By GLOBUS Correspondent, Karishma Bansal

Women have long been subjected to patriarchal roles in society, limiting their ability to work in the official sector, have a political voice, and own land, all of which reinforce gender inequity. The reality of attaining the Sustainable Development Goals gets increasingly startling as we approach 2030. If current trends continue, over 340 million women and girls will still live in extreme poverty by 2030. To close the gender gap and achieve women’s empowerment across key global objectives, an additional $360 billion per year is required.

This article focuses primarily on SDG16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions) as I explain what the UN Women Peace and Security Agenda is and why specifically women are critical in achieving it. In 2022, figures rose to 614 million women for girls living in conflict-affected contexts -50% higher than in 2017. It also discusses the possible solutions that multinational organisations such as the UN and charities are implementing to address institutional barriers.

What is the UN Women Peace and Security Agenda?

On October 31st, 2000, the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 specifically prioritised women’s participation in international prevention and resolution of conflicts and peace-building initiatives. Its three clauses aimed to increase the number of women involved in decision-making around issues of peacebuilding and conflict transformation, protect women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations (especially from gender-based violence), and adopt a gender perspective on peace-making, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.

Why specifically ‘women’?

As noted by UNSCR 1325, women and men experience conflict differently, and as such, they rarely have the same sources, political rights, authority, or control over their environment. Gender norms, culturally defined but widely accepted, have positioned leadership qualities, confidence, and assertiveness outside of women’s typical characteristics.

Although men and women can contribute similarly towards sustainable development, women often have unique and holistic approaches supported by ecofeminism and political feminist ecology. Typically, women have always been involved in conflict as peacemakers or activists, yet they are disproportionately affected, while men operate in public-speaking roles and armed groups. As such, they rarely have the same resources, political rights, authority, or control over their environment. Consequently, addressing women’s struggles for recognition should be acknowledged to facilitate the distribution of power and resources and access to opportunity. Women can contribute to policymaking by emphasising the importance of interrelated categories of peace and security: health and education, economic security, community development, and political stability.

Women in Sustainable Development

While sustainable development is understood as a gender-neutral concept outside the academic literature, within the literature, it is very apparent there is a gender divide. Past winners of the Sustainable Development Leadership Award awarded by the World Sustainable Development Summit are almost all exclusively given to men. Since its inception in 2005, only one woman, H.E. Ms. Tarja Halonen, the President of Finland, has won it. She was a lawyer and politician who became the first female woman to hold the presidency of her country. Throughout her career, she pushed for social justice and sustainable development and stressed the importance of gender equality. Even though women constitute half the population, she argues that gender equality is a human right and a precondition for successful societies.

Women’s broader contribution to sustainable development has been increasingly recognised over the past few decades. Their local understanding allows them to understand immediate priorities and provide a vital voice for communities across the country. They are uniquely positioned as stewards of natural resources, growing crops including rice, corn, and legumes, which all provide their peers with basic nutritional requirements. However, considerable evidence highlights that women face major barriers to becoming leaders, including unequal access to economic opportunities. For example, in the Pacific Region, only 41% of women work in the formal economy, compared to 81% of men. Combating violence against women and girls, increasing women’s rights to assets, and increasing women’s access to decent work are all essential to achieving women’s resilience to climate and catastrophe risk.

Improving gender equality and women’s empowerment

1) Gender mainstreaming has been widely accepted as the most practical means to facilitate sustainable development practice, and it expands the visibility of gender at international levels. UN Women define it as “the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels”. They also define it as “a strategy for making women’s and men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated”. At a programmatic level, gender analysis with monitoring and evaluation are highly credible strategies, while at the institutional level, implementing accountability mechanisms will promote gender equality.

2) We need gender-disaggregated data! Currently, the lack of data constrains gender equality advocation and adequate policy.  Metrics are essential to supporting policy, but in many countries, reporting gender statistics is not a legal requirement, and as such, the sector is under-prioritised and underfunded. When women are fully represented at all levels, we can prevent the upturn in violence and protect the long-term sustainability of peace and democracy.

3) Gender budgeting is a tool of gender mainstreaming that will show the impact of restructuring revenue and expenditure in order to promote gender equality. If implemented effectively, gender budgeting will help to expose the inequalities that are embedded in public policies and will help reduce the gender pay gap, amongst other gender gaps.  

4) Intergenerational community workshops will help build women’s confidence in their abilities and distinguish their perception that their education and experience are barriers to standing in elections. Education and training programmes will increase their confidence and equip them with leadership skills earlier in their career.  Additionally, young women can learn from wiser, more experienced women while building stronger, more resilient relationships. Part of the reason women fail to run for political positions is due to their lack of confidence in comparison to their male peers, but these measures can challenge the issues they face: higher rates of violence and discrimination with limited access to inheritance and property rights.

Header image from Flickr by IAEA Imagebank