SDG #5 Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment
According to the United Nations…
18% of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced some type of physical and/ or sexual abuse.
In 30 countries globally, genital mutilation is happening to 1 in 3 girls aged 15 to 19.
Women spend three times more hours working in unpaid services and domestic work.
Only 19% of countries worldwide actually track budget allocations for gender equality.
Only 1 in 4 of the seats in parliament are held by women and only 27% of managerial positions are held by women, whilst still representing 39% of the workforce.
Only 57% of women who are married or in a union make their own decisions in regard to their sexual life and the use of contraception.
This is not only a women’s issue, this is an issue for humanity.
SDG #5 aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
UN Women was created in January 2010 within the framework of the UN Reform Agenda, in order to accelerate progress towards achievement of the goal. It was developed to support inter-governmental bodies in the advancement of policies, norms and global standards.
Targets and Indicators
SDG 5 targets all women and girls around the world. It aims to eliminate all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, recognise unpaid care and domestic work and end all forms of harmful practices. Also, it aims to ensure that women have the ability to participate in society and in their sexual and reproductive health, through equal opportunities.
The goal is to safeguard equal rights towards all women when it comes to economic recourses, such as access to land ownership, financial services, inheritance, amongst others. Additionally, women should be able to use enabling technology for information and communication and strengthening of policies and to promote female empowerment.
The Beijing Platform for Action
In 1995, the United Nations came together to create the Beijing Platform for Action, which was adopted at the Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995 and has now reached its 20 year anniversary. Its objective is to:
· Remove obstacles to gender equality and the empowerment of women
· Encourage men to participate fully towards equality
· Ensure equal access to education and healthcare
· Protect women’s economic empowerment
· Ensure that these targets are at the centre of sustainable development
· Develop the full potential of women and girls
Whilst a number of these actions have been progressed over the last 20+ years, the world is still short of full gender equality. To this end, in January 2015, 189 governments came together to create Beijing +20, to reaffirm and declare their support for the original goals as well as providing actions that could streamline progress towards these goals.
In particular, Beijing +20 brought together 30,000 activists streamed in a parallel forum, maintaining pressure and networking, and producing global action plans for the transformation of gender roles. This produced the final Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action – the most progressive blueprint for advancing women’s rights until today.
For the detailed document click here.
Why a multidimensional and multisectoral approach matters
In Colombia, women living in rural areas are 12 times more likely to lack skilled health care during childbirth. In Pakistan, 40.6% of the poorest women are undernourished compared to the 2.4% in the rich urban areas.
To be able to measure these statics accurately, it is necessary to follow a multidimensional and multisectoral approach. Simply looking at data without any qualitative data will not be enough to give an answer to why these inequalities are occurring. In order to address these challenges and give them the necessary importance countries have committed to reporting statistics and progress and identifying marginalizes populations on a regular basis. With this, governments will be more capable to develop and implement policies and programmes for the better.
Where we are now
The thought of gender equality has advanced and spread out significantly, but this doesn’t mean that the objective is fulfilled.
According to the data provided by the UN, female genital mutilation has become less habitual, but the numbers are not decreasing at pace to reach the elimination target in 2030. The number of women getting married between the age of 20 to 24 has been decreasing from one in five to one in four from 2004 to 2019.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted women the most. Women make up three quarters of the nurses and doctors and they already spend three times as much time as men working at home without earning money. During the pandemic, the closure of schools requires parents (mostly mothers) to take care and home school their children during the day. Also, several countries report that the cases of domestic violence rose considerably during these times.
In 2019, a small increase of 3% was seen in managerial positions around the world occupied by women. As of 1 January 2020, women represent an additional 2.6% of single or lower houses of national parliaments seats, this shows that women, have an increasing power in decision-making positions, holding 36% of elected seats in local deliberative bodies based on data from 133 countries and areas.
Additionally, there is a significant increase in the number of married or in-union women who make their own decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive health and rights and also on average 73% of the laws in 75 countries had to guarantee full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Social and economic development has been accelerated with the implementation of mobile phones and social platforms towards empowering women. However, data from 66 countries from 2016 to 2108 shows that 6.8% additional men have mobile phones compared to the women in the area.
Gender equality across the Sustainable Development Goals
Gender equality is a prominent topic of the Agenda 2030. In the SDG indicator framework, there is a noticeable reference to gender equality in nearly all of the goals, more specifically, 53 indicators are related to the topic. The goals are all interlinked and the achievement of each target, inside a goal, will most likely implicate others.
By way of example, the eradication of gender inequality will help achieve the sustainable development goal of eradicating extreme poverty. Globally, women and girls are 4% more likely to live in extreme poverty, especially women aged 25 to 34. Incrementally, women are more vulnerable in the household, which leads to a 10% increase in likelihood of food insecurity.
This continues throughout the sustainable development goals and continues to highlight the importance for countries and corporates globally of striving to achieve every single SDG in unison, rather than selecting the goals that they believe specifically relates to them.
In conclusion, since 1995 we have seen significant developments toward gender equality worldwide. There is, however, much more to do to achieve this goal in line with Agenda 2030. We can only say that this goal has been achieved when men and women, girls and boys, are completely equal across all 53 metrics associated with this SDG. As we have seen, SDG 5 is not only a problem for women, but a global problem, and in order to make this better, there has to be a worldwide cooperation and effort.
