Progress around gender equality is at a stand still, the United Nations reports, as bias against women has not improved in the last decade.

Released Monday, the U.N. Development Program’s Gender Social Norms Index found that 9 in 10 men and women worldwide still hold biases against women. Among respondents, around half believe that men make better political leaders than women. 46 percent said men should have more of a right to a job than men, with 43 percent saying that men make better business executives than women.

28 percent said that university education is more important for men than women. A quarter said that it is “justifiable for a man to beat his wife."

Only around 10 percent of world leaders are women — a number that has remained stagnant since 1995. There are only 59 countries where women are educated at a higher rate than men, but even within those nations, the gender income gap sits at 39 percent. As the report explains, "average income gaps between women and men are correlated more strongly with measures of gender social norms than with gaps in education."

The COVID-19 pandemic also set back gender equality, as women often were expected to dedicate more “time spent on unpaid care and domestic work, decision-making regarding sexual and reproductive health, and gender-responsive budgeting."

The report also noted that the "biases hold across regions, income levels and cultures — making them a global issue."

Pedro Conceição, head of the Development Program’s Human Development Report Office, said that “social norms that impair women’s rights are also detrimental to society more broadly, dampening the expansion of human development."

"In fact, lack of progress on gender social norms is unfolding against a human development crisis: the global Human Development Index (HDI) declined in 2020 for the first time on record — and again the following year," he said. "Everyone stands to gain from ensuring freedom and agency for women."