Gender Equality in Foreign Policy

The 2026 Gender Equality in Foreign Policy (GEFP) Index launches at a markedly different political moment than its first iteration in 2023. Conflicts have deepened, the multilateral system has come under sustained strain, and the financing landscape has deteriorated sharply—including significant drops in Official Development Assistance (ODA) overall and in gender-targeted ODA specifically. This is precisely why an updated Index is needed now: not to retreat into a smaller or safer agenda, but to respond more pragmatically to the one in front of us.

The GEFP Index evaluates 57 countries across seven priority areas—peace and militarization, ODA, migration, labor protections, economic justice, institutional commitments, and climate governance—using quantitative indicators to make visible where structural integration of gender equality is strongest, where gaps persist, and where opportunities for reform exist. This iteration expands the 2023 Index (which was then called the Feminist Foreign Policy, or FFP, Index) to include nine additional countries, broadening geographic representation, particularly across the Global South. Across all seven domains, the central finding is consistent: the gap is not between countries that have made commitments and those that have not—it is between commitment and the institutional, financial, and political conditions needed to act on it.