UN Millennium Development Library: Taking Action

Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women

UN Millennium Project

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136550133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

The Millennium Development Goals, adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, are the world's targets for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions by 2015 income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure and shelter while promoting gender equality, education, health and environmental sustainability. These bold goals can be met in all parts of the world if nations follow through on their commitments to work together to meet them. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals offers the prospect of a more secure, just, and prosperous world for all.

The UN Millennium Project was commissioned by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a practical plan of action to meet the Millennium Development Goals. As an independent advisory body directed by Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the UN Millennium Project submitted its recommendations to the UN Secretary General in January 2005. The core of the UN Millennium Project's work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising more than 250 experts from around the world, including scientists, development practitioners, parliamentarians, policymakers, and representatives from civil society, UN agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and the private sector.

This report lays out the recommendations of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality. The Task Force recommends seven strategic priorities: strengthen postprimary education for girls while ensuring universal primary education; guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights; reduce women's and girls' time burdens; guarantee property and inheritance rights; eliminate gender inequality in employment; increase women's participation in government; and significantly reduce violence against women. Action on these priorities will enable countries in every region of the world to achieve gender equality and women's empowerment by 2015.

 

Chapter 1

A problem with a solution

How can the global community achieve the goal of gender equality and the empowerment of women? This question is the focus of Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals endorsed by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. It is also the focus of this report.

Gender inequality is a problem that has a solution. Two decades of innovation, experience, and activism have shown that achieving the goal of greater gender equality and women's empowerment is possible. There are many practical steps that can reduce inequalities based on gender—inequalities that restrict the potential to reduce poverty and achieve high levels of well-being in societies around the world. There are also many positive actions that can empower women. Without leadership and political will, however, the world will fall short of taking these practical steps—and meeting the Goal. Because gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions, and market forces, political commitment at the highest international and national levels is essential to institute the policies that can trigger social change and to allocate the resources necessary for gender equality and women's empowerment.

Before the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 nearly every country had made a commitment to equal rights for women and girls by ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).¹ Signatories are legally obligated to meet the commitments they specify. Often described as the international bill of rights for women, CEDAW provides for women's equal enjoyment with men of civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights. It is unique in establishing legal obligations for state parties to ensure that discrimination against women does not occur in the public sphere or the private sphere.

UN member states also made important commitments to promoting gender equality and women's empowerment at the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.² The inclusion of gender equality and women's empowerment as Millennium Development Goal 3 is a reminder that many of those promises have yet to be kept. It also offers a critical opportunity to implement those promises.

Genuine equality means more than parity in numbers, which can sometimes be achieved by lowering the bar for all—it means equality is achieved at high levels of well-being

National and international women's movements have worked to hold governments accountable for the legal and political commitments they have made through CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, and other international agreements. It is women's activism and social mobilization, combined with innovative responses from some governments and civil society organizations, that have led to significant improvements in women's and girls’ status since the first UN Conference on Women in 1975 in Mexico City. Investing in women's advocacy organizations is key to holding the international community and national governments accountable for achieving Millennium Development Goal 3.

In the past three decades women have made gains, particularly in health and education, as evidenced in lower mortality rates, higher life expectancy, and reduced gender gaps in primary school education. Despite these gains, it is clear that many countries will miss the first deadline for the Goal 3 target: eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015. This will be the first visible Millennium Development Goal failure. That failure should spur the global community to reenergize and take action so that the 2015 target deadline is met. In doing so, countries should strive to achieve more than numerical parity.

The spirit of the Goal—gender equality and the empowerment of women—requires fundamental transformation in the distribution of power, opportunities, and outcomes for both men and women. Genuine equality means more than parity in numbers, which can sometimes be achieved by lowering the bar for all—men and women. It means justice, greater opportunity, and better quality of life so that equality is achieved at high levels of well-being.

To ensure that Millennium Development Goal 3 is met by 2015, the task force has identified seven strategic priorities (box 1.1). These interdependent priorities are the minimum necessary to empower women and alter the historical legacy of female disadvantage that remains in most societies of the world.

These seven priorities are much broader than the Goal 3 target. That target is restricted to education, a focus justified by the strong evidence that investing in girls’ education yields high returns for girls themselves and high returns for development (Schultz 2001).³ By setting an ambitious target for eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education—in less than a decade—Goal 3 sends a clear message that gender inequality in education in the twenty-first century is unconscionable and must be rectified.

Important as it is for women's well-being and the development of societies, education alone is insufficient to eliminate the wide range of gender inequalities found in many societies. Education may be an important precondition to women's empowerment, but it does not guarantee that empowerment. For this to occur, women must also enjoy equal rights with men, equal economic opportunities, use of productive assets, freedom from drudgery, equal representation in decisionmaking bodies, and freedom from the threat of violence and coercion.

