Equality of the sexes: the path to an improved world.
Sharing power between genders enhances health outcomes, reduces poverty, and promotes environmental sustainability.
The struggle for global gender equality is far from being victorious. Consider education, for instance: In 87 nations, less than half of females successfully finish secondary education, as per 2023 statistics. Afghanistan, under the Taliban’s rule, still prohibits women and girls from attending secondary schools and universities. Similarly, in the realm of reproductive health, abortion rights have been restricted in 22 U.S. states since federal protections were invalidated by the Supreme Court. This has deprived women and girls of their autonomy and hindered access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.
SDG 5, one of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, focuses on “achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.” It encompasses objectives like ending discrimination and violence against women and girls, eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation, ensuring sexual and reproductive rights, achieving equitable representation of women in leadership roles, and granting equal access to economic resources. Globally, progress toward this goal is falling short, with only a few countries achieving all of its targets.
In July, the United Nations introduced two fresh indices the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) and the Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI). The WEI gauges the capacity and freedoms that women possess to make their own choices, while the GGPI assesses the disparities between women and men in various domains like health, education, inclusivity, and decision-making. Regrettably, these indices reveal that even when a minor gender gap is bridged, it does not necessarily lead to substantial levels of women’s empowerment. Among the 114 countries included in both indices, those performing well in both areas account for less than 1% of the total female population.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation, with women experiencing the greatest burden of additional unpaid childcare responsibilities when schools had to close. They also faced heightened instances of domestic violence. While child marriages had decreased from constituting 21% of all marriages in 2016 to 19% in 2022, the pandemic jeopardized even this gradual progress. It pushed up to 10 million more girls into the risk of child marriage over the next decade, in addition to the 100 million girls who were already at risk before the pandemic.
Out of the 14 indicators for SDG 5, only one or two are nearing achievement by the 2030 deadline. As of January 1, 2023, women held 35.4% of seats in local-government assemblies, an increase from 33.9% in 2020 (the target being gender parity by 2030). In 115 countries with available data, roughly three-quarters, on average, had enacted the necessary laws ensuring full and equal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. However, the UN estimates that globally, only 57% of married or unionized women have the autonomy to make decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Widespread bias against girls and women by men, observed in various settings, continues to pose a significant obstacle to attaining gender equality. However, Ruth Mace, an anthropologist at University College London, contends that patriarchy is not an inherent or “natural” societal structure. Across the globe, numerous women-centered societies exist. As science writer Angela Saini elaborates in her recent work, “The Patriarchs,” these societies frequently do not represent the complete opposite of male-dominated systems; instead, they are communities in which both men and women participate in decision-making processes.
An illustration of this concept can be found among the Mosuo people in China, where there exist both ‘matrilineal’ and ‘patrilineal’ communities. In these communities, rights like inheritance are conveyed through either the male or female lineage. Researchers conducted a study comparing the health outcomes related to inflammation and hypertension in men and women within these societies. They discovered that women in matrilineal communities, where they have increased autonomy and influence over resources, enjoyed superior health outcomes. Remarkably, the researchers did not identify any substantial adverse impact of matrilineal practices on the health outcomes of men.
Regarding the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there is emerging evidence suggesting that a more gender-equitable approach to politics and power yields positive outcomes for numerous goals. In a study published in May, Nobue Amanuma, the deputy director of the Integrated Sustainability Centre at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Hayama, Japan, along with two colleagues, conducted an investigation to assess whether countries with a higher proportion of women legislators and younger legislators perform better in achieving the SDGs. Their findings supported this notion, with a more pronounced impact observed on socio-economic objectives like eradicating poverty and addressing hunger, as compared to environmental goals such as climate action and biodiversity conservation. The researchers recommend further qualitative and quantitative studies to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons.
Surprisingly, the notion that gender equality positively influences outcomes across various SDGs is often overlooked within the goals themselves. Out of the 230 distinct indicators associated with the SDGs, only 51 explicitly address topics related to women, girls, gender, or sex, which includes the 14 indicators within SDG 5. Unfortunately, there is insufficient collaboration among the organizations responsible for different SDGs to ensure that sex and gender considerations are adequately integrated. For instance, the indicator for the sanitation target (SDG 6) lacks data that is broken down by sex or gender. Without this data, monitoring improvements in this and other SDGs becomes a challenging task.
The journey towards achieving gender equality remains lengthy, and the autonomy and decision-making power of women remain significantly constrained. However, the scientific evidence supporting the idea is growing stronger: distributing power equitably between genders paves the way for the kind of world we all aspire to live in and need.
