The world's developing nations continue to lag far behind industrial countries in gender equality and gender empowerment, according to a new U.N. report released here.

Titled 'Progress of the World's Women 2002,' the study says only three of 133 developing nations - Argentina, Costa Rica and South Africa - have made any significant progress in elevating the status of women.

Published by the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the report blames the lack of progress on several factors, including poverty, economic globalization, illiteracy and the failure of the international community to honor its pledges to assist poor nations.

"Poverty is a critical obstacle to women's access to education, economic empowerment and political participation," UNIFEM executive director Noeleen Heyzer told IPS.

In a globalized world, the feminization of poverty is a continuing drag on the progress of poorer countries in every aspect of development, including gender equality, she added.

"As governments are forced to cut spending on services such as education, health care, transport--in the interests of structural adjustment and market liberalization--it is women who pick up the burden, as unpaid household workers."

One of the Millennium Development Goals, adopted by world political leaders at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly in September 2000, calls for the "elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015."

But in order to achieve these goals, Heyzer said, "we must hold all nations accountable, not only developing nations."

"It is clear that in the poorest countries, women will need the support of a more just international system to achieve gender equality and empowerment," the study said.

Heyzer pointed out that assessing progress towards gender equality requires an understanding of the current world context: economic globalization, national fragmentation, military conflicts and diseases such as HIV/AIDS - "all with major consequences for women's lives." According to the study, the same seven northern European countries that registered most gender achievements in 2000--Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands and Germany--were the leaders again in 2002.

Their achievements are attributed primarily to the strong political will of successive governments to achieve gender parity and gender empowerment, as well as to high rates of literacy and economic advancement.

South Africa, which was the leading developing nation in 2000, was joined by Argentina and Costa Rica mainly because of large increases in women's share of parliamentary seats in those two countries.

Currently, the women's share of seats in the United States is 12 percent and in France 11.8 percent. But about 38 developing nations have a higher share, said the study, including 25.7 percent in Rwanda and 20.7 percent in Nicaragua.

But in Argentina, the recent financial and social crisis has thrown nearly everyone's life into disarray, leaving women especially hard-hit, it added. "Their wages have decreased, their rates of unemployment have increased and their poverty has deepened," said the report. The study says that despite pledges made at several U.N. conferences since 1992, there has been little other progress toward gender equality and gender empowerment in poorer nations.

"The greatest improvements have occurred in women's share of seats in parliament because this can be changed quickly in a short space of time," the study said.

Since changes in literacy, education, and employment are rarely so dramatic in a similarly short space of time, they require widespread changes in economic and cultural structures, the report argued.

Among the key findings in the report is that an estimated 140 million young people in the world are illiterate, and more than half, about 86 million, are young women.

Additionally, many of the poorest women in the world are employed in agriculture or "informal" manufacturing and services, and their work is vastly ignored in employment statistics.

"Essential to the elimination of feminized poverty and progress on gender equality is for governments everywhere to recognize and value women's work," Heyzer said.

The good news is that a majority of countries have achieved gender equality in secondary school education or have more girls than boys enrolled at the secondary level.

Heyzer said that both the United Nations and the international community must move ahead on implementing the commitments to gender equality made at the world conferences of the 1990s.

"We have a new opportunity with the agreement of all 189 nations on the Millennium Development Goals, one of which is to promote women's equality and empower women."

"In order to realize this, which is critical not only as a goal in itself but as necessary to the achievement of all of the other goals, we must hold all nations accountable, not only developing nations."