Holding the Line: 2025 Global Health 50/50 Report

Global 50/50’s eighth annual Health Report finds a marked downturn in the public availability of organisational commitments and policies for workplace fairness and equity. The gains reported in previous years were fragile; the figures presented in this year’s Report are a reminder that the road to social justice, including gender justice, is long, with inevitable setbacks. The 2025 Global Health 50/50 Report, and the accompanying Gender and Health Index, shines a light on whether and how organisations are playing their part in addressing two interlinked dimensions of inequality: inequality of opportunity in career pathways inside organisations; and inequality in who benefits from the global health system. The Report assesses the gender, fairness and equity-related policies and practices of 199 organisationsb active in global health – covering 37 countries and over 4 million employees, and provides a comprehensive overview on gender equality and the distribution of power and privilege across the global health ecosystem. 

The 2025 Report seeks to contribute to understanding how current political contexts impact the most influential organisations active in global health – and their ability and/or willingness to maintain gender justice, fairness and equity commitments. For the first time since G5050 began monitoring in 2017, Global 50/50 document a regression across the variables they assess. The regression is particularly marked for organisations (both for-profit and nonprofits) with US federal grants or contractsc who stand to lose funding, influence or charitable status if they do not comply with the directives from the current US administration, whether such outcomes are legally enforceable or not.10

Global 50/50 recognise that this removal of public commitments and policies does not necessarily mean that organisations have foregone their commitment to creating and delivering workplaces that are fair and equitable for all people, nor that the organisations have abandoned their commitments to gender justice. It may simply mean that organisations have responded to external pressures by removing publicly available policies.

While recognising the challenges posed by the current climate, this moment of rupture can also provide an opportunity to reclaim, rethink and realise more sustainable and equitable institutions and systems in the future.