the local stakes that build towards it, often without coming into sharp enough focus.

In many low-income countries, for instance, women spend up to four hours a day collecting firewood and water—work that remains unpaid, and time that precludes agency. Simultaneously, this labour remains almost entirely absent from wider economic planning. The result of unrecognised labour across these, and many other contexts, is a distorted picture of productivity and an underinvestment in the very infrastructure—clean energy, water systems, childcare—that would ease these burdens and strengthen social, economic, and even individual agency.

We were able to learn this alongside partners in Vietnam’s Lam Dong province, where the CAFÉ REDD initiative worked alongside indigenous K’Ho women to reflect their knowledge and priorities within forest restoration efforts. Activities were adjusted to fit around farming and care responsibilities, and local ecological practices informed parts of the approach. The initiative ultimately offered a step toward recognising women’s roles in shaping land use decisions and contributed to more responsive planning.

Thousands of miles away, in a vastly different context, our partners in Ethiopia shared similar learnings. By grounding interventions in how communities themselves defined exclusion, especially for young women, a similar principle shaped the RAYEE programme. The result: over 275,000 young people accessed dignified work, and new space was created to question and shift the norms and systems that limit participation. Such shifts catalyse change, not only in individual agency, but also in how local governance actors, service providers, families, and communities respond and reimagine their roles in enabling young women and marginalised youth to participate as legitimate economic actors.

This matters beyond the local. As global financing shifts toward climate and infrastructure megaprojects, the risk is that invisible labour stays invisible, and the structural conditions that limit women’s participation go unaddressed. Recognition at the community level is not peripheral to economic growth, it is foundational. Without it, inclusion is reduced to rhetoric. At a time when development financing is increasingly centralised, we learned that efforts like these offer a quiet corrective: inclusion does not simply follow growth, it creates the conditions for it.

While recognition at the local level opens the door, inclusive progress cannot fully take root unless people also have a say in the systems that shape their lives. In Mali, where the PGLR+ programme created space for communities to co-develop local budgets, women pushed for water access points near health centres, and young people successfully advocated for vocational training schemes; priorities that had been overlooked for years. This gap between who is affected and who decides is where inclusion often breaks down. Voice, in this context, beyond a gesture, becomes a way to redistribute power more equitably.

Ultimately, visible through partnerships across contexts is that when governance makes space for this kind of negotiated engagement, the results are more responsive and more durable. Even in highly fragile environments, investing in the social infrastructure of governance can support more peaceful coexistence and more inclusive decision-making. And often, it only takes one committed actor or coalition to start shifting what is possible.

Yet globally, these kinds of mechanisms remain the exception. In 2023, political rights and civil liberties declined in 52 countries, while only 21 made improvements, marking the eighteenth consecutive year of global democratic decline. Even in climate action—where effective governance and locally led responses are widely recognised as essential—less than 10% of global climate finance is dedicated to local action. And when funding does reach the ground, it is rarely locally led.

The deeper pattern that emerges is that as development financing scales up, decision-making still often seems to drift not nearly enough to the people most affected. And this carries a very tangible risk, because the cost of exclusion is real, and the consequences show up quickly across contexts, but are perhaps most immediately apparent in economic outcomes.

According to the World Economic Forum, gender parity across key dimensions—including income, labour participation, and political leadership—is now more than 120 years away. Parity in income alone is projected to take over 150 years. These timelines reflect not a lack of evidence, but a lack of sustained commitment.

It is worth remembering through these times that progress on inclusion has never been automatic, but has always depended on recognition, accountability, and agency being reinforced deliberately, often in difficult contexts, and rarely at scale. That remains true in 2025.

The case has been made. The risk now is in forgetting it. As transitions accelerate—economic, climate, technological—the question of who shapes them will continue to define who benefits. And in this context, while inclusion slips further down the agenda in some quarters, the responsibility is not to scale back, but to hold the line. To reinforce what we already know builds more equitable systems, which in turn are more stable, more prosperous, and more capable of supporting shared progress.