| dc.description.abstract | Don’t we already know that things
have improved for girls and women
in recent decades, from increased
access to education and the growing
number of women in leadership
roles, to the strengthening of feminist
movements around the world?
Can this Index really tell us anything
we don’t already know about global
progress on gender equality? Is there
more to do, even after $40 billion was
pledged at the Generation Equality
Forum in Paris in June 2021?
The answer to these questions is
a resounding yes. If we are to reach
the vision laid out in the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) for people
and our planet, we must track progress
– or the lack of it – with a gender lens
across the whole of the 2030 Agenda.
And we must use the resulting data to
drive accountability for gender equality
commitments. The SDG Gender
Index is the most comprehensive tool
available to do precisely that.
Yes, there has been some measurable
progress towards gender equality
since the 1995 World Conference on
Women in Beijing,
and yet none of us
lives in a country that has achieved the
full promise of equality envisioned in
the SDGs nor are most countries on
track to achieve those goals by 2030.
Even if most countries worldwide
seem to be making some advances
on gender equality, tools like the
SDG Gender Index are essential to
sound the alarm at the slow pace,
the limited scale and the profound
fragility of these advances. This is
vital as we navigate in light of global
shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic
and other ongoing and future crises
that we know will follow.
The Index has been developed by the
EM2030 partnership, which brings
together national, regional and global
leaders from feminist networks, civil
society, international development
and the private sector to connect
data and evidence with advocacy
and action on gender equality.
The partnership is driven by a shared
belief: that data can expose inequality
and injustice, motivate change and
drive accountability. The 2022 SDG
Gender Index is the result of years
of dialogue and learning across our
‘global to local’ partnership and
beyond.
The COVID-19 pandemic has
dominated our discussions and
thinking around the Index, even
though it is too soon to gauge its full
impact on girls and women, in all
their diversity, worldwide. One thing
is clear, however: the pandemic has
exposed and intensified the severe
and intersecting inequalities that
were already holding them back,
long before any of us had heard of
COVID-19. What matters now is what
we do next.
As well as illustrating the many
challenges, the Index has a positive
message: that rapid progress is
possible. The Index data, and the
clear policy recommendations we
have drawn from the Index findings
and our collective experience, chart a course based on the vision
of EM2030: a just, peaceful and
sustainable world, where all girls and
women have equal power, voice,
opportunity and access to their
rights, in line with the SDGs. | en_US |
