Heart at Work with Trina Sunday

55. Inside the United Nations: What CSW70 Reveals About Power, Progress and Pushback

• Trina Sunday • Episode 55

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What happens when progress on gender equality stops feeling guaranteed and starts feeling fragile?

I’ve just stepped out of the room at CSW 70 at the United Nations, and this episode is my real-time reflection on what I saw, felt, and couldn’t ignore. This wasn’t business as usual. I take you inside the conversations shaping global gender equality, from access to justice to the growing pressure on human rights frameworks.

I talk about what it means when an outcome document on women’s rights can’t reach consensus, and why that moment matters more than it might seem. I also share the impact of hearing voices like Malala Yousafzai, and the confronting reality of what “gender apartheid” signals for women and girls globally.

If you’re an HR leader, this episode connects the dots between global systems and workplace systems. I discuss why leadership today requires more than good intent. It calls for structural courage, sharper thinking, and a willingness to question who our systems really serve.

Where might your own systems be creating access or barriers? I’d love to hear your reflections. Let’s continue this conversation. Connect with me on LinkedIn.

SHOW NOTES: https://trinasunday.com/get-inspired/ 

Trina Sunday is a human-first leadership strategist, HR advisor and creator of the HEART Work™ model, helping HR leaders and People & Culture professionals build workplaces where people and performance thrive side by side. With more than 25 years of experience across HR, organisational development and leadership advisory in Australia, Asia and global leadership communities, she works with HR leaders and executive teams to strengthen leadership capability, shape workplace culture and drive human-first organisational transformation. Through the Heart at Work with Trina Sunday podcast, leadership programs and advisory work, Trina is passionate about empowering HR professionals to move beyond compliance and lead the future of HR with courage, clarity and influence.

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Heart at Work is for HR Leaders Who Care Deeply About Performance and People

Welcome to Heart at Work.

I’ve just come off the ground from CSW70 at the United Nations in New York, and this episode is a real-time reflection from inside the room. I want to take you beyond the headlines and into what this year’s Commission revealed about gender equality, global instability, backlash, and why this may have been one of the most important CSWs in recent memory.


Welcome to Heart at Work with me, Trina Sunday.

This space is for HR leaders who care deeply about performance and equally deeply about people. For more than 25 years, I’ve been asking one persistent question: what are the real conditions for happiness at work?

Because when humans come first, something deeper shifts — how people show up, how leaders decide, and how work feels.

Here, we explore what it really takes to lead with courage, compassion and clarity. And we pull up a chair to the conversations HR leaders don’t always get to have.

There’s heart here, but there’s also depth.

If you’re ready to build workplaces where people and performance thrive side by side, you’re in the right place.

Let’s get to the heart of it.


This Week Was the 70th Commission on the Status of Women

I’ve just arrived in Cambodia and am recording this after an incredibly intense, moving and, um, thought-provoking week at the 70th Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW70, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

And I want to do something a little different in this episode.

I don’t just want to tell you what happened. I want to take you inside it.

Inside the rooms, inside the energy, inside the tension, inside the moments that felt bigger than the agenda paper.

Because this year did not feel like business as usual, whatever that is.

It felt like one of the most significant CSWs in recent memory.

Not only because of the formal agenda, but because of the global backdrop against which it’s unfolding.

Rising conflict, democratic instability, erosion of human rights, intensified attacks on women’s autonomy, and a growing sense that rights many assumed were settled are in fact still deeply contested.

And that tension ran through the entire week.

I have to say, walking into the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations on the opening day was one of those moments that genuinely stopped me in my tracks.

It was surreal.

And not just because I was fangirling that Anne Hathaway was in the room.

Thousands of feminists, advocates, policymakers, diplomats, civil society leaders from all over the world were gathered in one place.

You could feel the history in the room, but you could also feel the weight of the moment.

And it wasn’t abstract. It was not ceremonial.

It felt urgent.

One of the things I kept coming back to is this.

For many people, CSW might just sound like another UN meeting, but it was so much more than that.

This year, CSW is the United Nations’ principal global intergovernmental body dedicated to gender equality and the advancement of women.

And each year, governments negotiate what are called the agreed conclusions.


