Looking back, 2010 to 2020 was a golden era for gender equality. New institutions were born, financing boomed, and we had feminist foreign policies in name at least, and sometimes even in practice. With strengthened architecture and financing, we created spaces for collective strategizing. And from that advocacy, came new laws and policies that improved the lives of women and girls in real ways. 

And then, since the pandemic, air started to leak from the tyres. Momentum slowed, and the backlash began. And a year ago, it all changed cataclysmically. 2025 was a year of grief. Of picking ourselves up off the floor, licking wounds, and working out what is next. Looking ahead, I see five areas for 2026 which are critical to progress.

• Get to grips with defence, trade and economics – It is not that gender equality is no longer trendy and we should immediately pivot to en vogue topics. But it is also useless pretending the vibes haven’t shifted towards defence, trade and the economy. 

It is tempting to ignore these shifts and stick to what we know well. The argument goes that with limited resources, we can’t spread ourselves thin and dilute our impact. There’s certainly a case for that.

But that approach smacks of denialism. The world has shifted. It’s no good ignoring those shifts because we don’t like them. And a feminist approach to trade, defence and economics is important! We can add something to the debate! How do trade deals ensure ethical supply chains? The entire Women, Peace and Security agenda is ever more relevant. And how about childcare as critical economic infrastructure? These are our bread and butter issues.

We are not short on academic expertise on feminist approaches to defence, trade and economics. What we lack is advocacy comfort and knowledge to translate and advance this expertise. Gender advocates are more accustomed to working in development, gender equality, and global health spaces. We are less comfortable in economics, trade and defence spaces. 

In 2026, we need to a) learn how to translate academic thinking on gender, defence, trade and economics, to public policy and practical asks, so we have the policy knowledge to go toe-to-toe with officials and experts, b) develop the connections and familiarity to access decision-making spaces on these issues.

• Men and masculinities are the unfinished work – This is somewhat controversial but for every minute we spend on ‘empowering women’, we should spend at least a tenth of that unpicking the ways men uphold the patriarchy. 

Men are responsible for nearly 100% of violence against woman and girls. Men overwhelmingly occupy the positions of power that make decisions about our lives. We cannot empower women to avoid their own assaults, or accept jobs never offered to us. This has been true for centuries. But over the last 50 years, as women have shifted beliefs and begun to progress in material ways, it is more men who have remained stuck, trapping themselves and women in rigid gender stereotypes. And recently, some men have begun to slide backwards. 

I believe we are in the very early stages of the backlash to anti-woke, and accelerating that movement means putting pressure on men and boys to change. This is not women’s work, we have enough to do ourselves. It has to come from men themselves. And there are good men, doing excellent work, helping other men to challenge the patriarchal notions of masculinity in their heads, that trap themselves and trap women too.

• Renewing global norms and frameworks – We are shifting to a world of multipolar competition, and longstanding post-war global norms are under attack. No, the West was never a benevolent holder of the rules-based international order. Global norms were never applied equally, and post-war institutions were always rigged in favour of high-income countries. And yet, we at least all normatively agreed some things were good (ending gender-based violence), and some things were bad (women dying in childbirth). We no longer agree on these things. The coordinated attacks on longstanding norms, positions and institutions that upheld the post-war rights-based era accelerated after January 2025.

And yet just holding the line is not enough. Gender equality advocates should not try to go back to what didn’t work in many ways, especially for people in the global south. The SDGs are nearly over and we need to move to what’s next. We have to re-invent the system, and renew forward-looking commitments to human rights, dignity and equality, in a post-2030 world. The feminist community should be central to this rethinking, so that gender equality is central to it, and not left behind.

• Chess pieces in place for the inevitable end of this era – This era too shall pass. Not without effort, and not without struggle. But it will end. It is possibly already in the very early stages of a counter-backlash. My spidey sense says the anti-woke, far-right has overplayed its hand, and we are already seeing the smallest signs of a turn against it. The question for gender equality advocates is yes, how to hasten that end, but also how to position for what comes after. With a longer time horizon to 2030 and beyond, we need to plant seeds now that will bloom in 5-15 years. And we need to do so across multiple forums. Legal, political, civil society, media, and more. We need to identify longer term opportunities and guide steadily towards them. This is exciting work, and it is creative and brave. But it also requires sustained funding, leadership and focus. I hope we see this in 2026.