Foreword

Recent decades have seen great advances in gender equality at national and global levels, particularly since the 4^th World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Today, issues of gender equality and women’s empowerment have been taken into account in many national planning systems and gender equality priorities are being included in national and local programming and budgeting processes. They have been embraced in the Millennium Declaration and recognized both as important goals in themselves and as central to achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed in 2000. UNDP and UNIFEM have played a key role in assisting Governments and other stakeholders in many countries achieve progress and in developing and implementing programmes that support legislative and policy changes aiming at gender equality, promote women’s human rights and establish close partnerships with governments, gender equality advocates, the private sector and other agencies of the UN system.

Despite important progress made, much work remains to be done to achieve gender equality. We are now almost 15 years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action and 10 years since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration. New challenges have emerged in the form of food, economic or energy crisis and climate change, combined with unmet ODA commitments, which make it unlikely that the MDGs shall be met. Furthermore, UN and other reports have found that in many if not most countries, women are likely to be disproportionately impacted by these crises, further retarding progress on achieving reproductive health, reducing maternal mortality and making it more difficult for women to share in progress in such areas as the reduction of poverty and hunger, gains in productive and decent work and the elimination of chronic diseases, including HIV and AIDS.

Important commitments have been made by Governments in the past years and the pivotal role of gender equality for development and poverty reduction has been recognized at all levels. However, a major challenge today is turning these commitments into actions. Many national development plans still lack a gender perspective; governments and aid agencies still lack gender expertise; policies still lack appropriate gender sensitive targets and indicators; documents and studies still lack accurate data disaggregated by sex and gender statistics; and overall, commitments to gender equality lack provisions for financing and implementation.

Making the MDGs Work Better for Women draws on good practices to elaborate key strategies for accelerating the pace for reaching the MDGs. Women’s empowerment and progress towards gender equality drives all of the MDGs. Making the MDGs work better for women implies that they work better for all.

Preface

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 hinges on making tangible progress with regards to gender equality across the developing world. Innumerable studies have demonstrated that gender equality is a precondition for sustainable growth and poverty reduction. Where women are empowered we observe better health and education outcomes for their children as well as a more sustainable use of natural resources. Where women are meaningfully integrated into the labour force we have seen impressive advances in social well-being.

Maintaining and scaling up investments in gender equality is especially important in the context of the current global economic crisis. Projections of sharply reduced economic growth, rising unemployment, tightening credit conditions, falling remittances, and compressed aid flows will likely deepen deprivation around the world and seriously impede, if not reverse, progress towards the attainment of the MDGs. Although it is difficult to assess the likely magnitude of the setback, evidence from past crises demonstrates that growth collapses are costly for human development outcomes because the rate of deterioration is more rapid during growth decelerations than the rate of improvement during accelerations. This has the potential to irreversibly deplete the human capital stock in developing countries.

In this context, it is especially important to optimize the use of scarce aid funds and protect and scale up recent achievements towards the attainment of gender equality. This publication seeks to distil knowledge on successful practices developed through the “Gender and the Millennium Development Goals” project to highlight approaches that governments, donors and civil society can take to make the MDGs work better for women. It does so by bringing together the knowledge and experience of these stakeholders in promoting gender-responsive MDG processes.

Section I, “The MDGs and Gender Equality: Progress and Challenges”, looks at successes and road blocks in meeting MDG targets and the extent to which national reports have addressed gender in reporting on each goal. Section II, “Engendering Local and National MDG Policy Processes”, focuses on strategic priorities and actions. Section III, “Good Practices: Gender and the MDGs Project”, highlights processes and activities that work, while Section IV, “Scaling Up Progress on MDG3: Investing in Gender Equality for Development”, sets forth the challenges. Section V summarizes the key recommendations put forward in sections I-IV.

This publication draws on a range of monitoring reports, analytical assessments, action guides and training modules developed and published by various stakeholders including UN agencies and task forces, the World Bank and other donors, women’s networks and individual gender experts. These materials, listed under References, serve to support, strengthen and expand the pilot project outcomes and observations. They will be invaluable to users of this guide who wish to read more about using a gender-sensitive lens to assess and advance the MDGs so that they work better for women.

Click here to access the French version