This is the Future Girls Want

What is the future girls want to see? What should change in order to make the world a better place for girls and young women – for everyone?

International Women’s Day

The theme for International Women’s Day 2025 is #AccelerateAction.

#IWD2025 takes place against a backdrop of unprecedented ideological attacks, the erosion and reversal of hard-won rights around the world and severe de-funding of critical work, making efforts to advocate for girls’ rights more important than ever before.

Without urgent action, global gender equality could be worse in 2030 than when the Sustainable Development Goals were agreed in 2015. 

Today’s girls risk having fewer rights than their mothers and, in some cases, even their grandmothers.

It’s time to #AccelerateAction for the #FutureGirlsWant.

5 girls’ rights at risk without urgent action

Over recent years, we have seen the regression of rights in several areas which directly impact the lives of children and young people, especially girls, including:

banning comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) – denying essential information to children, adolescents and young people

restricting access to and funding for safe abortion

anti LGBTQIA+ laws

excluding girls and women from education, work and public spaces

lowering the age of marriage

This negative shift is part of a deliberate effort by a growing anti-rights movement, which uses divisive narratives to polarise the public and maintain patriarchal norms and power structures.

Read: 5 girls’ rights at risk in 2025

Priscila from the Puruhá indigenous group in Ecuador is being supported by Plan International.

Chittaya uses the knowledge and skills she has gained from her school's student club to speak out on the importance of SRHR.

Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69)

CSW69, held at the United Nations in New York between 10 – 21st March 2025, marks 30 years since the Beijing Platform for Action was declared.

This landmark announcement saw 189 countries adopt the most comprehensive global agenda for the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.

This year’s event provides a critical opportunity to reinforce these commitments, plus those made at Summit of the Future last year.

We’ll be taking a team of global youth advocates to push for progress on crucial girls’ rights issues.

Stories from the Future

Stories from the Future is a collection of short hopeful fiction stories set in a desirable version of the year 2055.

Plan International invited 15 adolescent girls and young women from 11 countries from around the world to imagine a future 30 years from now where governments and policymakers fully adopted the recommendations made by adolescent girls and young people on the occasion of the Beijing+30 celebration.

Thialal from Senegal imagines a future where girls are free to be whoever they want to be without harmful gender stereotypes. — Thialal, 20, from Senegal imagines a future where girls are free to be whoever they want to be without harmful gender stereotypes.

Jhussahara, 20, from Peru imagines a future where girls channel indigenous elders wisdom to create solutions to the climate emergency. — Thialal, 20, from Senegal imagines a future where girls are free to be whoever they want to be without harmful gender stereotypes.

The illustrations were created by André Arruda, with the support of AI image generation software Midjourney.

What would the lives of adolescent girls look like in this particular future? What kind of opportunities and possibilities would they have access to that they currently do not? And what kind of new or persistent challenges would they face?

Read girls’ Stories from the Future