Millennium Development Goals and Gender

The 3rd of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) announced in the 2000 Declaration aims "to promote gender equality and empower women". It differed from the other Goals in setting a target to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005, far in advance of the normal 2015 deadline. Although the overall ratio of girls per hundred boys entering primary education in the developing world advanced from 87 to 94 between 1990 and 2005, the UN MDG Report for 2008 discloses that 113 countries failed to achieve parity. The lowest ratios are found in rural areas within sub-Saharan Africa where extreme poverty compels girls to perform domestic tasks such as collecting water and firewood, rather than attend school.

Benin school room © Dan Gerber

The Report further predicts that only 18 of these countries are likely to achieve the wider target of eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education by 2015. Although a lack of resources is a consistent backdrop to these figures, the specific action necessary to accelerate progress is complex and varies for each country. There is some agreement, however, that the two most important steps are to remove fees for primary education (so that parents have less reason to favour boys over girls) and to improve school sanitation facilities to allow appropriate privacy for girls. The costs are high and, in countries where school fees have been lifted, the resulting influx of new pupils has often defeated the capacity of buildings and teachers to cope with them.

Women and Development

Woman leader at meeting, Benin © Dan Gerber

The strongest debate generated by MDG 3 has been less about its lack of progress than its inadequate scope. The former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, once said that "there is no tool for development more effective than the education of girls” but critics observe that gender parity in education is insufficient on its own to dismantle unjust social hierarchies. Equal access to resources such as healthcare, land, credit and technology should also play a part. Campaigners would have preferred a much more inclusive approach to the MDGs, with gender perspectives specifically integrated into all of the Goals. Indeed the 2008 UN Report concedes that “the limited progress in empowering women and achieving gender equality is a pervasive shortcoming that extends beyond the goal itself”.

One important step would be to recognise how aggregation of data in reports can conceal important gender differences in progress. For example, whilst the encouraging decline in prevalence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa generates cautious optimism for MDG 6, the gender profile of those living with HIV has been steadily changing to the extent that 75% in the 15-24 age group are women.

The belief that gender perspectives should inform all development strategies is founded on accumulating evidence that a fairer stake in society for women reduces poverty, generates economic activity and improves the quality of health and productivity of the family unit. Although often pressed to do more, the majority of international NGOs and donor agencies attach great importance to the correlation between poverty reduction and women's participation and have extensively integrated gender issues into their development programmes.
Women's Rights

Malian women in Dire © Dan Gerber

The pursuit of equality for women is of course built on deeper foundations than utilitarian economics. Unfortunately, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights took the minimalist approach of saying that "everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex" .... with little further reference to women's issues. This proved unhelpful in practical terms and it took campaigners over 30 years to cajole the international community into solid interpretation and commitment to address gender injustice.

This commitment came in the shape of the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979. CEDAW has been described as a bill of rights for women; it spells out the areas in which women experience discrimination and commits countries to amend their laws, construct national gender policies and create institutions to deliver them. The most solid subsequent endorsement of CEDAW came at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September 1995, at which governments committed themselves to the Beijing Platform for Action, a detailed template for eradication of discrimination and poverty.

Two schoolgirls, India, November 2003 © Peter Armstrong

This generally positive global commitment to women's rights has not been reflected in the rate of progress. Ineffective enforcement of legislation is the most common constraint, possibly not helped by the plethora of UN organisations addressing different aspects of gender inequality. As part of the UN reform process, there have been calls for a more streamlined architecture of agencies to bring greater coherence to women's issues. Another important obstacle has been the failure of the US to ratify CEDAW, a move which has been repeatedly blocked by right wing interests who perceive a threat to sovereignty.

One of the most shameful failures of legislation relates to the practice of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide in India and China. Originally believed to be a characteristic of impoverished rural communities, recent disclosures suggest that over 10% of female pregnancies in middle class New Delhi are aborted. In China, 118 boys were born in 2005 for every 100 girls. There can be no more explicit illustration of the strength of cultural norms to attribute low status to women.
Women's Equality

It is such cultural traditions in developing countries that create the most stubborn obstacle to the essential steps towards women's equality. The belief that girls should work in the home and in the fields rather than go to school, and the presumption that a woman acquires no right to property on marriage are deeply entrenched in many societies. Whilst development agencies are normally anxious to respect cultural traditions in their programmes, they are reluctant to compromise on issues of gender equality.

The disempowerment of women is often reinforced in a country's laws; for example, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are in various stages of amending laws which prevent women from gaining access to land and property. The HIV/AIDS crisis has accelerated these pressures, given that over 30% of households in southern Africa are now headed by women, few of whom can claim ownership rights.

