Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Chapter 2
Task force perspective on gender
equality and empowerment
The task force affirms that gender equality and women’s empowerment are central
to the achievement of all the Millennium Development Goals (box 2.1).
Development policies and actions that fail to take gender inequality into account
and that fail to enable women to be actors in those policies and interventions
will have limited effectiveness and serious costs to societies (World Bank 2003c).
The reverse is also true: achievement of Goal 3 depends on how well each of the
other goals addresses gender-based constraints and issues (box 2.2). Thus, this
task force believes that achieving Goal 3 depends both on the extent to which
the priorities suggested here are addressed and the extent to which the actions
taken to achieve the other Goals promote equality of boys and girls and men
and women. While this interdependence among the Goals is important, the task
force wishes to underscore that Goal 3 has intrinsic value in and of itself. That is
why this report focuses on priorities and actions to achieve Goal 3.
Defining gender equality and empowerment
Like race and ethnicity, gender is a social construct. It defines and differentiates
the roles, rights, responsibilities, and obligations of women and men.
The innate biological differences between females and males form the basis of
social norms that define appropriate behaviors for women and men and determine
the differential social, economic, and political power between the sexes.
Although the specific nature and degree of these differing norms vary across
societies and across time, at the beginning of the twenty-first century they
still typically favor men and boys, giving them more access than women and
girls to the capabilities, resources, and opportunities that are important for the
enjoyment of social, economic, and political power and well-being.
In addressing Goal 3, the task force has focused on the historical disadvantage
experienced by women and on how gender norms and the policies based on those