The Agreed Conclusions

That is the formal outcome document of the session.

And it’s not just symbolic language.

It matters because it sets out the commitments, priorities and policy direction that can shape national reform, funding priorities, advocacy agendas and accountability conversations around the world.

It becomes a reference point, a signal, a benchmark.

And this year’s conclusions were focused on a critical theme ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls, including by promoting inclusive and equitable legal systems, eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and addressing structural barriers.

But I have to pause there for a second because the theme is just so incredibly important.

This was not fluffy or peripheral.

This was about access to justice.

And women around the world have access to only two-thirds of the legal protections available to men.

Two-thirds.

And this CSW70 focused on whether women and girls can actually rely on legal systems, institutions and public structures to protect them, to hear them and to treat them fairly.

And as it turns out, we can’t.

When we listen to discussions about ensuring and strengthening access to justice for women and girls, it was about discriminatory laws, exclusionary policies, structural barriers, and whether justice is genuinely available or only theoretically available.

And in the current global climate, that is enormous.

Because access to justice is not separate from everything else.

It is connected to war, poverty, violence, child marriage, trafficking, economic abuse, workplace harassment, digital exploitation and policy failure.

When legal systems are weak, biased, inaccessible or captured by ideology, women and girls pay the price, often first and often the most severely.

And that’s why this felt like such an important CSW.

Not just because of the wording in the document, but because of what it represented as a moment in history this year.


An Outcome Document on Justice for Women and Girls Couldn’t Be Adopted by Consensus

And then came the development that made it immediately clear that this year was different.

The outcome document had to go to a vote.

Now, for people outside the UN system, that might not sound dramatic.

But inside the room, it absolutely was.

Traditionally, the agreed conclusions were always adopted by consensus.

That means that member states of the United Nations negotiate, debate and adjust language until they can all live with the final wording.

It’s messy, it’s political, it’s often difficult.

But the point is that the final document is usually adopted without a formal vote.

This year, that didn’t happen.

Consensus could not be reached on the wording.

And for the first time, the Commission adopted the agreed conclusions through a recorded vote.

37 in favour, one against, with six abstaining.

The United States voted against.

This is hugely significant.

Because when an outcome document on justice for women and girls can no longer be adopted by consensus, it tells us something really important.

It tells us the backlash is real.

It tells us that language of rights is under pressure.

It tells us that we are no longer in a moment where progress can be assumed just because a framework exists.

And that’s exactly why the atmosphere felt so charged.

There was a recognition in the room that this was not just procedural — it was political, ideological and symbolic of a wider pushback against gender equality happening across multiple countries and systems.

I later attended the town hall with Secretary-General António Guterres, where he addressed that resistance directly.

He said that when you push for change, you’re pushing against the patriarchy, and the patriarchy is pushing back.

He also urged civil society to keep shaking the foundations of privilege and said he’d be with them now and forever.

That quote landed because it named what many of us were feeling.

There’s a temptation, especially in leadership circles, to treat resistance as evidence that a movement has gone too far.

But what if resistance is actually evidence that the movement is touching the thing it needs to touch?

What if the backlash is telling us that the foundations really are being shaken?


Gender Apartheid Refers to Institutionalised Systemic Oppression on the Basis of Gender

That was the mood.

And layered into all of this was the broader global reality.

Women are often the most affected by war and conflict.

Not only because of direct violence, but because conflict destabilises everything around them — access to education, health services, justice systems, livelihoods, mobility, documentation, family safety and community structures.

And children, of course, carry that burden too.

The Secretary-General warned during the week that the number of women living within 50 kilometres of conflict is the highest it has been in decades.

That is sobering.

And when you pair that with a deterioration of human rights in multiple contexts, especially for women and children, the whole week takes on a different tone.

Because it’s not just about aspiration.

This is about survival, protection and whether the global system is capable of holding a line.

And one of the moments that captured that most powerfully for me was hearing Malala Yousafzai speak.

She was, without question, one of the standout voices of the week.

She stood there visibly heartbroken, speaking about the reality facing women and girls in Afghanistan.

And she used a phrase that was enormously significant — gender apartheid.

