UN Women
United Nations Organization for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
UN Women was established by a merger of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, established in 1976) and other agencies and became operational in 2011. The organization operates under a governance structure and has an executive board representing different regions. Former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet was its inaugural executive director and Jordanian Sima Sami Bahous is its current executive director. UN Women is a member of the UN Development Group.
History
In response to UN General Assembly resolution 63/311, in January 2010 the Secretary-General presented report A/64/588, entitled Comprehensive Proposal for the Composite Agency for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. In his report, the Secretary-General resolved that, rather than relieving other parts of the United Nations system of their responsibility for contributing to the promotion of gender equality and women's empowerment, the new agency should seek to sharpen the focus and impact of the gender equality activities of the entire United Nations system. Additionally, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon estimated that approximately $125 million per annum were needed for operating costs and "start-up" capacity at the country, regional, and headquarters levels. Moreover, an additional $375 million per annum were needed in the initial phase to respond to country-level requests for programmatic support.
After years of negotiations between UN member states, women's groups, and civil society, on 2 July 2010 the General Assembly unanimously adopted resolution 64/289, thus creating UN Women by merging the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW); the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW, established in 1976); the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI, established in 1997), and the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, established in 1976). Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced at the founding of the movement that he was "grateful to Member States for having taken this major step forward for the world's women and girls.
“UN Women” enters the record as united Nations Organization for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Women, United and Nations can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“UN Women” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Women, United and Nations provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q641576. VIAF identifies the subject as 187333441. The Library of Congress control number is no2011155726. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1976, 2011, 2010 and 1997.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “UN Women” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.