Gender Equality

The challenges that we face can be addressed only through stronger international cooperation. The Summit of the Future in 2024 is an opportunity to agree on multilateral solutions for a better tomorrow, strengthening global governance for both present and future generations. The present policy brief aims to elaborate on the proposal on the Emergency Platform to respond to complex global shocks, incorporating feedback received from Member States and other relevant partners. The Emergency Platform would not be a standing body or entity but a set of protocols that could be activated when needed. The brief outlines some of the characteristics of global shocks in the twenty-first century and some of the risks we could face in the future. It highlights how such shocks have the potential to undermine progress to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and 2030 Agenda, as well as human rights and gender equality. It reflects on lessons from the response to recent complex global shocks and sets out proposals to strengthen the international response to a complex, global shock through the convening of an Emergency Platform. Finally, it offers recommendations on how these proposals could be taken forward in the Pact for the Future. This is the second of the Summit of the Future Policy Briefs.

Waste-pickers are one of the most crucial yet often ignored segments of the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programming. These workers often labour in hazardous conditions under the uncertainty of informal employment but are the key to keeping the environment clean and our cities (particularly urban spaces) safe. Challenges these workers face - such as limited earning capacity, increased risk of falling into poverty and insecurities of food, income, work and livelihood - have been further accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These challenges have been noted to be worse for women - who are more vulnerable to significant impacts on their health - with potential intergenerational impacts. This brief, drawing from broad themes of socio-economic insecurity among informal workers across developing nations, presents on-ground evidence on demographic, employment, identification, housing and social security characteristics of waste pickers from across ten states in India. It also discusses some policy directions to ensure structural transformation towards resilient and equitable development for this cohort.

Development discourse has long acknowledged the disproportionate impact of climate change and its implications for women and other marginalized social groups and has called for gender-responsive and inclusive climate action in international, national and local arenas. However, some countries are still pursuing development trajectories that fall short on gender sensitivity and social inclusion, worsening the impacts on women and marginalized groups while hindering resilience-building efforts. Given Sri Lanka’s heightened climate vulnerability and the exacerbated climate risks on women and other socially excluded demographics, and responding to the call for action in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, this brief examines the level to which Sri Lanka’s development and climate policies and strategies integrate a gender and social inclusion approach in comparison to regional peers. Drawing on this work, this brief then provides recommendations to improve the climate policy landscape of Sri Lanka, including the gender-responsiveness of such work, to inform the country’s ongoing National Climate Change Policy revisions.

This year marks the 20-year milestone of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, a landmark agreement in which Governments committed to “building a society for all ages”. The Madrid Plan of Action contains a broad range of objectives, including that of reducing poverty among older persons. Poverty is a particular risk for older persons. Most people work less or stop working altogether at some point in old age, either for health reasons, family responsibilities, because they must or want to retire at the statutory retirement age, or because discrimination undermines their employment opportunities. While many older persons remain productive, many of their contributions to their countries’ economies, to their communities and to their families are not formally recognized or paid. Their economic well-being depends on the availability of public income support, affordable health care, family support and savings to a greater extent than that of the working-age population. Because of the disadvantages they experience throughout their lives, older women may suffer from higher levels of poverty than old men.

En este documento se presentan nuevas evidencias sobre los efectos de la pandemia mundial del COVID-19 en la economía de los cuidados. Como complemento de otro documento de políticas de ONU Mujeres, “Abordar las consecuencias económicas del COVID-19”, en este se destaca un conjunto de medidas clave para abordar el incremento del trabajo de cuidados no remunerado derivado de la pandemia, garantizar una compensación adecuada y condiciones de trabajo dignas para quienes se desempeñan en este sector de manera remunerada, y permitir la participación de quienes prestan cuidados remunerados y no remunerados en las decisiones políticas que les afectan. También, se brindan recomendaciones que podrían considerar los actores interesados, desde gobiernos hasta organizaciones internacionales y el sector privado, con ejemplos de algunas medidas ya adoptadas.

