In 80 years, no woman has served as United Nations Secretary-General. Of 48 officially recorded candidates since 1945, only eight have been women, and for the first 60 years of the U.N.’s existence, not a single woman was formally considered. As diplomats quietly maneuver ahead of the 2026 race for the next U.N. secretary-general, the perennial question returns: will this finally be the moment for a woman to lead the organization?
So far, three of the five official candidates are women: Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile; Rebecca Grynspan, who currently serves as secretary-general of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development; and Argentine diplomat Virginia Gamba, who served as the U.N.’s special representative for children and armed conflict between 2017 and 2025. The other two candidates are: Rafael Grossi, an Argentine diplomat who is serving as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Macky Sall, the former president of Senegal. The next U.N. secretary-general will serve a five-year term starting in January 2027. Member States have until April 1 to make their nominations.
Whoever wins, they will be stepping into the job as the U.N. confronts a crisis of credibility. From Sudan to Ukraine, wars grind on with little diplomatic traction. Climate negotiations oscillate between urgency and paralysis. Humanitarian systems strain under historic levels of human displacement. In many cases, the U.N. is not even at the table, as individual countries step into mediation roles shaped as much by regional influence and geopolitical calculation as by collective purpose. Trust in the capabilities of multilateral negotiation is eroding in capitals across the globe.
Against this backdrop, the question of who leads the U.N. is about whether the institution is being optimized to respond to increasing systemic risk. Research shows that an organization works best when it is helmed by a diverse leadership team. Although having a woman at the top of the U.N. is no guarantee for success, it could signal a commitment to increased institutional relevance and improve decision-making by bringing different perspectives to an institution in need of revitalization.
Parity Improves Performance
The fact that a woman has never led the U.N. is often framed as a normative failure, a contradiction of the U.N. Charter’s promise of equal rights. Although this is true, it also represents a deeper systems failure in multilateralism.
Modern institutions, from corporations to national security agencies, now recognize what behavioral economics, organizational psychology, and management science have demonstrated repeatedly, that diverse leadership teams outperform homogeneous ones in complex environments. They process information more rigorously, avoid groupthink, and demonstrate greater adaptability under stress. Additionally, repeated evidence has shown that peace agreements brokered with women’s representation are more durable and tend to last longer. In volatile systems, cognitive diversity is not an ethical luxury but a strategic asset.
The U.N., arguably the most complex governance system in the world, operates in precisely such an environment. Yet its apex role has remained confined to a narrow leadership archetype since its founding, drawn from a generation of male career diplomats and politicians whose professional formation occurred during the post–World War II golden age of great-power diplomacy. The absence of women at the top is not merely exclusionary but represents an untapped reservoir of skills in a system that cannot afford inefficiency in an increasingly difficult diplomatic environment.
Incremental Gains and Structural Limits
To be clear, progress has been made across multilateral organizations outside the U.N. The Women in Multilateralism Report 2026, which was launched by an organization one of us (Susan) founded at the Global Women Leaders Voices Dialogue in Madrid this January, tracked 62 multilateral organizations and found that 46 percent of chief executives in 2025 were women. This number is up from 42 percent just two years ago. Moreover, across these organizations, women make up 46 percent of the senior management teams, and almost one-third of the institutions tracked have achieved full gender parity at this level. That is far better than what you see in major corporations, better than what we see in national politics, indicating a systemwide shift in global governance.
These changes did not happen organically. They followed deliberate policy decisions including transparency in appointments, taking civil society recommendations seriously, and mobility within multilateral organizations that aligned with explicit parity goals.
However, the pattern changes where U.N. member States directly control nominations. Women account for just 23 percent of Permanent Representatives at the U.N. in New York. Out of 193 member States, 72 countries have never sent a woman ambassador to the U.N., and 63 countries only sent a woman once. In governing bodies, the forums where States exercise oversight on agencies, women represent just 28 percent on average of key decision-makers. Moreover, despite a rising number of chief executives across the organizations tracked in the report, 21 organizations have never appointed or elected a woman as chief.
The system optimizes when institutions act independently. It stagnates where political gatekeeping persists. The secretary-general selection sits squarely in that second category.
