Dhiraj Kumar Nath
The UN General Assembly’s 70th session adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) carrying 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. These SDGs are considered as a universal, integrated, and reformative vision for a better world. Thousands of representatives from all over the world gathered in New York 25-27 September, 2015 to launch their most ambitious global effort since the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
The fifth goal is to “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”. So far the world community was vocal in “[Promoting] gender equality and empowerment of women,” as indicated by the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG).
But Goal-5 contains implementation strategies like ending of all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere, eliminating violence against all women and girls, eliminating all harmful practices such as childhood, early, and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, recognising and valuing unpaid care, and ensuring women’s full and effective participation with equal opportunities in leadership at all levels in political, economic, and public life.
This is for the first time that girls are included as actors to lead the way towards equality and transforming the world. The vision is to have “Planet 50:50”, a planet where there is gender parity and a world where women, men, girls, and boys will all have substantive equality. It means transformative change that is irreversible, sustainable, and substantive where girls will lead the way.
Most countries have not evaluated the cost of gender gaps, especially in violence against women. This continues to affect one in three women around the world. The cost in pain, violation of rights, and trauma paralyses women and destroys families.
Globally, the total economic cost of intimate partner violence has been estimated to be at least 5 per cent of global GDP. In the United States alone, the annual costs of intimate partner violence have been calculated at 5.8 billion dollars.
Gender gaps in the workplace are similarly costly. The International Labour Organization recently estimated that the total cost of gender inequality in employment across Asia alone is 45 billion dollars a year.
This is based on the fact that 45 per cent of working-age women in Asia are outside the labour force, compared to just 19 per cent of men. If female employment is to match male employment, GDP per capita in the Middle East and North Africa should be increased by 27% and by 19% in South Asia as revealed by UN Women.
Women’s and girls’ unpaid care work is a structural cause of gender inequality, with impact on a lifetime. Data shows that in some middle-income countries, between 30 and 70 per cent of income can be lost in a woman’s lifetime because of activities that are associated with her care-giving as a mother.
In India, the total value of time spent on unpaid care and domestic work was estimated to be equivalent to 39 per cent of GDP.
Leading to 2030, the infrastructure that supports women’s empowerment should be given priority. In countries, where there is no water or sanitation infrastructure, it is women who bear the brunt. Where there is no water infrastructure, girls and women make up for that shortage.
The Prime Minister of Bangladesh in her speech at the World Leaders Forum stated that Bangladesh girls are progressing well ahead of boys in school enrollment. Incentives for female student are given as a political decision to empower girls with education.
She pointed out that at present about how two thirds of girls are married before 18 years of age, despite the political decision to restrict marriage age to 18. She assured students of Columbia University that child marriage in Bangladesh will be totally stopped in Bangladesh by 2041.
The PM also stated that education of girls must not be disturbed due to threat of fundamentalists – a strong political commitment of the government. She mentioned that Bangladesh is a model of advancement and modernisation and empowerment of women in particular.
The fact remains that strategic interventions are urgent to ensure the empowerment of women and girls, and how these girls with modern outlooks can change society making the Planet 50:50.
UN Women is going to arrange an International Conference in March 2016 to develop significant strategic interventions for the empowerment of women, keeping in view the provisions of CEDAW, ICPD+10, and Beijing Declaration and Platform of Actions. Bangladesh will be one of the active participants to the conference.
But more than anything else, all countries must ensure that 2030 is the year every country has to achieve substantive, irreversible gender equality that is truly transformative and the planet will be 50:50. Girls of the world will lead the way.
Dhiraj Kumar Nath is a former secretary and adviser to the caretaker government.
Source: bdnews24