As the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) draws closer, world leaders will gather at the United Nations next week to discuss the faltering campaign to improve the human condition, advance equity and set the community of nations on a more sustainable path.
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According to the United Nations website, the UN “will convene the SDG Summit on (Sept. 18-19, 2023) at its headquarters in New York, during the General Assembly high-level week.” During the summit, leaders from around the globe “will carry out a comprehensive review of the state of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), respond to the impact of multiple and interlocking crises facing the world, and provide high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions towards the target year of 2030.”
The UN warns that the Sustainable Development Goals agenda is in “deep peril,” because “development progress is reversing under the combined impacts of climate disasters, conflict, economic downturn and lingering COVID-19 effects.”
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Earlier this week, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs released the Global Sustainable Development Report 2023, setting the stage for the summit. (The report is titled, “Times of Crisis, Times of Change: Science for Accelerating Transformations to Sustainable Development.”)
The report examines the series of cascading crisis — COVID-19, inflation, conflict, natural disasters — that has “wiped out years of progress on some goals, including eradication of extreme poverty.” Unless the world accelerates efforts to achieve the SDGs by 2030, the report states, “humanity will face prolonged periods of crisis and uncertainty — triggered by and reinforcing poverty, inequality, hunger, disease, conflict and disaster.”
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Of particular concern in the run-up to the 2030 deadline for the attainment of the SDGs is the stubborn persistence of gender inequality, which condemns hundreds of millions of women and girls around the globe to poverty and misery.
Gender gap
The World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index measures progress in efforts to achieve gender parity. The index includes four main benchmarks: economic opportunities, education, health and political leadership. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2023, “the level of progress toward gender parity (the parity score) for each indicator is calculated as the ratio of the value of each indicator for women to the value for men.” A national score of one means that full parity between men and women has been achieved. And the data reveals that women, even in Canada and the United States, endure gender inequity.
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“Gender parity in Europe (76.3 per cent) surpasses the parity level in North America (75 per cent) this year to rank first among regions,” the WEF report, which was published in
June 2023, reads “North America ranks second, having closed 75 per cent of the gap, which is 1.9 percentage points lower than the previous edition.”
The WEF reports that Canada suffered “a 0.2 percentage-point decline in the overall parity score since the last edition” and the United States registered reduction of 2.1 per cent. “At the current rate of progress, 95 years will be needed to close the gender gap for the region,” the report says of North America.
Gender Snapshot
According to another progress report on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the community of nations is not on track to meet the human development benchmarks pertaining to the rights and well-being of women and girls. The report (“Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2023) was produced by UN Women and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. And the report was written by Ginette Azcona, Antra Bhatt, Guillem Fortuny Fillo, Yongyi Min, Heather Page and Sokunpanha You.
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For example, SDG 1 commits the world to ending poverty “in all its forms everywhere” by 2030. However, the report states that “progress on eradicating poverty needs to be 26 times faster to reach the goal by 2030.” The gender report also reveals that approximately one in 10 women in the world today lives in extreme poverty. “If current trends continue, by 2030, an estimated eight per cent of the world’s female population — 342.4 million women and girls — will still be living on less than $2.15 a day.”
When it comes to women living in extreme poverty, the report notes that “most (220.9 million) will reside in sub-Saharan Africa.” In 30 per cent of the world’s countries, “the extreme poverty rate among women and girls in 2030 is projected to exceed 11 per cent, equivalent to the global poverty rate in 2015 when the global goals were adopted.”
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To lift all women and girls out of poverty, the report states, the world will have to simultaneously “act on long-standing gender disparities, including in access to land, health care and family planning, education and the labour market.” And that will require gender-responsive social policies and determined efforts to counter gender-based discrimination “that limits women’s leadership.”
However, policymakers cannot formulate smart policies without the proper information. “The dearth of sex-disaggregated data is a major constraint for policymakers and gender equality advocates,” the UN report reveals. Only 42 per cent of countries with up-to-date official statistics on monetary poverty collect poverty data disaggregated by sex. Disaggregated data is important, because it reveals sizable gender gaps.
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Gender inequality
Under SDG 5, the world is committed to achieving “gender equality and empower all women and girls” by 2030. However, the gender snapshot report describes the commitment to gender equality as “lacklustre.” Moreover, the authors conclude that the community of nations “is failing women and girls.”
“Deeply rooted biases against women, manifesting in unequal access to sexual and reproductive health, unequal political representation, economic disparities and a lack of legal protection, among other issues, prevent tangible progress,” the report reads. And there simply isn’t enough official data available to monitor gender equality. “Countries lack 44 per cent of the data required to track SDG 5,” the report states.
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The report also includes a special section focusing on the hardships that older women endure. “Globally, in 2023, women aged 55 to 59 are more likely to live in extreme poverty than men (eight per cent compared to 6.9 per cent),” the report reads. And the UN reports that many women “reach old age with few assets and savings, and lack an adequate pension or social protection benefits.”
Women find themselves in precarious economic situations later in life “due to a higher likelihood of career interruptions, part-time employment, lower earnings and more time spent on unpaid care responsibilities.” Moreover, women are less likely to have pensions. “Women enjoy universal access to pensions in only 56 out of 116 countries with data,” the report states. “In 47 countries, women’s pension coverage is not universal and lags behind men’s.” And those women who do have pensions may “have limited control over how they are spent within households.”
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“In this critical midpoint moment of the SDGs, financing for development must prioritize policies and programs committed to closing gender gaps and empowering women and girls. Gender equality must be costed as a separate but synergistic objective in achieving all global goals,” the report concludes.
Conclusion
According to the gender snapshot report, “a gender-focused SDG stimulus package” would, if implemented, “deliver transformational results for women, girls and societies.” And that would be good for humanity.
“Gender equality multiplies and accelerates the drivers of human progress, economic growth and sustainable development. But it will never be achieved without explicit attention and dedicated resources,” the report concludes.
Barriers to gender equity are inextricably linked to the faltering campaign to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Unless the world stops treating women and girls as second-class citizens, or worse, as private property, humanity will remain mired in conflict, inequity and misery. To realize our potential as a species, women and girls must be lifted up and given the opportunities and tools necessary to succeed. And if they succeed, humanity will flourish.
In the final analysis, the world will meet its fate as one.
Follow Geoffrey P. Johnston on Mastodon @GeoffyPJohnston@c.im.
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