Spring/Summer 2004

Volume 33
Numbers 3-4

Learn First:
The Policy of Access

The Millennium Development Goals and Gender Equality
By Lee Schwentker, Guest Editor, On Campus With Women

In the past, gender-blind macroeconomic and national policies have often either kept women out of jobs or kept them in the lowest-paying and most hazardous jobs. Such policies have also kept women earning less than men for equal work and kept them underrepresented in positions of leadership.

Slowly but surely, the international development community has come to recognize that "development, if not engendered, is endangered." In other words, gender issues must be integrated into all areas of development if such development efforts are to be successful and sustainable for all members of society. Yet, despite this recognition of the importance of gender issues to development policies, recent reports have highlighted the disconnection between women's concerns and other aspects of development theory and practice.

Both the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and the United Nations Development Programme have published reports examining how gender issues have been articulated in the development goals set forth in the Millennium Declaration. Passed in 2000, the Millennium Declaration, according to the UN report, "outlines the central concerns of the global community--peace, security, development, environmental sustainability, human rights, and democracy--and articulates a set of interconnected and mutually reinforcing goals for sustainable development." A highlight of the Declaration is the agreement on the part of 191 governments "to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger, and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable." In spirit, then, gender equality is at the heart of the Millennium Declaration.

However, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) outlined in the Declaration segregate gender equality from the other development issues. WEDO contends that meeting the Millennium Development Goals without attending to gender equality would increase costs and diminish outcomes for countries. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger


2. Achieve universal primary education


3. Promote gender equality and women's empowerment


4. Reduce child mortality


5. Improve maternal health


6. Combat HIV/AIDS


7. Ensure economic sustainability


8. Develop global partnerships for development

Nations that fail to consciously address issues of gender equality as they work to attain these goals are likely to shortchange women. For example, when attending to issues of poverty (Goal 1), governments must consider that women comprise the majority of the world's poor. To adequately address this issue, poverty must be understood not only in terms of income levels but also in terms of low levels of empowerment, opportunity, and security for women and girls.

In addition, in order to attain goals 1 through 7 it will be necessary for individual nations, the UN, and international trade organizations to develop global partnerships for development (Millennium Development Goal 8). The primary responsibility for achieving the MDGs has been given to the poorest countries, while wealthy nations have not been held accountable. Yet, these nations must participate if the central ambitions of the Millennium Declaration--i.e., peace, security, democracy, etc--are to be realized for all nations, wealthy and poor.

According to Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), the MDGs have been critiqued by international women's movements for a variety of reasons, including:

• The MDGs are an abridged version of resolutions and platforms of the United Nations Conferences in the 1980s and exclude issues such as gender-based violence and political participation.


• The goals do not include issues relating to war even though the obstacles women face during and after conflicts present major barriers to advancing development.


• The goals do not take into account women's vast diversity in ability, race, indigenous status, or sexual orientation. Nor do the goals consider the needs of the poorest women who have the least access to health and education.


• The MDGs do not conceive of human rights in a holistic manner. Women cannot fully participate in their societies if human rights issues are addressed in isolation. As Ana Elena Obando of AWID notes, "It is not possible, for example, to think about promoting education for women if at the same time they cannot access water because this service has been privatized. It's impossible to analyze poverty without taking into account women's political participation and violence against women."

To address these shortcomings, WEDO recommends increasing the use of sex-disaggregated data in order to better measure needs of women around the world and the impact of social and fiscal policies. In addition, WEDO advocates tracking the progress of the Millennium Development Goals and putting pressure on governments to address issues of women's human rights.

Finally, planned revision of the goals in 2005 will give nations the opportunity to recommit to--and revise--the MDGs. The revision should renew focus on women's issues internationally because 2005 will also bring a revision of the objectives articulated at the 1995 World Conference on Women at Beijing, thus continuing to build momentum for gender-conscious development theory and policy.

References

Millennium Development Goals National Reports: A Look through a Gender Lens (United Nations Development Programme, 2003). www.undp.org/gender/docs/mdgs-genderlens.pdf.

United Nations Millennium Development Group, Reporting on the Millennium Development Goals at the Country Level. 2001. (United Nations Development Program, 2001). www.undp.org/mainundp/propoor/docs/UNDGMDG-Guidance-NoteENG.doc.

Women's Empowerment, Gender Equality, and the Millennium Development Goals: A WEDO Information and Action Guide. (New York: Women's Environment & Development Organization). www.wedo.org/publicat/MDG_toolkit1.pdf.