Progress on global goals leaving women behind: UN Women

15, Feb 2018 | CJP Team

The Thomson Reuters Foundation reported that, according to a newly published report from the United Nations’ women’s agency, progress under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were outlined in 2015 remains “unacceptably slow” for women and girls. “Even where progress has been made, it has been highly uneven,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director, UN Women, said in the report’s foreword, adding, “Alarmingly, many hard-won gender equality achievements are under threat.” UN Women’s report revealed that 4.4 million more women than men subsist on less than $1.90 per day, mostly due to the fact that women do more than double the amount of unpaid care and domestic work compared to men. One in every five girls and women has suffered violence at the hands of an intimate partner in the last year, even as 49 nations do not have laws shielding them against domestic violence. In 18 countries, husbands can legally bar their wives from working, according to the report. Mlambo-Ngcuka noted that “the gender pay gap stands at 23 per cent.” The report highlights that for girls and women “di erent dimensions of well-being and deprivation are deeply intertwined”. The report says that a girl born into poverty “and forced into early marriage,” is more at risk of dropping out of school, giving birth at a younger age, “suffer complications during childbirth…and experience violence,” compared to a girl born in a higher-income home who marries later. Global leaders agreed on 17 SDGs aimed at addressing major global problems by 2030. However, according to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, experts have cautioned that progress is inconsistent, and not rapid enough for the 2030 deadline. A UN report in July 2017 that violence and conflict were largely causing this. The complete UN Women report can be read here.