Globally, some progress on women’s rights has been achieved. In India, 83.3% of legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG indicator, with a focus on violence against women, are in place. The adolescent birth rate is 12.2 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 as of 2018, up from 10.7 per 1,000 in 2016. In 2016, 72.8% of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods.

However, work still needs to be done in India to achieve gender equality. 27.3% of women aged 20–24 years old who were married or in a union before age 18. As of February 2021, only 14.4% of seats in parliament were held by women. In 2018, 18.4% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months.

As of december 2020, only 44.3% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: unpaid care and domestic work, key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap and information and communications technology skills. In addition, many areas – such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women’s access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment – lack comparable methodologies for reguar monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in India.