WUNRN
GENDER EQUALITY & SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT - WORLD SURVEY ON THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT 2014
Direct Link to Full 123-Page UN
Women 2014 Report:
17
October 2014 - UN Women has released its new report, the World
Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2014: Gender Equality and
Sustainable Development. Charting the rationale and the actions
necessary to ensure ground-breaking change, the flagship UN study asserts that
any comprehensive sustainable development pathway cannot be achieved without an
explicit commitment to gender equality, women’s rights and their empowerment.
Coming on the heels of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September,
the World Survey 2014 provides an in-depth analysis of sustainable
development issues, the challenges and the solutions, through a gender
lens.
Climate change has tremendous social, economic and environmental
consequences. Its effects are being felt in floods, droughts, and devastated
landscapes and livelihoods. Women and girls are among the most affected by these
changes, given the precariousness of their livelihoods, and because they bear
the burden of securing shelter, food, water and fuel, while facing constraints
on their access to land and natural resources. As the global community grapples
with the challenges of charting trajectories to sustainable development and in
defining the Sustainable Development Goals, the World Survey 2014
emphasizes the centrality of gender equality to this endeavour.
The World Survey 2014, issued every five years, focuses this year
on the theme of gender equality and sustainable development by examining a
select range of issues that are fundamental to women’s lives and are strategic
for achieving gender equality and sustainability. These include: patterns of
growth, employment generation and the role of public goods; food production,
distribution and consumption; population dynamics and women’s bodily integrity;
and water, sanitation and energy.
The report uses three critical criteria to assess whether policy actions
and investments towards sustainable development adequately address gender
equality. These are: Do they support women’s capabilities and enjoyment of
their rights? Do they reduce, rather than increase, women’s unpaid care work?
And do they embrace women’s equal and meaningful participation as actors,
leaders and decision-makers?
“Effective policy actions for sustainability must redress the
disproportionate impact on women and girls of economic, social and
environmental shocks and stresses. The World Survey 2014 is a
thoughtful contribution to our understanding of how gender equality relates to
sustainable development. This report will strengthen policy actors in different
parts of the world – whether in government, civil society, international
agencies or the private sector — towards more robust and effective policy
measures and investments,” said UN Women Executive Director Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka.
The World Survey 2014 brings key analytical perspectives grounded
in research that shows the deeply unsustainable directions of current patterns
of production, consumption and distribution. The causes and underlying drivers
of unsustainability and of gender inequality are deeply interlocked. Dominant
development models that support particular types of underregulated market-led
growth rely on and reproduce gender inequalities, exploiting women’s labour and
unpaid care work. Similarly, they also produce environmental problems by
overexploiting natural resources and generating pollution, further intensifying
gender inequality as women and girls are often disproportionately affected by
economic, social and environmental shocks and stresses. While international
debate has brought these issues into the spotlight, policy responses still tend
not to focus on achieving women’s human rights or gender equality.
The report makes concrete recommendations, calling on Member States to:
(i) Develop and implement sustainable development
policies that are in line with international norms and standards on gender
equality, non-discrimination and human rights;
(ii) Ensure that macroeconomic policies create decent work
and sustainable livelihoods and reduce inequalities based on gender, age,
income and other contexts;
(iii) Promote decent green jobs and adequate wages for
agricultural and informal workers, especially women, through labour market
regulation and gender-responsive employment policies;
(iv) Ensure that sustainable population policies are grounded
in sexual and reproductive health and rights, including the provision of
universally accessible quality sexual and reproductive health services,
information and education;
(v) Ensure universal access to water, with a goal of reducing
unpaid care work; to clean, private and safe sanitation for all women and girls
that is responsive to gender-specific needs; and to efficient solid-fuel stoves
or cooking technologies that use cleaner fuels and involve women in their
design, testing and marketing.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________