To mark the International Women’s Day in March 2025, 114 exchanges and central counterparty clearing houses (CCPs) around the world participated in the eleventh annual 'Ring the Bell for Gender Equality' to accelerate gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community.
These bell-ringing events aim to raise awareness of the private sector’s essential role in advancing gender equality and women’s empowerment and contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals. See a short video here.
The 2025 theme, “Ring the Bell for ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment” highlights three urgent priorities:
- Advance rights: Uphold the full spectrum of women’s and girls’ human rights and eliminate violence, discrimination, and exploitation.
- Promote equality: Dismantle systemic barriers and amplify the voices of women and girls in marginalized communities.
- Foster empowerment: Ensure inclusive access to education, employment, leadership, and decision-making spaces.
Throughout Ring the Bell for Gender Equality, more than 50 UN Women offices played a key role by co-organizing events, delivering keynote speeches, and participating in high-level panels in collaboration with exchanges and partners across the globe. Among the participating countries were Armenia, Austria, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Moldova, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Philippines, Portugal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, among many others.
Participating exchanges continue to drive progress by:
- Signing and advancing the Women’s Empowerment Principles (more than 40 financial exchanges have made this commitment);
- Encourage listed companies to also make a WEPs commitment. As of March 2025, over 11,000 companies have made this commitment.
- Promoting gender-related corporate disclosure and transparency;
- Supporting gender-lens investing and innovative products such as gender bonds;
- Expanding women’s access to finance and leadership roles.
As we near the 2030 milestone, the time to shift from commitment to implementation is now. Action, measurement, and accountability are essential to closing persistent gaps and ensuring gender equality for all.
The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted in 1995, is the most comprehensive global agreement to advance women’s rights. It covers key areas such as education, health, economic opportunity, political participation, and ending violence against women and girls. In 2025, the world marks the 30th anniversary of this landmark agreement—a key moment to accelerate action for gender equality.
As part of this milestone, governments, civil society, and the United Nations came together at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) to review progress, identify gaps, and agree on ways to drive change for all women and girls everywhere. A landmark political declaration was adopted by consensus by Member States to respect, protect and champion the rights, equality and empowerment of women and girls.
