A dramatically shrinking World Health Organization has seen a slight decline in overall gender parity amidst restructuring. However, strict recruitment policies and targeted job cuts have actively boosted female representation within the organisation’s professional ranks. At the same time, deep regional disparities in gender representation remain unresolved, with men holding  the overwhelming majority of staff posts in the African, South-East Asian and Eastern Mediterranean regions.

Amidst sweeping job cuts triggered by the US withdrawal and a massive budget crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) claims that “gender parity has been achieved” among its remaining 8,569 staff members in the Director General’s annual report, to go before WHO member states at next week’s World Health Assembly.

However, WHO human resources data for 2025, released on 1 May, reveals this to be slightly misleading: women actually lost their 50.1% majority from 2024, dropping slightly to 49.7% by the end of 2025.

Despite this broader decline, progress was made within the Professional and higher categories, where female representation successfully rose from 47.9% in December 2024 to 48.5% by December 2025. While the absolute numbers for both genders shrank during the restructuring phase, a larger number of male professionals departed the organisation than women (105 men compared to 67 women).

This progress is not solely a result of the ongoing downsizing but reflects an intentional, long-term policy shift: targeted recruitment measures introduced in 2023 to achieve gender parity mandate that job openings must be reopened if the applicant pool is less than 30% female or if shortlists lack at least two women.

These strict policies, which remain in place until parity is reached in under-represented grades, helped drive the percentage of female applicants up incrementally from 31.4% to 32.1% over the past four years.

Gender parity by region: a tale of two organisations

While the WHO’s official designation points to overall gender parity on a global scale, examining the workforce data for 2025 reveals a starkly divided WHO. True gender balance remains elusive, with distinct female-majority and male-majority regions painting a complex picture of international representation.

The Western Pacific Region currently boasts the highest overall female representation at 65.2%, followed closely by Headquarters and Global Shared Services at 63.5%, and the European Region at 59.2%. Conversely, male staff retain a dominant majority in the African Region (65.5% male), the Eastern Mediterranean Region (59.2% male), and the South-East Asia Region (57.4% male).

However, a more in-depth look at the data reveals that these top-level majorities also are somewhat skewed by the concentration of women in administrative and clerical roles. In both Headquarters and the Western Pacific, the high overall female representation is heavily driven by the General Service category, where women make up 79.5% and 74.3% of the staff, respectively.

By contrast, the male-dominated regions exhibit male majorities across nearly all job categories: in the African Region, for example, men hold 67.8% of the General Service roles alongside their dominance in the professional ranks. Data on the WHO Region of the Americas, which has its own governing body, budget and HR processes, is not included in the global HR report.

Uneven gains in field and senior leadership

These regional disparities become even more pronounced when examining crucial leadership roles. While women are increasingly securing top diplomatic and operational roles, these leadership gains remain highly uneven across the globe. The South-East Asia Region leads the agency in field leadership, successfully achieving exact gender parity, with 50% of its country offices now headed by women.

In stark contrast, female leadership in the field lags severely in other regions: In the African Region, only 25.5% of country offices are headed by women, and the Eastern Mediterranean Region reports a similarly low 26.3%.

A similar divide exists within the highest echelons of senior management at the D1 and D2 grades – the WHO’s top director-level roles. The European Region has the highest percentage of women in these senior leadership positions at 40%, followed by Headquarters at 36%. Meanwhile, the lowest senior female representation is found in the South-East Asia Region (23.1%) and the African Region (24.1%).

In the DG’s annual human resources report, the organisation openly acknowledges that the greatest remaining gaps in global gender parity exist exactly at this glass ceiling: the uppermost D2 (director) level is only 24.5% female, and the P6/D1 (senior leadership) levels stand at 37.3% female.

Staff decline tracks toward June projections

The DG’s human resources report also confirms the sheer scale of the ongoing departures. By December 2025, the WHO counted a steep 9.4% decrease in regular staff members, down to 8,569 as compared to the 9,463 staff recorded at the end of 2024, or the 9401 employed as of 1 January 2025.

The data on end-of-year departures indicate that the health agency is well on its way to reaching its previously announced target of slashing nearly 25% of its global workforce by mid-2026.  Now, according to the latest projections before WHA, there will only be 7283 regular WHO staff remaining by 30 June, about 23% less than the 9401 employed as of 1 January 2025.

Meanwhile, the number of non-staff affiliates decreased by 23% in 2025, down to 5,844 full time equivalent positions across three non-staff categories as compared to 7,582 in 2024.  These categories includes professionals and general service staff working under “Agreement for Performance of Work” contracts for specific, time-limited tasks, “Consultants” for more ongoing roles, and Special Service Agreements (SSAs), a type of non-staff category common in Africa and South-East Asia.

Headquarters is bearing the heaviest burden of the realignment. Official projections indicate that Geneva and Global Shared Services will shrink by 29% by June 2026, losing over 800 staff members. Meanwhile, the proportion of personnel based in country offices has increased to nearly 46% of the remaining global workforce.

This deliberate geographic shift reflects a strategic institutional goal to build a significantly leaner administrative headquarters while vigorously protecting country-level health delivery. “The development aid era is over. WHO Geneva needs to be much smaller,” as diplomatic sources who spoke to Health Policy Watch framed it.

Financing the restructuring

The WHO currently faces a funding gap of approximately $630 million, representing roughly 15% of its $4.2 billion base budget for the upcoming 2026-2027 biennium. Officials have managed to shrink this deficit through aggressive reprioritisation, extensive staff cuts, and a 50% reduction in travel costs. This represents a massive reduction from the initial projected deficit of $1.7 billion, which was catalysed by the geopolitical earthquake of the US withdrawal from the global health agency, announced in January 2025 when President Donald Trump took office.

To finance the sweeping realignment, the Seventy-eighth World Health Assembly in 2025 authorised the temporary use of up to $410 million from Programme Support Costs reserve funds to cover unavoidable indemnities and salary gaps. Yet, the organisation has successfully minimised its reliance on these reserves. To date, the projected utilisation of the reserve funds stands at $206.2 million, roughly half of the authorised amount, according to the Human Resources report focusing on “WHO’s prioritization and realignment process.”

Senior management says they achieved this by prioritising “preventive measures” to manage the downsizing. Approximately 51% of all global separations were managed through natural attrition, the expiration of fixed-term contracts, and a voluntary early retirement package, completely sparing the agency from paying out costly forced termination indemnities for those individuals.

As attention turns to the next World Health Assembly and the election process for a new Director-General, the incoming leader will inherit a downsized organisation that boasts a stronger female representation in its professional ranks in several regions – yet remains fundamentally fractured by severe budget constraints and glaring regional disparities.

Image Credits: WHO/Christopher Black , Felix Sassmannshausen/HPW, WHO/Human Resources – Prioritization and Realignment Process , WHO Human Resources Update, 31 December 2025.