NGOs report the large gap between legislation and enforcement and that the newly appointed ministers are rarely women. In many cases they say that the visible progress at the national level does not reach the grassroots populations. The surveys also reveal varying levels of government cooperation with NGOs and their programmes, ranging from meaningful collaboration to indifference or outright resistance. While expected regional differences have surfaced in the surveys, global trends are striking. Education and violence surfaced as the two prevailing issues.
Education overall is viewed as the area where the greatest progress has occurred.
In developing countries, especially, most of the progress is in primary education, in sharp contrast to spotty or no progress in secondary education, math and science, gender sensitivity of curricula and teachers, and, especially, retention in school of adolescent girls. In industrialized countries, NGOs address gender sensitivity in the classroom, discrimination in sports and, in some cases, in science and technology. Violence is seen as the most serious problem in all regions and varies regionally from interfamilial sexual and physical abuse, to female genital mutilation, infanticide, early marriage, and commercial sexual exploitation. Surprisingly, the impact of armed conflict is barely mentioned. Health and Nutrition are reported to show progress in most regions, although teenage pregnancy is a wide concern throughout.