The Security Council Constraint
In 2016, the race for U.N. secretary-general undeniably demonstrated that a deep bench of highly qualified women exists. Seven women ran, outnumbering male candidates for the first time. They were former prime ministers, foreign ministers, and heads of major U.N. agencies. Their candidacies altered expectations from women candidates being perceived as anomalies into credible contenders for the role.
But any serious discussion of parity must acknowledge this structural reality: the five permanent members of the Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) — known as the P5 — retain veto power over secretary-general candidates. Though the official Security Council process is uncodified, the Council typically holds closed-door meetings with candidates, followed by private deliberations on all candidates. These are expected to take place after General Assembly hearings and will likely culminate in “straw polls” which are an informal voting mechanism to determine their recommendation. Discouragements in the straw polls typically indicate the likelihood of a veto in the adoption of the Security Council Resolution to appoint the secretary-general (see more process details and trackers at 1 for 8 Billion).
In 2016, during the sixth poll, António Guterres received the strongest support from the P5, with four encouragements and no discouragements, indicating no veto threats and clear backing. By contrast, all other candidates received at least one P5 discouragement (a potential veto) with several receiving two or more, significantly weakening their prospects for appointment. The poll, however, indicated no clear bias between men and women, opening the door for a serious conversation this round about a woman secretary-general.
In 2016, none of the women broke through the system, but this outcome was not based on merit but political alignment. The 2026 race unfolds under different conditions. The U.N.’s authority is being contested. Its operational capacity is stretched. Calls for institutional reform are louder than at any point in recent memory. Yet, the U.N. remains the primary forum for humanity to hash out its most complex collective action problems, including climate governance, pandemic response, nuclear non-proliferation, and the coordination of humanitarian assistance in major conflicts. In such an environment, the choice of strategic leadership becomes part of institutional survival.
Why This Moment Is Different
The call for a woman secretary-general is not new, but the case is no longer simply about correcting a historical imbalance. The goal now is not symbolic representation alone. Rather, the organization needs a leader, potentially a woman, whose leadership style, commitment to the U.N. Charter, and ability to navigate geopolitical fragmentation match the unprecedented challenges facing multilateralism today.
Gender parity expands the range of perspectives at the table, not as an abstract moral good, but as a mechanism for improving decision quality. In conflict mediation, humanitarian coordination, climate diplomacy, and financial governance, the ability to synthesize competing priorities is central to effectiveness. The world’s most sophisticated organizations now treat diversity as a risk-management strategy. The U.N, tasked with navigating global systemic risk, should do no less.
The nominations of Bachelet, Grynspan, and Gamba, and the broader field that will inevitably emerge before April 1 when nominations close and the ballot polls begin, offer member States a test. Do they see gender parity as symbolic politics or as institutional strengthening?
The Future of the United Nations
The U.N. Charter’s commitment to equal rights was not decorative language. It was recognition that legitimacy depends on representation. Eight decades later, legitimacy is again at stake, but this time, so is performance.
The data in Women in Multilateralism 2026 show that when parity is measured, prioritized, and institutionalized, systems shift. The question is whether the most consequential leadership decision in the multilateral system will follow that same logic.
To be clear, this is not to say a woman secretary-general would magically fix all the dysfunction facing the world. The U.N. is but a reflection of its member States. That said, nostalgia for a post-World War II U.N. will only hold back the creation of a vision for what the U.N. could be in the 21st century. Leadership needs to prioritize the mediating role of the U.N., delivering on the consensus for the future of humanity that was built in the Sustainable Development Goals, and more recently the Pact for the Future, and push ambition forward with the States willing to take their global commitments seriously.
In 2026, member States will choose a person to lead the U.N. but they will also be sending a signal. They can choose the status quo, or they can acknowledge that optimizing global governance requires drawing from the full spectrum of available talent. In an era of overlapping crises, the U.N. cannot afford to operate below its full capacity. Gender parity is not about optics. It is about whether the system is serious about functioning at its best.
– Susana Malcorra and Nudhara Yusuf, Published courtesy of Just Security.
