Invisible barriers: How social norms keep women out of leadership roles

Invisible barriers: How social norms keep women out of leadership roles

Despite growing evidence that women’s leadership improves political decision-making processes, parity between women and men in decision-making is far off. According to data from UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), 27.5 per cent of parliamentarians globally are women. In only 28 countries, women occupy positions in the highest office, while 101 countries have not had a woman leader. Women represent less than a quarter of Cabinet ministers and account for 36 per cent of locally elected officials. 

What factors account for these figures?  The answer lies not only in concrete barriers — including unequal laws, limited funding or opportunities, and violence against women in politics — but in the unwritten rules of society: social norms.

• What are social norms? 

Social norms are the unwritten rules about what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” in a community. They shape perceptions of who is deemed fit to lead and participate in public life, and whose voice counts, limiting women’s access to decision-making roles and driving men’s domination. While some norms help societies function smoothly, others reinforce discrimination — including the norms that block women's path to political leadership, explored below. 

Social norms directly influence individual behaviour, family and community expectations, and institutional practices. They often reflect historical, cultural, and gendered assumptions about authority, power, and public engagement. Social norms can change, as time, culture and societies evolve. Though adaptable over time, these norms can be deeply rooted and often intertwined with culture, religion and other community-based beliefs, making transformation extremely difficult and slow. 

Image

• How do social norms limit women’s political participation?

These invisible barriers can be both explicit and implicit, enforced through approval or disapproval of behaviours, or social pressure. They are present in private and public spheres:

• At home, women are often expected to shoulder a disproportionate amount of unpaid care and domestic work, compared to men, leaving little time for political engagement. Boys are often taught to be assertive and ambitious, while girls learn to nurture.
• In politics, women are often confined to “soft” portfolios in education and social protection, while men dominate areas widely perceived as more prestigious or powerful, such as economy, finance, or defense – limiting women's influence over major resource and policy decisions.
• Political parties often provide women candidates with less funding or support due to doubts about their leadership abilities.
• Media tend to portray men as competent, but women often have to repeatedly prove themselves and face stereotypes. 
• Monuments, textbooks, and movies celebrate men as leaders, shaping ambition long before adulthood.

As a result, harmful social norms often exclude, silence, or discourage women from pursuing leadership roles. 

When women lead, decision-making is more representative, inclusive, and effective. Studies¹ show that women in parliaments push for childcare, healthcare, pensions, and gender equality laws. Yet as long as norms keep politics a “man’s world,” democracy itself remains incomplete.

• Can social norms change?

Social norms can change and evolve - but not overnight. Some shifts happen quickly, with, for instance, norms related to women’s employment in paid work - which unintentionally changed following the two World Wars, to make up for the gap in men’s employment due to military mobilization. This period transformed roles of women and men and therefore expectations tied to women's participation in economic and public life altogether. But most social norm changes require decades of advocacy and tireless actions from different parts of society.

UN Women research shows that social norms can change - when three approaches come together:

1. Transform the story – The stories we hear and tell shape what we think is “normal.” Too often, they reinforce stereotypes and inequality. To shift norms, we need new narratives—ones that challenge harmful narratives and open up new possibilities for women and girls.
2. Change everyday realities of women and girls: Norms don’t shift if people don’t have real alternatives. Women won’t step into public life if it means facing violence, having no financial support or juggling with care responsibilities. Change happens when women and girls have access to opportunities, services, and safety—backed by laws that are not only in place, but actually work in practice. And for those laws to work, public support and ongoing advocacy is important.
3. Build collective power – Social norms are shaped by power—who has it, and who doesn’t. To change them, power needs to shift too. This means supporting women and marginalized groups to organize, speak out, and lead, while also building alliances with others—from community leaders to unions, from the media networks to academia. Lasting change comes from collective, sustained action. 

No single intervention works alone; it takes all three, at the same time, to make change happen.

• What is UN Women doing about it?

UN Women supports efforts to transform the social norms that hold back gender equality and women's leadership through its country, regional and global programmes, in partnership with governments, civil society organizations, women's rights movements and other stakeholders. One of these efforts is the WYDE | Women’s Leadership Initiative, funded by the European Union and implemented with partners including International IDEA, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), and civil society organizations. Through WYDE, UN Women and its partners are working globally to:

• Shift harmful narratives through advocacy initiatives, intergenerational dialogues, training of the media, parliamentarians, local representatives and civil society leaders.
• Reform institutions by promoting quotas, mentoring women candidates, and training parliaments to address violence against women in politics.
• Strengthen feminist movements by funding grassroots organizations working on innovative social norms change projects and building bold coalitions for systemic change.

Explore more: WYDE | Women’s Leadership: Strategy on Social Norms Change.

Continue reading: Time to act — everyone has a role in making women's leadership the norm.

Image

¹ R. Chattopadhyay and E. Duflo (2004). “Women as policy makers: Evidence from a randomized policy experiment in India,” Econometrica 72(5), pp. 1409–1443; K. A. Bratton and L. P. Ray. 2002. “Descriptive representation: Policy outcomes and municipal day-care coverage in Norway,” American Journal of Political Science, 46(2), pp. 428–437.

² UN Women, Ideologies, institutions and power: Addressing discriminatory social norms, 2026