Justice must work for all women and girls, and for every generation – At CSW70, young leaders and women’s rights advocates tackle the justice gap across the life course

At the annual ‘CSW Youth Forum’ on 8 March and at a panel discussion on ‘Intergenerational approaches to access to justice across the life-course’ on 13 March, girls, young feminists, older women advocates, civil society organizations, and policymakers gathered to identify intergenerational approaches to advancing access to justice for all women and girls across the life course.

Both events, organized by UN Women during the CSW70 , served  as a uniquely intergenerational space to share experiences, exchange ideas, and propose solutions to the age-based barriers that continue to prevent women and girls from claiming their rights.

Globally, women hold just two-thirds of the same legal rights as men and no country has achieved full legal equality for women and girls.  Despite decades of international commitments, the justice gap persists — and it is sharpest at the margins. Adolescent girls and young women face limited legal literacy, parental restrictions on participation in justice processes, criminalization and stigma around sexual and reproductive health rights, and digital surveillance that deters safe reporting. Women's exposure to conflict has increased by 50 per cent over the past decade, heightening legal vulnerability and justice gaps for younger women in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Older women, meanwhile, confront compounding lifelong inequalities: pension exclusions, lack of documentation, barriers to inheritance and property rights, and a near-total absence of recognition of unpaid care work in legal claims. Elder abuse, often perpetrated within families, remains widely underreported and under-addressed.

Across the life course, structural barriers — patriarchal norms, weak law enforcement, and institutional bias — deepen these disadvantages. Participants emphasized that closing the justice gap requires an intergenerational lens and called for intentionally intergenerational and intersectional approaches to justice reform that recognize and respond to the distinct but connected challenges women face at every stage of life.

Participants also highlighted that age discrimination remains insufficiently addressed in legal frameworks, reinforcing exclusion across the life course. Speakers stressed that justice systems must better reflect lived realities and build trust with communities so that women of all ages can safely claim their rights.

Young leaders spoke to the specific obstacles adolescent girls and young women face in seeking justice — limited legal literacy, stigma around sexual and reproductive health rights, digital harassment, and exclusion from the very policy spaces where laws are shaped.

Participants called for legal information to be made accessible in indigenous and local languages, and for structural inequalities within legal systems to be addressed head-on. Across regions, young feminists were clear: justice is not only a legal process — it is a broader effort to dismantle the inequalities that allow injustice to persist.

The dialogue also shone a light on barriers that older women disproportionately face — discrimination tied to inheritance rights, land ownership, access to pensions, and legal documentation. Lifelong economic inequality and unpaid care responsibilities further limit their ability to pursue legal remedies.

Participants stressed that justice systems must recognize how inequalities accumulate across women's lives, and that the knowledge and experience of older women must inform advocacy and policy reform — not be sidelined by it.

Participants identified concrete steps to strengthen access to justice across generations: expanding legal literacy initiatives, strengthening gender-responsive legal aid, repealing discriminatory laws, and ensuring the meaningful participation of both young and older women in justice reform.

They also underscored the need for coordinated partnerships — across governments, civil society, UN agencies, development partners and international institutions — to address the structural barriers that no single actor can dismantle alone.

The recommendations emerging from the Youth Forum were shaped through a broader consultative process led by young feminists and adolescent girls in the lead-up to CSW70. More than 23,000 young people and adolescents from over 75 countries contributed to community, national, regional, and global consultations that informed the Global Youth and Adolescents Recommendations. The process also included a Virtual Global Adolescent Girl Leadership Town Hall on 12 February 2026, convened by UN Women and co-created with girl leaders, where more than 100 girls under 19, from over 50 countries, shared their experiences in navigating justice systems and identified priorities for making them more accessible and responsive to girls’ realities. The consultations fed into the CSW70 Youth Forum, helping shape the youth-led priorities presented during the session.

The events demonstrated the power of intergenerational dialogue to build more inclusive and equitable justice systems. By centering the voices of women and girls across the life course, participants reaffirmed a shared commitment: justice must work for every woman, at every stage of her life. The recommendations emerging from these discussions will inform ongoing advocacy and policy efforts to make that commitment real.