Action on Poverty Leaving Women & Girls Behind - Report

· Systematic discrimination to blame, says ActionAid.
· Inequality will prevent UN hitting development goals.

Systematic discrimination against girls and women in the world's poorest countries will prevent the United Nations meeting its goals to reduce poverty, according to a report published today by the charity network ActionAid. The report says gender inequality must be put at the heart of the development agenda if those aims are to be met.

ActionAid said girls and women were more likely to be poor, hungry, illiterate or sick than boys and men, and called on Britain and other governments to tackle the disparities. Amid growing concern that the millennium development goals set by the UN for 2015 will not be met, the charity said a focus on women was vital to put the international community back on track.

Laura Turquet, the Women's Rights Policy Officer of ActionAid, said: "Gordon Brown announced that 2008 would be the year of action on world poverty. But progress can only be accelerated if the world's governments tackle the real reasons why women are being left behind."

The report found that women and girls formed the majority of the poor and hungry, and, in south Asia, women are getting a shrinking share of income as the economy continues to grow. Ten million more girls than boys miss out on primary school, while African women accounted for 75% of all young people living with HIV/Aids.

ActionAid said the aim of universal primary education was being hampered in Africa by the 40bn hours spent by women and children collecting water each year -equivalent to a year's labour for the entire workforce of France.

While it praised Brown for putting development at the top of the political agenda, it said the "critical link" between gender equality and poverty had been lost, and leadership had been missing. "The prime minister's pledge to help accelerate progress towards universal education will not be possible unless the obstacles to girls' attendance are addressed. No 10's new International Health Partnership can only be deemed successful if it has an impact on the scandalous rates of maternal mortality and provides women with access to the safe sexual and reproductive health services they are entitled to."

Brown has issued a "call for action" in 2008 to ensure the UN meets its 2015 goals of halving the number of people living on less than a dollar a day, cutting infant mortality by two-thirds, cutting maternal mortality by three-quarters and putting every child in school.

A special session of the UN will be held in September to discuss ways of making speedier progress, with discussions centred on four areas: health and education; climate change and the environment; the role of business; and trade and growth.

ActionAid said discussions at the UN and at this year's meeting of the G8 industrial nations in Japan would only succeed if they started with the recognition that the "development emergency is first and foremost an emergency for women and girls".

The report added: "The disproportionate impact of poverty on girls is not an accident, but the result of systematic discrimination." On current trends, the goal of halving hunger would not be met until 2035, 40 countries would not have equal enrolments for boys and girls until after 2025 and current progress in cutting maternal mortality rates was less than one-fifth of what was needed to meet the goal.

The total number of HIV/Aids infections in 2007 was 33 million - the highest ever.

Turquet said: "Getting the goals back on track is about more than governments saving face. Fundamentally it is about women realising their basic human rights. As the lack of progress on maternal health shows, people's lives are at stake."

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