Women Peace and Security Index

The 2021 Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index reveals a slowing pace of global improvement and widening disparities in women's status. While developed countries, particularly Nordic nations, lead the index, fragile states and regions like South Asia perform poorly. The report highlights how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities, particularly through job losses in female-dominated sectors and increased risks of intimate partner violence. Additionally, new indices for forcibly displaced women and subnational data for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States demonstrate that national averages often conceal severe internal disparities and the compounding disadvantages of displacement.

• The 2021 WPS Index shows a widening gap between the highest and lowest performing countries, with Norway scoring .922 and Afghanistan scoring .278. This range is significantly wider than in 2017, when the top performer was only about twice as high as the worst.
• Global progress on women's inclusion, justice, and security has slowed, with the average index score rising by approximately 7 percent between 2017 and 2019, but only by about 3 percent between 2019 and 2021.
• South Asia is identified as the worst performing region in 2021, characterized by high levels of legal discrimination, intimate partner violence, and discriminatory norms, with fewer than 25% of women in paid work.
• The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected women's employment, with estimated global losses of 5 percent for women compared to 3.9 percent for men in 2020. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 17 million women exited paid work.
• Pandemic lockdowns increased the risk of intimate partner violence. In Iran, prevalence rates of current intimate partner violence rose from 54 to 65 percent six months into the crisis.
• Forcibly displaced women in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan face an average disadvantage of approximately 24 percent compared to host community women, with the largest gap found in South Sudan (42 percent).
• In Afghanistan, subnational disparities are stark, with provincial index scores ranging from .639 in Panjshir to .162 in Uruzgan. The lowest-ranking provinces are primarily in the southeast, where organized and intimate partner violence are highest.
• In Pakistan, provincial performance mirrors income and poverty levels, with Punjab scoring the highest (.734) and Balochistan the lowest (.194). Balochistan also reports the highest rates of both organized violence and intimate partner violence.
• The United States exhibits significant state-level variation, with Massachusetts scoring more than four times better than Louisiana. Racial disparities are prominent, particularly in maternal mortality, where Black women experience higher rates than white women in all states with data.
• There is a strong correlation (.83) between the WPS Index and the ND-GAIN Index, suggesting that countries with better protections for women are better positioned to mitigate climate change threats.
• Global levels of organized violence have declined since a 2014 peak, but the number of conflicts has increased, with 56 state-based and 72 nonstate conflicts recorded in 2020.
• Women's parliamentary representation has increased globally from 20 to 26 percent since 2017, though Papua New Guinea was the only country with no women in parliament in 2021.

APA

Peace Research Institute Oslo (2021). Women Peace and Security Index. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/c56d2663-980e-420f-9145-a9e5710cef3a/22 Tracking Sustainable Peace through Inclusion Justice and Security for Women.pdf?inline=true

Chicago

Peace Research Institute Oslo. Women Peace and Security Index. 2021. https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/c56d2663-980e-420f-9145-a9e5710cef3a/22 Tracking Sustainable Peace through Inclusion Justice and Security for Women.pdf?inline=true.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Peace Research Institute Oslo |title=Women Peace and Security Index |date=2021 |url=https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/c56d2663-980e-420f-9145-a9e5710cef3a/22 Tracking Sustainable Peace through Inclusion Justice and Security for Women.pdf?inline=true |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{peaceresearchinstituteoslo2021women, author = {{Peace Research Institute Oslo}}, title = {{Women Peace and Security Index}}, institution = {Peace Research Institute Oslo}, year = {2021}, url = {https://cdn.cloud.prio.org/files/c56d2663-980e-420f-9145-a9e5710cef3a/22 Tracking Sustainable Peace through Inclusion Justice and Security for Women.pdf?inline=true}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }