Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

28 Chapter 1
Genuine equality
means more
than parity in
numbers, which
can sometimes
be achieved by
lowering the
bar for all—it
means equality
is achieved at
high levels of
well-being
on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 Fourth World Conference
on Women in Beijing. 2 The inclusion of gender equality and women’s
empowerment as Millennium Development Goal 3 is a reminder that many
of those promises have yet to be kept. It also offers a critical opportunity to
implement those promises.
National and international women’s movements have worked to hold governments
accountable for the legal and political commitments they have made
through CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, and other international
agreements. It is women’s activism and social mobilization, combined with
innovative responses from some governments and civil society organizations,
that have led to significant improvements in women’s and girls’ status since the
first UN Conference on Women in 1975 in Mexico City. Investing in women’s
advocacy organizations is key to holding the international community and
national governments accountable for achieving Millennium Development
Goal 3.
In the past three decades women have made gains, particularly in health
and education, as evidenced in lower mortality rates, higher life expectancy, and
reduced gender gaps in primary school education. Despite these gains, it is clear
that many countries will miss the first deadline for the Goal 3 target: eliminate
gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and
in all levels of education no later than 2015. This will be the first visible Millennium
Development Goal failure. That failure should spur the global community
to reenergize and take action so that the 2015 target deadline is met. In
doing so, countries should strive to achieve more than numerical parity.
The spirit of the Goal—gender equality and the empowerment of women—
requires fundamental transformation in the distribution of power, opportunities,
and outcomes for both men and women. Genuine equality means more
than parity in numbers, which can sometimes be achieved by lowering the bar
for all—men and women. It means justice, greater opportunity, and better
quality of life so that equality is achieved at high levels of well-being.
To ensure that Millennium Development Goal 3 is met by 2015, the task
force has identified seven strategic priorities (box 1.1). These interdependent
priorities are the minimum necessary to empower women and alter the historical
legacy of female disadvantage that remains in most societies of the world.
These seven priorities are much broader than the Goal 3 target. That target
is restricted to education, a focus justified by the strong evidence that investing
in girls’ education yields high returns for girls themselves and high returns
for development (Schultz 2001). 3 By setting an ambitious target for eliminating
gender disparities in primary and secondary education—in less than a
decade—Goal 3 sends a clear message that gender inequality in education in
the twenty-first century is unconscionable and must be rectified.
Important as it is for women’s well-being and the development of societies,
education alone is insufficient to eliminate the wide range of gender inequalities