U.N. Millennium Development Goals
	Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Achieve universal primary education. Promote gender equality and empower women. Reduce child mortality. Improve maternal health. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Ensure environmental sustainability. Develop a global partnership for development.
	Goal Three Strategic Priorities
	Strengthen opportunities for postprimary education for girls while simultaneously meeting commitments to universal primary education. Guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights. Invest in infrastructure to reduce women's and girls' time burdens. Guarantee women's and girls' property and inheritance rights. Eliminate gender inequality in employment by decreasing women's reliance on informal employment, closing gender gaps in earnings, and reducing occupational segregation. Increase women's share of seats in national parliaments and local governmental bodies. Combat violence against women and girls.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were established in 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit. Every member state in the UN signed the Millennium Declaration, thereby committing themselves to work toward achieving these goals by 2015. The goals, while ambitious, were also intended to be operational, definable, and addressable; in other words, to be achievable. To help progress toward the realization of these goals, Kofi Annan and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) established the Millennium Project, under which ten task forces were created. These task forces were given three years to identify strategies, priorities, and means of achieving the MDG.

Goal Three explicitly addresses gender equality and women's empowerment, with particular emphasis on achieving gender equity in access to and completion of primary and secondary education. In linking education and gender equality under the same task force, the UN Millennium Project indicates its awareness of the centrality of education to women's equality and empowerment. The data in this article are drawn from the Task Force on Education and Gender Equality report, Taking action: Achieving gender equality and empowering women and a presentation by Caren Grown, lead author of the Task Force report, entitled, Taking Action on the Millennium Development Goals: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women, given at the International Center for Research on Women Insight & Action Seminar held in Washington, D.C. on May 11, 2005.

The Task Force report authors assert that Goal 3 has value on its own as well, even though all eight goals are interrelated and the success of one goal depends on and contributes to the success of the other goals. The Task Force identified gender equality in access to and completion of primary and secondary education as critical to achieving gender equality in all areas, as indicated by their decision to name education as the first strategic priority under Goal 3. In addition, all eight goals have targets embedded in them; the target for Goal 3 is "eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005 and in all education no later than 2015. This is the only target to have an initial goal year of 2005, further emphasizing the centrality of education not only to achieving women's equality, but to the attainment of all eight MDG. Unfortunately, while there has been significant improvement in access to schooling, many countries have failed to meet the target for both primary and secondary education.

Participation in primary, secondary, and postsecondary education has enormous positive implications for women in several areas, including the labor market/economy, political participation, fertility, maternal health and mortality, health and "bodily integrity" and risk of HIV infection. In addition, participation in and completion of secondary and postsecondary education are shown to have the largest impact on women's empowerment, though the groundwork for higher levels of education must be laid in primary schooling. However, it should be noted that the impact of education, however powerful, is also mitigated by the larger societal context. Women who live in more egalitarian societies experience a greater positive impact from education than those who live in more gender-stratified environments. Education is transformational, but is not, in and of itself, enough to enact gender equality.

The Task Force identified several interventions that have been successfully employed by different countries and regions to increase access to and participation in postprimary education. These include

• improving the affordability of education by eliminating user fees, offering incentives to families and girls, and offering targeted scholarships;
• building primary and secondary schools close to girls' homes, thereby reducing the risks girls face when traveling long distances;
• making schools safe and "girl-friendly" by, among other things, reducing harassment girls face, offering workshops on gender-based violence, providing separate bathrooms, and making childcare available;
• strengthening the quality, content, and relevance of education by ensuring that girls and women are valued in the curricula and textbooks, encouraging girls to pursue any and all subjects (including math and science) and to participate in class, and increasing the number of female teachers;
• educating illiterate and/or poorly educated mothers, thereby improving the educational possibilities and outcomes for their children.

Each of these intervention strategies has proven helpful in increasing gender parity in education, indicating that successful interventions are possible and that models exist for conducting such interventions. Aware of differential access and levels of participation even within country/region, the Task Force recommends that the first priority should be increasing access for and enrollment of girls belonging to ethnic minority groups and those living in poverty.

However, the Task Force recognizes that it is not enough to simply increase access. It is also necessary to increase completion of primary, secondary, and postsecondary education to enjoy the full benefits and impact of education on women's empowerment. As such, while it is important for nations to concentrate on increasing universal access to and participation in primary education, they must simultaneously focus on improving access to and enrollment in secondary and postsecondary education for girls. In laying out the significant impact education has on all areas of women's lives and well-being, and in providing concrete strategies and approaches for improving access to and participation in all levels of education, the Task Force on Education and Gender Equality has created a clear and powerful tool for change.

To download the full report, go to: www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/tf_gender.htm.