Gender Equality

Faced with population ageing, countries in the UNECE region are preparing for growing numbers of older persons receiving pensions and needing health and long-term care services. An important societal adaptation to ageing has been to increase the labour market participation among women and older persons to ensure the sustainability of social security and protection systems. It is now time that regulatory frameworks, financial provisions and services support the equal sharing of paid and unpaid work in families, households and communities between women and men to close prevailing gender gaps in care, employment, earnings and pensions. Unless gender- and age- responsive reforms are addressing the multiple dimensions of gender inequality in ageing societies, women risk to be disproportionately disadvantaged by the consequences of population ageing, facing double and triple shifts of paid, domestic and care work at the detriment of their own health, earnings and savings which can accumulate to a greater risk of poverty, social isolation and unmet care needs in their own advanced age.

By revealing how under-prepared the world is for systemic shocks, COVID-19 has refocused attention on another, rapidly escalating crisis: that of environmental degradation and climate change. Only six years ago, the global community agreed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, recognizing the need for environmental, economic and social transformation to work in tandem to achieve human rights for all. Even before the pandemic, the world was off-track to meet these commitments. Now, with the world at a crossroads, one of the most consequential questions facing governments, business and the global community is whether decisive action will be taken to rapidly transition the global economy to more sustainable patterns of production and consumption to prevent—or at least reduce the extent of—environmental breakdown. There is growing recognition that marketbased solutions are ineffective in driving change at the requisite scale and pace. As the world looks to recover and rebuild after COVID-19, there is an opportunity to advance ‘gender-just’ transitions, a transformative approach that can achieve greater gender equality and set economies on more equitable and environmentally sustainable paths.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, there are all sorts of structural constraints that limit the full enjoyment of women’s rights and progress towards gender equality. Globalization, changing demographic patterns, climate change, economic conditions and inequality in technology access and use within and between countries pose additional challenges. In addition, the appearance, interaction and confluence of a whole number of disruptive technologies have all the features of a new technological revolution. The rapid changes associated with existing and emerging technologies are making themselves felt in a number of dimensions of development, creating opportunities and challenges for societies and economies; in particular, they are giving rise to new scenarios for the world of work.

This paper presents a costing analysis for a set of family-friendly services and transfers: income protection for children, people of working age, and older persons; universal health coverage; and early childhood care and education and long-term care services. The social protection and care policies that are included in the costing have enormous significance for families and broader society, and their implementation would have particularly important impacts for women, since they are over-represented among those without income security, they face specific life course contingencies, and they take on a highly disproportionate share of unpaid care work. Previous work studied different components of this package more in depth, often also providing projections for the future. The comparative advantage of the present study is that it looks at an integrated package of family-friendly services and transfers and estimates the costs for a large sample of countries (151 to 166, depending on the scenario). The costing shows that such a package is affordable in many countries. Depending on the scenario, median costs range between 4.6 and 10.1 per cent of GDP. Those countries that cannot finance the full package can initially afford at least some of its critical elements, such as health care or income support.

This discussion paper focuses on the interconnections between policies to move toward universal health care (UHC) as a key element of social protection and those to advance gender equality, women’s empowerment, and human rights. Based on an analysis of country experiences, it shows how gender is a key fulcrum on which all health system elements are leveraged and is hence central to achieving UHC.

This report has been prepared to inform the Asia-Pacific regional intergovernmental review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on the Beijing+30 Review in November 2024. It presents key progress, remaining challenges, good practices and lessons learned by member States and stakeholders involved in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in Asia and the Pacific. Based on a synthesis of latest data and evidence, it proposes strategies to guide the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in Asia and the Pacific in the context of evolving global and regional megatrends, such as the just green transition, digital and technological transformation, and demographic shifts. The intersectional challenges related to gender, age, ethnicity, disability and other socioeconomic factors are reflected in the analysis. The report aims to identify opportunities to address gender inequalities and inform the development of future policies and programmes that can bring about gender-transformative changes for all women and girls of diverse background in Asia and the Pacific.

The climate crisis is the most pressing issue of our times, one that is threatening progress on gender equality and human rights and hindering the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Against this backdrop of rising global temperatures and unfulfilled national pledges, women, girls and gender-diverse people are mobilizing to demand that their voices be heard in decision-making on climate policy. To answer their demands, this paper describes how to achieve feminist climate justice through four interlinked dimensions (recognition, redistribution, representation and reparation) and the principles of interdependence and intersectionality. It provides practical guidance on what countries need to do to transition to low-emission economies that are resilient to a changing climate, while advancing gender equality and recognising the leadership of women, girls and gender-diverse people in driving the change that is so urgently needed. In doing so, it zooms in on the global food system as just one illustration of how this framework can be applied, as well as provides analysis of the major barriers to accountability for gender-responsive climate action and how they can be overcome. The vision for feminist climate justice is of a world in which everyone can enjoy the full range of human rights, free from discrimination, and flourish on a planet that is healthy and sustainable. With this conceptual framework, UN-Women aims to open up space for discussion of feminist alternatives to the status quo and to inform the next edition of its flagship report, Progress of the World’s Women, on gender equality in the age of climate crisis.

Proponents of inclusive growth advocate for equity considerations to be at the front and center of growth policy. However, their principal concern is with class – not gender equality. This publication shows that economic growth is an inherently gendered process and gender-based inequalities can in fact be barriers to shared prosperity. Gender equality will thus need to be central to any project of inclusion. The book argues that for growth to be gender-equitable and truly inclusive, the pattern of growth must create decent work and productive employment for women and men. This would require policy-makers to rethink the role of macro-level economic policies, including trade, industrial, macro-economic, finance and investment policies, and to adopt human rights as a guiding normative framework. The book highlights the importance of addressing unpaid care and domestic work and calls for a transformative approach that recognizes and values care work.

Under the framework of the UN Joint Global Programme on Essential Services, UN Women, together with UNODC and the IAWP, developed this handbook on gender-responsive police services to address the need for a strengthened justice sector response to violence against women and girls. The handbook is based on and complements existing global and country-specific handbooks and training materials for law enforcement. It covers areas such as prevention of violence against women and girls, gender-responsive police investigations, survivor-centred approaches, and institutional transformation within an often-complex justice system. It also provides guidance on responding to violence against women and girls during a crisis, including a pandemic.