WUNRN
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS (MDG'S)
REPORT 2013 - GENDER
Direct Link to Full 68-Page Report
Published in 2014:
https://www.devex.com/news/we-can-t-put-off-to-tomorrow-what-needs-to-be-done-today-84104
MDG'S 2013 REPORT - WOMEN & GIRLS - MANY SUCCESSES, BUT MANY CHALLENGES REMAIN
Girls
in Ethiopia, where the U.K. Department for International Development support
grants to help keep girls in school. So much more still needs to be done to
promote gender equality and empower women. Photo by: Jessica
Lea / DfID / CC
BY
By John Hendra, UN Women - 13 August
2014
As
the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals approaches, there can be no
doubt that the MDGs, including MDG 3 — “promote gender equality and empower
women” — have made a significant difference to the lives of women and girls
worldwide.
As the 2013
MDG Progress Report released last month shows, disparities in primary
school enrolment between boys and girls are being eliminated, and progress
toward gender parity in school enrolment is evident at all levels of education.
Women’s political participation continued to increase with 46 countries now
having more than 30 percent female members of parliament. Women’s access to
paid employment in non-agricultural sectors has been increasingly, albeit
slowly. As the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development has highlighted, the MDGs
successfully galvanized greater investment in gender equality by donors.
Bilateral aid targeting gender equality and women’s empowerment tripled from $8
billion in 2002 to $24 billion in 2012 — an annual growth rate of 12 percent.
However, so much more remains to
be done, and time is running out.
Most urgently, while the maternal mortality rate dropped by 45 percent between 1990 and 2013, far too many women still die in pregnancy and childbirth — almost 300,000 women in 2013 alone — when these deaths are largely preventable. Girls from poor rural households are more likely to be out of school. Women continue to be concentrated in vulnerable employment, at higher rates than men, and women still take up just 21.8 percent of all parliamentary seats worldwide.
Further,
some regions are lagging significantly when it comes to meeting the MDG gender
targets. Girls still face significant barriers to entering both primary and
secondary school in sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia. Gender disparities
only grow in secondary education. North Africa has one of the lowest
proportions of women in paid employment, with little change over the past two
decades. Very few women are represented in decision-making in some regions — in
the Pacific women hold just 3 percent of parliamentary seats.
Maternal mortality rates remain
much higher in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean.
And globally, young women aged 15 to 24 have a 50 percent higher risk of
becoming infected with HIV than their male peers.
The unfinished business of the
MDGs must be addressed in the new post-2015 development agenda, now being
negotiated by U.N. member states. At the same time, we can’t lose sight of the
need to accelerate MDG implementation in the time we have left. It’s very
welcome to see more than 50 countries already committed to accelerating the
MDGs, with many of these countries focusing on MDG 5 on maternal mortality and
MDG 3 on gender inequality. Further concerted effort and accelerated action by
governments and the international community is urgently needed to achieve these
lagging gender equality targets.
That said, and as recognized by
U.N. member states during this year’s 58 session on the Commission on the
Status of Women, some of the most critical gender equality challenges were
missing from the MDGs. For example, violence against women, which affects one
in three women worldwide, was not included. Nor was women’s disproportionate
responsibility for unpaid care work — which constrains their ability to
participate in social, political and economic life — or women’s unequal access
to productive assets, including land, addressed in the MDG framework. What’s
more, integration of gender equality targets and commitments was inadequate
across the framework, impeding progress towards achieving all the MDGs.
The new post-2015 development
agenda must squarely address these issues and the structural inequality and
discrimination that underpin and reinforce gender inequality. That’s why it’s
very welcome to see the recent report of the Open Working Group include not
only a dedicated goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment, but also
targets within the goal that go much further than MDG 3, by addressing key
structural constraints to gender equality, including gender-based
discrimination, violence against women and girls, harmful practices such as
female genital mutilation and early, child and forced marriage, women’s
disproportionate share of unpaid care work, lack of equal participation in
decision-making in political economic and social life, and lack of sexual and
reproductive health and rights. Important targets are also included in other
goals, including reducing maternal mortality, equal rights to economic
resources, eliminating gender disparities in education, full and productive and
decent work for all women and men, and equal pay.
Commitment and action in these
areas really has the potential to transform gender relations and the lives of women
and girls everywhere.
Also welcome is the growing
recognition — including among U.N. member states — that it’s simply not
possible to achieve sustainable development unless gender equality and women’s
empowerment are fully realized. Women’s education and women’s share of
employment can have a positive impact on economic growth. When women have a
greater voice, and participate in public decision-making, resources are more
likely to be allocated to investments in human development priorities. And when
women are better educated, children’s health and education outcomes improve.
Achieving gender equality is critical to accelerate efforts to reduce poverty
and promote human development.
There has been unprecedented
engagement in the process of developing the new goals and targets, including in
consultations around the world led by the U.N. system which have involved 3
million people to date. Expectations are high: people want the new development
agenda to address insecurity, injustice, and inequality, including gender
inequality.
Looking forward, as the deadline
for the MDGs approaches — and negotiations on the new post-2015 development
agenda gather pace — it will be critically important to keep the level of
ambition high — indeed, to raise it even higher — as well as to rapidly
accelerate implementation of existing gender equality commitments. Especially
vital will be to ensure that the enabling environment required to achieve
gender equality is in place — including supportive national laws and policies
that are rights based and in line with international commitments, the right
indicators and disaggregated and gender responsive data to measure progress,
and most importantly, adequate funding for gender equality and women’s
empowerment.
We have only 500 days left to both deliver on the MDGs and put in place a new transformative sustainable development agenda. We can’t put off to tomorrow what needs to be done today. Now is the time to deliver for women and girls.
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