WUNRN
UN Women Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbhjXK2mMe8&feature=youtu.be
SDG
5 - Gender Equality & The Empowerment of Women & Girls – Video
http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-and-the-sdgs/sdg-5-gender-equality
SDG 5: Achieve Gender Equality & Empower All Women
& Girls
Photo: UNPhoto/Sylvain Lietchti
Targets
The sustainable development goals seek to change the
course of the 21st century, addressing key challenges such as poverty,
inequality, and violence against women.
Women’s empowerment is a pre-condition for this.
Women have a critical role to play in all of the SDGs,
with many targets specifically recognizing women’s equality and empowerment as
both the objective, and as part of the solution. Goal 5 is known as the
stand-alone gender goal because it is dedicated to achieving these ends.
Deep legal and legislative changes are needed to ensure
women’s rights around the world. While a record 143 countries guaranteed
quality between men and women in their Constitutions by 2014, another 52 had
not taken this step [1].
In many nations, gender discrimination is still woven through legal and social
norms.
Stark gender disparities remain in economic and political
realms. While there has been some progress over the decades, on average women
in the labour market still earn 24 per cent less than men globally[2].
As of August 2015, only 22 per cent of all national parliamentarians were
female, a slow rise from 11.3 per cent in 1995 [3].
Meanwhile, violence against women is a pandemic affecting
all countries, even those that have made laudable progress in other areas.
Worldwide, 35 per cent of women have experienced either physical and/or sexual
intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence [4].
UN Women joined the voices of many global actors in pointing out that violence
was absent from the Millennium Development Goals.
Women have a right to equality in all areas. It must be
embedded across legal systems, upheld in both laws and legal practices,
including proactive measures such as quotas. Since all areas of life relate to
gender equality, efforts must be made to cut the roots of gender discrimination
wherever they appear.
UN Women works to empower women and girls in all of its programmes. Advancing women’s political participation and leadership and economic empowerment are two of the entity’s central goals. UN Women supports more women to get on ballots, attain political office and go to polls to vote. We assist women to secure decent jobs, accumulate assets, and influence institutions and public policies, while underlining the need to recognize, reduce and redistribute the burden on women for unpaid care. We promote women’s role and leadership in humanitarian action, including in conflict-prevention and efforts to ensure peace and security. We advocate for ending violence, raise awareness of its causes and consequences and boost efforts to prevent and respond, including ensuring the rights of women living with HIV. We also work to ensure that governments reflect the needs of women and girls in their planning and budgeting, and engage men and boys, urging them to become champions of gender equality, including through our HeForShe initiative.