With 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators (of which 54 are gender-specific), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a historic global compact to achieve gender equality by 2030.
Gaps in gender data and the lack of trend data make it difficult to monitor progress for women and girls. Unless gender is mainstreamed into national statistical strategies and prioritized in data collection, gender data scarcity and gaps will persist. Investment in national statistical capacity is central to improving the coverage, quality and timeliness of data for monitoring gender equality and the SDGs.
Currently, 2.1 billion people lack safely managed drinking water and 4.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation services. When safe drinking water is not available on household premises, the burden of water collection and treatment falls largely on the shoulders of women and girls. The lack of safe sanitation and hygiene facilities at home may expose them to illness, harassment and violence—hampering their ability to learn, earn an income and move around freely. Where household members fall sick due to water-borne illnesses, it is mainly women and girls who provide the much-needed care.
The interconnectedness and indivisibility of the 2030 Agenda and the realities of the world in which we work require us to deal with complexity at an unprecedented scale. As such, we need to identify, understand and develop appropriate ways of applying systems thinking to collectively define and address the challenges that we confront. We need to think across and beyond one area of expertise or mandate and to understand how our actions contribute to the overall United Nations objectives.
Achieving the ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – and notably the goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment – requires transformative shifts, integrated approaches and new solutions. Based on current trajectories, existing efforts will not suffice to achieve a Planet 50-50 by 2030.
The Policies and Practice Guide is an online tool providing policy makers and practitioners with concrete guidance on how to ensure that the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) is gender- responsive by addressing the specific needs, challenges and situations of vulnerability faced by women and girls at all stages of migration, while taking into consideration the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination they may face.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a violation of human rights and is caused by gender inequality and norms on the acceptability of VAWG.
VAWG affects women and girls’ freedom of movement, participation in school, employment, leisure/recreation, and ability to safely politically organize, and their right in all spaces to live free from fear and experience of violence.
More than 75 per cent of the world’s population lives in societies that are more unequal today than 20 years ago. In many parts of the world, income gaps have deepened despite impressive growth performances. The sharpest increases in income inequality have taken place in those developing countries that were especially successful in pursuing vigorous growth and managed, as a result, to graduate into higher income brackets.1 Economic progress may well exacerbate inequalities, not alleviate them.
The cover of this 2017-2018 Annual Report of the Fund for Gender Equality (FGE) captures the diversity, breadth and importance of the projects and civil society organizations that the FGE supports.
Global Evaluation Strategy 2018-2021. In 2017, the UN Women Executive Board endorsed UN Women’s new Strategic Plan 2018-2021. To contribute to its successful
implementation, the UN Women’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) developed its new Global Evaluation Strategy for 2018-2021.