Legal issues are most problematic in Islamic countries where elements of Sharia law governing the behaviour of women remain in place. The Pakistan government has encountered fierce resistance from Islamic political parties to its efforts to reform the Hudood ordinances, ancient laws which declaim that adultery is a crime when carried out by women, and which make it virtually impossible for a man to be convicted of rape. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan represented the most extreme and unacceptable implementation of laws which deny a role for women. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel laureate, believes that the treatment of women in Islamic countries does not reflect the teachings of the Koran. She advocates a reinterpretation of Sharia law to recognise women's rights.
Women's Livelihoods

Women Carrying Water © World Bank

The burden of unpaid domestic work for women is particularly acute in developing countries. Poverty greatly compounds the demands of simple household tasks that would otherwise be minimal. In assessing progress in women's opportunities for non-agricultural work, the MDG Report for 2008 estimates that two thirds of women in developing countries find themselves in vulnerable piecework such as farming, or in unpaid household tasks.

This predominant role in tending crops and livestock as well as coping with large extended families places women in the front line against the connected global crises of food security and climate change. Rising food prices will stretch the ingenuity of poor households which will simultaneously lack awareness and resources necessary to adapt traditional farming methods to changing weather patterns.

In parts of the Middle East and in Central America the preponderance of unregistered female domestic workers raises concerns for low wages and abuse. In Asia where more women are able to find employment, concern focuses more on the concentration of women at the bottom of the production chain in factories with dubious labour conditions. The success of microcredit schemes in South Asia has been attributed in part to the aptitude that women have shown for exploiting the opportunity to run small enterprises. Women have demonstrated better track records for repayment and business sustainability.
Reproductive Health

The Goal to improve maternal health stands out from the other MDGs for its distressing failure to make any progress, lending weight to the argument that the framework for the Goals is creating a gender-blind allocation of resources. The rate of maternal mortality in developing countries has barely changed from the baseline 1990 level of 480 per 100,000 births; its comparison with an average figure of below 10 in developed countries is possibly the most stark evidence of global injustice. In parts of Africa and South Asia, the life expectancy of young women is akin to medieval Europe.

Mother and child, Rwanda © Heidi Martin

The importance of family planning in developing countries emerged originally from population concerns and there has been considerable success in bringing down high average fertility rates. Reproductive health education is now equally motivated by the principle of empowerment of women, as articulated in CEDAW which places an obligation on countries to ensure that women have the same rights as men to decide the "number and spacing of their children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable them to exercise these rights".

The majority of development agencies perceive the right to safe and high-quality abortion services as part of this vision for women's empowerment in reproductive health. Human Rights Watch estimates that 20 million unsafe abortions take place each year due to criminalization of the practice. In the context of international development, the US government considers that the concept of sex education has become too wide. As a result the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) is starved of a large percentage of its funding. Otherwise generous US funding for HIV/AIDS programmes imposes bias towards abstinence rather than safe sex, making the flawed presumption that the balanced gender relations found in the West are replicated in poor countries. The reality is that young women find themselves in desperately weak positions of social interaction from which to negotiate safe sex or no sex.
Violence against Women

Gender violence protest, Indonesia © Jane McGrory

HIV prevention programmes are also now more aware of the risks arising from domestic violence against women, one of the most brutal consequences of the economic, social, political, and cultural inequalities that exist between the sexes. Yet strong concerns voiced by development agencies and policy-makers have emerged only in relatively recent years. There is no mention of the subject in CEDAW, apart from a brief reference to human trafficking. In launching his new 2008 campaign, UNite to End Violence Against Women, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon observed that “at least one out of every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime”.

Whilst rich countries are by no means free of violence against women, the problems - which range from domestic violence to honour killings - are perceived to be more serious in developing countries. Attitudes in society need to change so that women can be more forthcoming in disclosing their problems. Legislation also has a part to play as in the Domestic Violence Bill in India which came into force in 2006.

Legislation is also gradually being introduced in African countries where deep-rooted tradition accounts for the widespread practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) - endangering perhaps as many as 3 million girls each year. Trafficking of women for sex and other services is illegal but authorities are struggling to keep up with the combination of crime syndicates and poverty which drive the trade.

Women suffer terribly in war zones, especially those wars in which the world's media take only token interest. The incidence of rape in Darfur, Congo, Northern Uganda and Sierra Leone may never be known, let alone carry any hope of accountability.
Women's Voices

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf © Center for Global Development

Principles of equality and empowerment lie behind the encouragement of greater representation of women in all levels of government. Women are more likely than men to keep sight of the human dimension in problem-solving and to favour peaceful resolution of conflict. Indeed, the most interesting developments in women’s political participation occur in some post-conflict countries whose constitutions have been torn up and rewritten. The Rwandan parliament is believed to have the highest representation of women in the world with over 50%. The 2008 election for a Constituent Assembly in Nepal featured generous quotas for women candidates. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, has been elected in Liberia, a country torn apart by conflict and corruption.

The overall picture is however less encouraging with only 8 women amongst 192 heads of government as at January 2008. Despite quotas in place in over 40 countries, average women’s representation in national parliaments remains barely over 15%.

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