She was naming a system.

Not isolated acts of discrimination, but an organised regime of exclusion and domination.

Removing women and girls from education, work, public life, movement, participation and autonomy.

She said that for nearly five years, women and girls in Afghanistan have been erased from public life.

Not sidelined. Not merely disadvantaged.

Erased.

That distinction matters.

Because when women are erased from public life, you are not dealing only with inequality.

You are dealing with organised exclusion.

She also challenged the international community to move from sympathy to accountability.

And reminded the room that killing children in classrooms is a war crime.

The room went silent.

Not polite silence.

The kind of silence where everyone knows they are in the presence of a truth that is too heavy to rush past.


CSW70 Sessions Pushed Beyond Awareness, Challenging Women to Act

At the Girls Not Brides event, Dr Faith Mwangi-Powell opened with a line that I loved.

You are not here to learn. You are here to get an assignment and then go and do your part.

And that’s the reframing.

Because one of the risks with global events like this is that people like me can become collectors of insight, collectors of quotes, collectors of moments — but not act.

What I appreciated about so many of the sessions at CSW70 was that they pushed beyond awareness.

They asked, what now?

What do you do with what you know?

What responsibility comes with proximity to these stories?

And that came through powerfully across child marriage, tech-facilitated abuse, economic abuse and the experiences of women in conflict settings.

But it also came through in innovation.

Women building, pushing, challenging and organising.

Yes, there was pushback.

Yes, there was grief.

Yes, there was tension.

But there was also resistance.

There was courage.

And there was extraordinary leadership.


CSW70 Highlighted the Importance of Systems Thinking in HR Leadership

Because sitting inside the UN all week, I kept thinking about systems.

Who designs them.

Who benefits.

Who is excluded.

Who gets justice and who gets procedure instead.

These questions are not only relevant at the level of nation states and global institutions.

They matter in workplaces too.

We are shaping systems every day.

Systems of access.

Systems of credibility.

Systems of accountability.

Systems of belonging.

Systems of justice.

And if this week reinforced anything for me, it’s that human-first leadership cannot just be about warmth or good intentions.

It has to include structural courage.

The courage to look honestly at who your systems are working for.

The courage to notice where policy and lived experience do not match.

The courage to understand that neutrality often protects the status quo.

And that’s why I felt like this was one of the most important CSWs to date.

Because it did not just celebrate progress.

It exposed how fragile progress can be.

It showed us that rights can be eroded.

That justice can be politicised.

That women and girls remain on the front line of conflict, exclusion and rollback.

But it also showed us something else.

That there are people all over the world refusing to be quiet.

Refusing to look away.

Refusing to let the foundations remain unshaken.

And honestly, being in the room for that felt like both a privilege and a responsibility.

It was surreal.

It was sobering.

At moments, it was heartbreaking.

But it was also clarifying.

Because once you’ve been in those rooms, heard those voices and felt that collective resolve, you cannot go back to talking about leadership as though it exists in some tidy, apolitical bubble.

Because it doesn’t.

Leadership lives inside context.

And right now, that context is asking more of us.

It’s heart work.


Keep Heart at Work

So that’s my reflection from inside CSW70.

You can find more daily recaps and highlights on my socials at TrinaSundayOfficial and on my LinkedIn page.

In the next episode, I’m going to take this a step further and explore what it all means for HR leadership in a much more volatile geopolitical environment.

If this conversation resonates with you, my Game Changer HR Leader Program kicks off this April.

Until next time, keep Heart at Work.

Thanks for spending time with me.

If this conversation challenged you, clarified something, or reminded you that you’re not the only one holding the tension between people and performance, then it’s done exactly what it was meant to.

This work isn’t easy. But it is necessary.

HR has a new future, and it leads with heart.

If you found value here, subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next.

Share this episode with someone who also believes work can be better.

And if you want to go deeper, explore the Heart Work model, the programs and the growing community of HR leaders at trinasunday.com.

Because when HR leads with clarity, courage and compassion, it doesn’t just change workplaces.

It changes lives.

Until next time, keep asking better questions, keep backing your voice, and keep putting humanity at the centre of performance.

Let’s keep Heart, at Work.