La protection sociale occupe une place de plus en plus importante dans l’agenda du développement social en Afrique subsaharienne. Des systèmes de protection sociale complets peuvent contribuer à éliminer la pauvreté et à réduire les inégalités, stimuler une activité productive et la croissance économique, et créer une résilience face aux crises multiples et récurrentes, en particulier s’ils fonctionnent en tandem avec d’autres politiques sociales et du marché du travail. Récemment, les pays de la région ont largement utilisé les instruments de protection sociale pour faire face aux retombées économiques et sociales de la pandémie de COVID-19. Dans ce contexte, cette note analyse dans quelle mesure et de quelles manières les pays de la région intègrent l’égalité des sexes et l’autonomisation des femmes dans leurs efforts de protection sociale, tirant parti d’une base de données unique de stratégies nationales de protection sociale de 30 pays de la région, y compris 14 en Afrique de l’Ouest et centrale, et 16 en Afrique de l’Est et australe. Elle constate que si un nombre important de stratégies reconnaissent les risques et les vulnérabilités liés au genre, peu incluent des actions spécifiques pour y faire face. Cette note s’achève par un ensemble de recommandations pour une intégration accrue des préoccupations relatives à l’égalité des sexes dans les efforts visant à mettre en place des systèmes nationaux de protection sociale.

Women face persistent structural challenges to decent jobs and economic independence. Now their livelihoods are even more vulnerable because of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This vulnerability is due in part to a system of gender inequality that imposes unpaid care and domestic work on women through socially constructed gender norms, and that deprives women of effective universal protection systems. How can we cushion the adverse effects during the COVID-19 crisis while paving the way for structural transformation? This policy brief, part of UNDP's Development Future Series, examines the most at-risk elements of women's income-generation capacity, presents the possibilities and estimated costs of a temporary basic income (TBI) for women's economic security across the developing world, and discusses options for long-term commitments of economic protection and gender equality.

How long do impacts of the graduation-based social protection approach last after support ends? What factors affect the impacts’ longevity? What do these factors mean for those seeking to exit poverty sustainably? This brief explores such questions by revisiting women who participated in a UNDP social protection initiative in one of Bangladesh’s most climate-vulnerable districts between 2017 and 2019. Four years on, the brief unpacks how the women are faring in a context where they are exposed to climate-induced shocks. The insights contribute towards sparking discussion on the sustainability of impacts and on influencing factors while carrying key lessons for social protection to achieve sustainable outcomes.

This paper analyses the gender gaps in access to and use of ICT, as well as ICT-related training, education, and employment opportunities, with a focus on the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region. It argues that gender equality in access to digital technologies and basic and advanced digital skills, as well as to decision-making, will transform women’s ability to participate at every level in the future economy and influence the digital economy as ICT professionals themselves. Achieving gender equality in digital access and ICT professions requires efforts at institutional and policy levels to harness ICTs to serve the goals of equality and justice, so that the gender-based discrimination and segregation in the labour market are not reproduced in the digital economy, and so that the benefits of data and digitally-driven change accrue equally to all.

Small arms and gender are intrinsically linked. A rich body of research in South-East Europe has documented how gender norms and roles can, in a complex interplay with other factors, fuel demand for small arms and shape patterns of their misuse. Gender also conditions specific risks that women and men face with respect to small arms misuse, in particular the forms and extent of their exposure to armed violence. On the other hand, widespread availability and misuse of small arms exacerbate existing gender inequalities, both in conflict and non-conflict settings, and reinforce power imbalances between women and men, which is most evident in the context of violence against women. These patterns are remarkably stable and, until recently, policy and the operational response have been weak and have mostly failed to adequately address links between gender and small arms. However, institutions in the Western Balkans, with support from UNDP SEESAC, are increasingly making efforts to mainstream the gender perspective across arms control frameworks, providing a blueprint for more gender-responsive policy solutions and contributing to more resilient communities. Elaborating on such experiences, this brief provides an overview of key evidence which has shaped arms control debates in the region and facilitated making a case for mainstreaming gender in small arms control. The brief further outlines practical strategies for gender mainstreaming and highlights the importance of gender analysis in enhancing the gender responsiveness of arms control. Finally, it discusses policy implications of bringing gender perspectives into arms control policies as well as ways forward.

In recent years, the Government of Costa Rica has recognized the importance of promoting gender equality and women empowerment in the conservation and sustainable use of forests. Costa Rica recognizes that promoting gender equality implies not only mentioning the issue as a priority or as a principle, but also prioritizing the identification of relevant gender inequalities and proposing concrete actions to address them. This brief examines how the Government of Costa Rica, with support from UNDP, is addressing prevalent gender gaps, empowering women in the environmental sector, and comprehensively integrating gender into environmental policies, governance and finance. This, in turn, has resulted in an innovative and gender-responsive offer of environmental incentives in the country that are scaling up results at an influential level, simultaneously increasing women’s economic empowerment, promoting sustainable use of forests and combating climate change.

