 The struggle for gender equality and gender parity when it comes to politics is truly one of the great struggles of our time. Truth be told, great strides have been made in terms of increasing the share of representation and access to political power enjoyed by women globally. But there's still a long, long way to go. When you take a look at the figures that emerge from our global state of democracy report, less than a quarter of members of legislatures around the world are women. On current trends, it will take over half a century to achieve a gender parity in parliaments globally, and that means that maybe my great-granddaughter will get to live in a world where half of the members of parliament are women globally. That's not acceptable. And mind you, this is barely the surface of the problem. If you scratch beneath the surface and go to lower levels of politics, not to speak of what happens in the corporate world, reality is totally different and is even less auspicious for women. So there's still a long way to go. And this is of the essence for so many reasons. I mean, one of the issues that I personally and ideas and institutions are increasingly concerned about is the role of democracy in achieving sustainable development goals, the 2030 agenda. We know because we know that democracies tend to do much better than hybrid regimes or authoritarian regimes when it comes to moving forward gender equality. And in turn, this is absolutely essential and it's been empirically demonstrated many times over. It is absolutely essential if we want to achieve sustainable development goals. Gender equality is arguably the single most important factor in predicting future levels of development across the world. The struggle for gender equality is a struggle for democracy. It's not entirely coincidental that religious fundamentalism has spread throughout the world precisely when the greatest strides in terms of gender equality are being made. We have to keep the struggle going. Neither democracy nor development can afford to leave half of the population behind. Our challenges are just too big to be able to afford that. So we at IDEA stand squarely with this struggle and will continue to make it part of our work.