GOAL: achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Gender equality is a fundamental right, a crucial key to ensuring a prosperous and sustainable world. Through the means of gender bias, we are taking the right of women to live their lives to the fullest. Considering that women and girls represent half of the world’s population, they therefore represent half of its potential.
Although substantial progress has been achieved in advancing gender equality, discriminatory laws and limiting social norms present obstacles in ensuring the respect of women’s rights.
Unfortunately, according to the UN, women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership, and 1 in 5 women and girls between the ages of 15 and 49 report experiencing physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner. Similarly, global estimates highlight that 750 million women and girls were married before the age of 18 and at least 200 million women and girls in 30 countries have undergone FGM.
Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated persistent inequalities, particularly impacting women and girls in the sphere of social protection, livelihoods, education, health and gender-based violence. Within that context, the pandemic resulted in the decline or complete loss of income, increasing poverty rates across the globe and deepening the extent of gender disparity.
The nine target goals to ensuring equal rights and respect for all are as follows :
end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.
eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
value unpaid care and promote shared domestic responsibilities
ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.
universal access to reproductive health and rights
undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws.
promote empowerment of women through technology
adopt and strengthen policies and enforceable legislation for gender equality