This brief examines how the women members of peace groups, established through a UNDP initiative in Iraq, overcame traditional barriers to play the role of peacemakers and social developers in their communities. From their perspective, the brief highlights the opportunities made available in post-conflict Iraq and identifies three realms that remained key in assuming their new roles in society: family dynamics, interactions with male community members and the media. Thus, it provides an understanding of the pathways through which women in traditional and conflict-affected societies like Iraq assumed the responsibility to rebuild their communities and initiate a structural shift in gender equality and social norms.

This discussion paper provides a ‘state of the evidence’ on social norms change within the field of gender and development. The paper presents findings from a scoping review of studies and evaluations of programmatic interventions to shift social norms, as well as insights from a broader body of evidence tracing how social change happens. It answers four questions: What are social norms?, How do social norms change?, How are social norms measured? and What role (if any) should global development organizations play in shifting social norms? In doing so, the paper traverses a divided evidence base that, on the one hand, does not adequately reflect the varied social, political and economic drivers behind historical changes in social norms, including the role of women’s and feminist movements, and on the other, grasps the complexity of social norms but does not lend itself to clearly defined theories of action. Key lessons include that social norms should be approached as one lever in a broader toolbox of programmatic options; that feminist and women’s rights movements are key agents of social norms change, and that sustainable investments in social norms programming requires shifts within development practice itself, including how change is measured.

والغاية من هذا الموجز السياساتي هو التطرق بتفصيل لمقترح منتدى الطوارئ الذي يرمي إلى التصدي للصدمات العالمية المعقدة، وقد أدرجت ضمنه التعليقات التي وردت من الدول الأعضاء ومن الجهات الشريكة المعنية الأخرى. ولن يكون منتدى الطوارئ هيئة أو كيانا دائما بل سيكون بالأحرى عبارة عن مجموعة من البروتوكولات التي يمكن تفعيلها عند الحاجة. ويعرض الموجز لبعض خصائص الصدمات العالمية في القرن الحادي والعشرين وبعض المخاطر التي يمكن أن نواجهها في المستقبل. ويسلط الضوء على قدرة تلك الصدمات على تقويض التقدم صوب بلوغ أهداف التنمية المستدامة وخطة عام 2030 وتحقيق الأهداف المتعلقة بحقوق الإنسان والمساواة بين الجنسين. ويستعرض بتمعن العبر المستنبطة من مواجهة الصدمات العالمية المعقدة الأخيرة ويقدم مقترحات لتعزيز التدابير الدولية للتصدي للصدمات العالمية من خلال عقد منتدى الطوارئ. ويقدم الموجز ختاما توصيات بشأن سبل المضي قدما بهذه المقترحات في ميثاق المستقبل.

ويتضمن هذا الموجز السياساتي اقتراحات بشأن الخطوات العملية اللازمة للإيفاء بالتزامنا الطويل الأمد بتلبية مطالب الحاضر بطريقة تصون مصالح الأجيال المقبلة وتحافظ على قدرتها على التمتع الفعلي بجميع حقوق الإنسان. وتشمل هذه الخطوات: )أ( تعيين مبعوث يكون لسانا مدافعا عن مصلحة الأجيال المقبلة على الصعيد العالمي؛ )ب( الاستعانة بالتبصر والعلم والبيانات على نحو أفضل؛ )ج( إصدار إعلان يحدد واجباتنا تجاه الأجيال المقبلة ويضفي عليها طابعا ملموسا؛ )د( إقامة منتدى حكومي دولي مكرس للنهوض بتنفيذ الإعلان وتبادل أفضل الممارسات. وتستند هذه الاقتراحات إلى خطتنا المشتركة وما جرى لاحقا من المشاورات الحكومية الدولية ومشاورات الجهات المتعددة ذات المصلحة، التي ورد بيانها في “ورقة عناصر الإعلان المتعلق بالأجيال المقبلة”، التي أعدتها البعثتان الدائمتان لفيجي وهولندا لدى الأمم المتحدة 1. ويجيب الموجز السياساتي على الأسئلة التي أثارتها الدول الأعضاء في أثناء المشاورات، وهي تشمل كيفية تعريف الأجيال المقبلة، وكيفية تحقيق التوازن بين التزامنا تجاهها وبين واجباتنا تجاه الأجيال الحاضرة، وكيف تنهض المقترحات بأهدافنا الحالية المتعلقة بالتنمية المستدامة والمساواة بين الجنسين وحقوق الإنسان، وما النتائج المنشودة من مؤتمر القمة المعني بالمستقبل بشأن هذه المسألة. والمنطق الذي تنهض عليه هذه المقترحات بسيط. فما نقوم به لمصلحة الأجيال المقبلة هو أيضا ما يتعين علينا أن نقوم به لمصلحتنا نحن أيضا، وهو أن نتعامل مع التحديات والفرص التي ينطوي عليها المستقبل بطريقة تفوق من حيث الحزمُ طريقة تعاملنا معها حاليا. ونحن نعلم أننا قادرون على التحلي ببعد النظر في عملنا الجماعي، كما يدل على ذلك النجاح الذي أحُرز في ترميم طبقة الأوزون.

