Women's participation in political and public life remains dynamic, multifaceted, and resilient, including in gaining access to power through alternative structures, as recognized in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. Even as the glass ceiling in formal political institutions stays mostly intact, women actively open new spaces for discourse, build networks across long-standing divides and create new communities of engagement. Through the autonomous movements they build at the local to global levels, women's political engagements develop across formal administrative boundaries and are transnational in reach based on the universality of women's right to equality, challenging unequal power relations, demanding accountability, defending rights and achievements, and advocating for systemic and cultural change in societies, institutions and States. Women's autonomous civil society organizations are crucial to women's participation in public and political life.