Box 1.1

Seven strategic priorities for action on Millennium Development Goal 3

1. Strengthen opportunities for postprimary education for girls while meeting commitments to universal primary education.
2. Guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights.
3. Invest in infrastructure to reduce women's and girls’ time burdens.
4. Guarantee women's and girls’ property and inheritance rights.
5. Eliminate gender inequality in employment by decreasing women's reliance on informal employment, closing gender gaps in earnings, and reducing occupational segregation.
6. Increase women's share of seats in national parliaments and local government bodies.
7. Combat violence against girls and women

Achieving true gender equality and women's empowerment requires a different vision for the world, not just piecemeal rectification of different aspects of inequality.⁴ The task force's vision is of a world in which men and women work together as equal partners to secure better lives for themselves and their families. In this world women and men share equally in the enjoyment of basic capabilities, economic assets, voice, and freedom from fear and violence. They share the care of children, the elderly, and the sick; the responsibility for paid employment; and the joys of leisure. In this world the resources now used for war and destruction are invested in human development and well-being, institutions and decisionmaking processes are open and democratic, and all human beings treat each other with respect and dignity.

It is our vision of such a world, together with our analysis of why women and men today rarely enjoy equality, that underlies the recommendations in this report.

Chapter 2

Task force perspective on gender
equality and empowerment

The task force affirms that gender equality and women's empowerment are central to the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals (box 2.1). Development policies and actions that fail to take gender inequality into account and that fail to enable women to be actors in those policies and interventions will have limited effectiveness and serious costs to societies (World Bank 2003c). The reverse is also true: achievement of Goal 3 depends on how well each of the other goals addresses gender-based constraints and issues (box 2.2). Thus, this task force believes that achieving Goal 3 depends both on the extent to which the priorities suggested here are addressed and the extent to which the actions taken to achieve the other Goals promote equality of boys and girls and men and women. While this interdependence among the Goals is important, the task force wishes to underscore that Goal 3 has intrinsic value in and of itself. That is why this report focuses on priorities and actions to achieve Goal 3.

Defining gender equality and empowerment

Like race and ethnicity, gender is a social construct. It defines and differentiates the roles, rights, responsibilities, and obligations of women and men. The innate biological differences between females and males form the basis of social norms that define appropriate behaviors for women and men and determine the differential social, economic, and political power between the sexes. Although the specific nature and degree of these differing norms vary across societies and across time, at the beginning of the twenty-first century they still typically favor men and boys, giving them more access than women and girls to the capabilities, resources, and opportunities that are important for the enjoyment of social, economic, and political power and well-being.

In addressing Goal 3, the task force has focused on the historical disadvantage experienced by women and on how gender norms and the policies based on those norms have perpetuated that disadvantage. This report notes the ways in which gender norms and policies also negatively affect boys and men, but the primary focus is to rectify the most common gender-based disadvantages—those faced by women and girls. The report recognizes, however, that men's engagement in meeting Goal 3 is vital. They can work as partners with women to bring about changes in gender roles and norms that can benefit both women and men. The report, therefore, suggests ways in which policies and interventions can engage men as equal partners in achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Box 2.1

Gender equality is critical to achieving all the Goals

Millennium Development Goal	Importance of gender equality for achieving the goal
Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger	Gender equality in capabilities and access to opportunities can accelerate economic growth. Equal access for women to basic transport and energy infrastructure (such as clean cooking fuels) can lead to greater economic activity. Gender equality in farm inputs helps increase agricultural production and reduce poverty because women farmers form a significant proportion of the rural poor. Equal investment in women's health and nutritional status reduces chronic hunger and malnourishment, which increases productivity and well-being.
Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education	Educated girls and women have greater control over their fertility and participate more in public life. A mother's education is a strong and consistent determinant of her children's school enrollment and attainment and their health and nutrition outcomes.
Goal 4 Reduce child mortality	A mother's education, income, and empowerment have a significant impact on lowering child and maternal mortality.
Goal 5 Improve maternal health
Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases	Greater economic independence for women, increased ability to negotiate safe sex, greater awareness of the need to alter traditional norms about sexual relations, better access to treatment, and support for the care function that women perform are essential for halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and other epidemics.
Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability	Gender-equitable property and resource ownership policies enable women (often as primary users of these resources) to manage them in a more sustainable manner.
Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development	Greater gender equality in the political sphere may lead to higher investments in development cooperation.

Identifying the dimensions of gender equality

Based on past analyses of gender in society, the task force has adopted an operational framework for understanding g...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Foreword
• Contents
• Task force members
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Millennium Development Goals
• Executive summary
• Chapter 1 A problem with a solution
• Chapter 2 Task force perspective on gender equality and empowerment
• Chapter 3 Strengthen opportunities for postprimary education for girls
• Chapter 4 Guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Chapter 5 Invest in infrastructure to reduce women's and girls’ time burdens
• Chapter 6 Guarantee women's property and inheritance rights
• Chapter 7 Reduce gender inequality in employment
• Chapter 8 Increase women's representation in political bodies
• Chapter 9 Combat violence against women
• Chapter 10 Data and indicators for monitoring progress
• Chapter 11 The financial costs of interventions to achieve gender equality
• Chapter 12 Making it happen
• Appendix 1 Education projections and country level education data
• Appendix 2 Reproductive health statistics
• Appendix 3 Employment statistics
• Appendix 4 Statistics on women's political participation
• Appendix 5 Employment indicators
• Appendix 6 Summary of e-discussion facilitated by ActionAid, United Kingdom
• Notes
• References