This collection, to which Gita Sen acted as contributor, examines the historic paradigm shift established by the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which positioned gender equality and women’s empowerment as central tenets of global population and development policy. The ICPD Programme of Action broke new ground by unequivocally defining reproductive rights as human rights and mandating government action to promote equity in all spheres of life, including a call for male responsibility. Published in 2004 by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the book reflects on progress a decade later. A 2003 UNFPA global survey reveals a landscape of uneven implementation. While significant progress was made in adopting national laws and conventions, critical gaps persist—most notably in enforcement, as evidenced by only 21 out of 91 countries with laws against gender-based violence effectively enforcing them.The analysis concludes that transformative progress remains contingent on closing financial resource gaps, strengthening accountability mechanisms such as CEDAW, improving sex-disaggregated data, and combining robust political will with effective gender mainstreaming.