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Gender Equality
Are Governments Catching Up?
This publication examines government policies toward the crucial nexus of work-family reconciliation focusing on employment-based leaves and early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. It starts by discussing the socio-economic context in Latin America. To illuminate regional trends and best practices the authors provide more detailed case studies of policy reforms in Brazil Chile Costa Rica and Uruguay.
Agrarian Labour and Resources in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper traces the restructuring of rural families’ agricultural production the intra-household division of labour and land usage in the interim between the global oil price rise of 1979 and its precipitous fall by 2015. These decades witnessed smallholder export crop production becoming increasingly uncompetitive in the world market due to the high costs of transporting bulky crops over the vast expanses of rural Africa. With the decline of cash cropping men women and youth were drawn away from farming towards off-farm cash-earning in a wide variety of non-agricultural activities. Now male heads of household no longer monopolize cash earnings in rural households to the same extent as in the past. Women’s and youth’s earnings afford them more household decision-making autonomy. Demographically the HIV/AIDS crisis has imposed strain on rural households and impacted land usage and inheritance affecting women detrimentally in some countries whereas state reform of inheritance laws has improved women’s situation in other countries. Generally officially published national-level rural labour statistics harbour gender bias and under-reporting of female labour expenditure. Domestic work continues to be the preserve of women. Marriage patterns are changing with some women experiencing a reluctance to marry men due to men’s lost income-earning capacity and women’s increased wariness of contracting AIDS. In this context matrifocal families have gained salience.
Gender Equality and Human Rights
There is a strong commitment to equality between women and men in international human rights law. The various actors within the treaty system who are tasked with elaborating on the meaning of human rights in international law have given close attention to gender equality. This work evaluates these elaborations against a conception of equality that is substantive. The achievement of substantive equality is understood here as having four dimensions: redressing disadvantage; countering stigma prejudice humiliation and violence; transforming social and institutional structures; and facilitating political participation and social inclusion. The publication suggests that there is a growing consensus at the international level on an understanding of substantive equality that reflects the four dimensions set out here. Making this understanding explicit will assist in addressing through a range of means the challenges of gendered inequality.
Feminist Perspectives on the 2030 Agenda in Ecuador
This discussion paper examines how the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been integrated into the national debate on gender equality in Ecuador. It identifies which policies from the Agenda have been taken into account and which have been rejected. It also examines how the actors involved in clarifying the scope of these policies—women’s movements sexual diversity organizations public officials and United Nations agencies working on gender equality—have coordinated their activities with the Agenda. In so doing it attempts to answer the following questions: How does the 2030 Agenda interact with the gender equality agenda in Ecuador? Where do they intersect and what are their points of contention? How has the global agenda influenced national policies and actions on gender equality and women’s rights? The paper also assesses whether newer feminist and sexual diversity organizations in Ecuador are aware of and incorporate the 2030 Agenda and conversely whether the Agenda addresses the debates and demands made by such organizations in recent years. Lastly it provides some recommendations on how to better translate the goals and targets on gender equality from the 2030 Agenda into Ecuador’s national gender policies.
Neither Heroines nor Victims
Circular labour migration is frequently portrayed as a gender-neutral phenomenon. Despite the growing literature on the feminization of migration scholarly and policy literature is often gender-blind. In Nepal over the last decade the share of women migrant workers has significantly increased. The National Population Census 2011 shows that about 13 per cent of the absentee population is composed of women. Due to prevailing patriarchal norms and values and skewed policy female labour migration is traditionally stigmatized and associated with sex work or equated to trafficking. However with rising demands for cheap labour (particularly domestic work) in destination countries (for example the Persian Gulf) continued inadequacy of rural employment opportunities and changing aspirations women are increasingly migrating independently. Pourakhi an organization established by women returnees in 2003 has collected more than 1700 case studies on returnee women migrant workers in Nepal. This paper delves into 307 of these as well as a consultation with 14 returnee migrant women from 14 districts to better understand the reintegration process. Rather than focusing on a (necessary) critique of labour markets and on the high human social and financial costs of migration this study aims at giving voice to the subjectivities of migrant women in Nepal as less attention has been paid to this aspect. It unpacks their reasons for undertaking international migration and their struggle for capability to secure a livelihood in the context of globalization.