Mainstreaming or marginalizing? Gender in the United Nations General Assembly discourse, 1993–2023

Gender equality is a central normative commitment in global governance, yet its discursive prominence within international political arenas remains uneven. This study examines how gender is constructed, prioritized, and integrated within the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) speeches over a 31-year period (1993–2023). Drawing on a large corpus of 171,901 speeches, and a total word count of 92.72 million, the analysis investigates three questions: (1) which themes dominate UNGA discourse, (2) how gender-related narratives have evolved over time, and (3) whether patterns of emphasis differ by speaker’s gender. Adopting a discourse-analytic approach supported by large-scale text analysis, the study identifies 20 recurring thematic clusters. The findings show that while geopolitical concerns consistently dominate UNGA debates, gender equality and women’s empowerment appear as secondary and often embedded themes rather than standalone priorities. Explicitly gender-focused agendas remain comparatively marginal, even as references to gender have increased over time. At the same time, women’s participation in UNGA speeches has risen substantially, from 4.8% in 1993 to 35.5% in 2023, though this shift does not uniformly translate into greater discursive centrality for gender issues. These findings point to a tension between the institutional commitment to gender mainstreaming and the continued marginalization of gender as a distinct political priority. The study contributes to scholarship on discourse, power, and global governance by demonstrating how gender equality is incorporated into, yet diluted within, broader development narratives.