DEVELOPMENT 75 commitments are reiterated in“ the 2030 Agenda for Global Action” which sets out the new SDGs. The challenge now is to turn words into action with and for women.
There is now widespread recognition that gender equality is both a matter of human rights and is catalytic for growth and development. Studies show that children born to women with some formal education are more likely to survive to their fifth birthday, receive adequate nutrition, and be immunized and enrolled in school.[ 1 ] Access to sexual and reproductive health services enables women to plan their families and expand their opportunities, and it also helps reduce both maternal and child mortality.
Empowering women helps drive economic growth, making investing in gender equality important to the G20 agenda. At the last G20 Summit in Brisbane, leaders rightly agreed on“ the goal of reducing the gap in participation rates between men and women by 25 per cent by 2025, taking into account national circumstances, to bring more than 100 million women into the labour force, and significantly increase global growth and reduce poverty and inequality”. This is an important step.
Reducing gender inequality in a major sector like agriculture is vital for enhancing economic growth, food security, and the well-being of families and communities. According to a report by the United Nation’ s Food and Agriculture Organization, while women supply nearly half of global agricultural labor, they do not reap the same rewards as their male counterparts. The report contends that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by twenty to thirty per cent. That could raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to four per cent per annum, and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by twelve to seventeen per cent.
The need to level the playing field for women farmers is recognized in SDG 2 on ending hunger, which includes the target of doubling by 2030 the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, namely women, through equal access to land, and to resources such as financial services and markets. Under the leadership of the Turkish Presidency, G20 members are about to adopt an Action Plan on Food Security and Sustainable Food Systems, through which they will support food system employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, in particular for smallholders including women and youth.
In many places, women bear the primary responsibility for growing food, managing natural resources, and securing the energy needs of their families. The new climate agreement must respond to and support the central role of women in building climate-resilience and supporting low emission development. Because women are so often on the frontlines of climate change and disasters, their full participation in global policymaking and implementation, including in the new Paris accord, is vital for action on climate change.
The United Nations Development Programme( UNDP) makes achieving gender equality a central focus of its efforts to eradicate poverty. Our work includes preventing and responding to sexual and gender-based violence, which persists everywhere. It includes providing support for genderresponsive economic policy-making and women’ s participation in decision-making, including for peace making and peace building. This focus is reinforced by SDG 16, which aims to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, including by ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decisionmaking at all levels.
There is no silver bullet for achieving sustainable development, but investing in gender equality is certainly a critical component of our efforts build a more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient world. �
“ There is now widespread recognition that gender equality is both a matter of human rights and is catalytic for growth and development. Studies show that children born to women with some formal education are more likely to survive to their fifth birthday, receive adequate nutrition, and be immunized and enrolled in school.”
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