In the wake of the “shadow pandemic” of violence against women and girls during COVID-19, policymakers, practitioners, and activists are searching for novel and effective ways to address violence against women (VAW), including in the context of ongoing crises and disasters. Social protection systems provide a wide range of policy tools and mechanisms that have the potential to address VAW. To date, however, this potential is largely unrealized. Policy discussions and practice on social protection and VAW remain siloed and evidence generation dispersed. Based on a phased scoping review of peer-reviewed academic and grey literature, which captured 48 articles focused on both social protection and gender-based violence, this policy paper brings the two fields together, to identify pathways for harnessing social protection to address VAW. In doing so, the paper enables policymakers to move beyond a focus on singular social protection interventions and towards a systems perspective that opens opportunities for preventing and addressing VAW through a broad range of social protection schemes, such as multisectoral coordination, accompaniment models, and training for social protection providers.

Paid domestic work employs many women in developing countries. Paraguay, where 94 percent of domestic workers are women and more than 90 percent of these jobs are informal, represents an extreme case of a problem that is common throughout the globe. These workers lack access to social security and generally endure precarious working conditions. What are the different legal, institutional, social and gender barriers that prevent domestic workers from having greater access to social security? Drawing on different sources of data from Paraguay, including the voices of both domestic workers and their employers, this study shows how persistently low levels of social security coverage in this sector are a product of complex interlocking factors: discriminatory cultural and gender beliefs, lack of accurate information and knowledge about social security, the low bargaining power of informal domestic workers and the low capacity for labour inspection that prevail in the sector. Based on these observations, the conclusions lay out guidelines to design integrated public policies for the sector’s formalization.

Цель настоящей концептуальной записки — доработать предложение о создании Чрез¬вычайной платформы для принятия мер реагирования на комплексные глобальные потрясения с учетом отзывов, полученных от государств-членов и других соответст- вующих партнеров. Чрезвычайная платфор¬ма задумывается не в качестве постоянного органа или постоянной структуры, а как на¬бор протоколов, которые могут быть активи¬рованы в случае необходимости. В записке дано краткое описание некоторых характери¬стик глобальных потрясений, произошедших в XXI веке, и некоторых рисков, с которыми мы можем столкнуться в будущем. Особое внимание в ней уделено тому, каким образом такие потрясения могут подорвать прогресс в достижении целей в области устойчивого развития и реализации Повестки дня на период до 2030 года, а также в деле осуществле¬ния прав человека и обеспечения гендерного равенства. В ней отражен опыт, полученный в ходе принятия мер реагирования на недав¬ние комплексные глобальные потрясения, и изложены предложения по укреплению меж-дународных мер реагирования на комплекс¬ные глобальные потрясения путем созыва Чрезвычайной платформы. Наконец, в ней предлагаются рекомендации о том, каким образом эти предложения могут быть отра¬жены в Пакте во имя будущего.

El objetivo de este informe de políticas es elaborar la propuesta sobre la Plataforma de Emergencia que permita responder en caso de crisis mundial compleja, incorporando los comentarios recibidos de los Estados Miembros y otros socios pertinentes. La Plataforma de Emergencia no sería un órgano o entidad permanente, sino un conjunto de protocolos que podrían activarse en caso necesario. En el informe se exponen brevemente algunas de las características de las crisis mundiales del siglo XXI y algunos de los riesgos a los que podríamos enfrentarnos. Se destaca cómo las crisis podrían menoscabar los progresos hacia la consecución de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible y de la Agenda 2030, así como de los derechos humanos y la igualdad de género. Se reflexiona sobre las lecciones extraídas de la respuesta a recientes crisis mundiales complejas y se presentan propuestas para reforzar la respuesta internacional a una crisis mundial compleja organizando una Plataforma de Emergencia. Por último, se ofrecen recomendaciones sobre cómo llevar esas propuestas más lejos en el Pacto para el Futuro.

The policy brief highlights the essentiality of women in agriculture and their potential role in shifting to sustainable agriculture, increasing food security and increasing agricultural productivity when they have access and ability to adopt innovative agriculture techniques such as climate-smart agriculture practices (CSA). This policy brief identifies key actions that can remove barriers or women in agriculture, including collection of gender disaggregated data for gender-sensitive planning, research analysis, advocacy for equitable access to productive assets, capacity building and awareness raising, and cross-sector collaborations to enable gender-equitable access to infrastructure, financial capital, productive assets and other services.

Adequate and dignified care provision for elderly populations is becoming an urgent policy issue, not only in high-income countries, but also in many middle- and low-income ones. This discussion paper documents and analyses varieties of eldercare policies, and their readjustments, in East Asia and Europe.

This work develops a set of regimes that link structures of economic growth with those of social reproduction. These regimes are then linked to groups of countries organized by economic structure and level of development to evaluate the macroeconomic consequences of a decline in gender inequality in the labour market. Social reproduction is defined in terms of the time and money it takes to produce, maintain and invest in the labour force, so it includes both paid and unpaid care work. The analytical emphasis is on how the distributions of production and reproduction among women, men, the state and capital determine investment and growth and how gender inequality is both cause and consequence of these relationships.

This discussion paper makes the case for investing in free universal childcare services of high quality in order to reduce gender inequality in earnings and employment. It estimates the employment-generating and fiscal effects of investing in free universal childcare in three middle income countries: South Africa, Uruguay, and Turkey. It calculates the total annual costs of investing in high-quality childcare services that would cover the entire population of children below primary school age, using parameters relevant to each national context. Results show that employment rates can be significantly increased, especially for women, as a result of the combined direct, indirect, and induced job creation. Although the total annual cost of such investment can go up to 3 to 4 per cent of GDP, the net cost can be halved thanks to significant fiscal returns stemming from increased employment and earnings, without changing the tax structure itself (rates and bands). Results are compared with those obtained using a similar method for the United Kingdom and show that the reach of a country’s tax system plays an important role in the funding process. The paper also estimates a theoretical fiscal break-even point, based on longitudinal labour supply effects of mothers closing their lifetime employment and earning gap following such generous childcare offer. In all three countries and the United Kingdom, the fiscal return on investment based on this measure is likely to outstrip the total cost of childcare for a typical mother of two children on average earnings.

This discussion paper provides an updated analysis of gendered economic inequality in high- and middle-income countries. A review of the literature demonstrates that such an analysis needs to explicitly recognize that gender, poverty, and (economic) inequality are intrinsically linked. Specifically, the paper addresses two sets of questions: First, how do intra-family resource allocation and distribution patterns both reflect and shape gender inequalities in power and well-being, and what factors—including policy-related ones—can mitigate these inequalities? Second, how do families as gendered institutions contribute to broader socio-economic inequalities, and what can be done to reduce/reverse these inequalities? Using data from the LIS Database, this paper shows considerable differences among 42 countries with respect to how likely women were to have their own income. The period from 2000 to 2010/2014 saw increasing rates of own incomes as well as women’s incomes constituting larger shares in total household income. A key finding is that, in countries where many women have an income of their own, relative poverty rates are lower.

Population ageing is a global phenomenon, a shift towards an increasing share of older persons in the population. Even the least developed countries (LDCs) are beginning to experience the progressive ageing of their populations, and this process is expected to accelerate during the second half of the current century (United Nations, 2023). Despite its far-reaching consequences, the emergence of this trend in LDCs has attracted only limited attention from both national policymakers and the international community. Most LDCs are still early in the decades-long process of population ageing, which is a direct consequence of the demographic transition towards longer lives and smaller families. Population ageing begins with a slowdown in the growth of the younger population but eventually involves the rapid growth of the older population. Early in this process, countries have an opportunity to benefit from the demographic dividend – a faster rate of economic growth on a per capita basis due to an increasing share of the working age population (and thus a falling dependency ratio) caused by a sustained decline in the fertility level. Although temporary, this opportunity often lasts for several decades. It comes to an end once the older population begins to grow more rapidly, leading to a rising old-age dependency ratio. Preparing for population ageing in LDCs will be critical for achieving sustainable development and ensuring that no one is left behind. Maximizing the benefits from the demographic dividend will provide an opportunity for these countries to develop economically before their populations become much older. It is also consistent with a pledge of “working together to support the acceleration of the demographic transition, where relevant”, as agreed in the Doha Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the Decade 2022–2031 (United Nations, 2022).