This month, all of us at IACD are especially excited to shift our focus to women and community development.
Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day
March is Women’s History Month. During this time, individuals and organizations work to raise knowledge and awareness of women’s history, to celebrate and promote women’s achievements, and to provide women with role models and inspiration. It’s a time to celebrate and empower women, and we are proud to join in those efforts.
8th March 2020 is recognized worldwide as International Women’s Day. IACD will be publishing our Women’s Empowerment and Community Development issue of Practice Insights to coincide with this important day. Anita Paul and Maryam Ahmadian, IACD’s Regional Directors for North Africa and the Middle East and South Asia respectively, have released a message on the background for this upcoming special issue below.
International Women’s Day (March 8, 2020) is a time to reflect on progress, development and growth made through women’s empowerment. Indeed, there is great reason to celebrate the many accomplishments of the role of women in community development. International Women’s Day is also an opportunity to consider how to enhance the 2030 Agenda, building momentum for the effective implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls (https://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/).
In addition, the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) will be celebrated in 2020 and continues to provide a progressive blueprint for women’s rights movements. This anniversary also provides us all with an opportunity to review the first five years of implementation of the Agenda 2030 and take stock of the successes, actions and lessons learned in working towards the fulfillment of the critical Sustainable Development Goals with special focus on Goal 5 of achieving Gender Equality.
Pictured above top L-R: Anita Paul (Regional Director for South Asia); Maryam Ahmadian (Regional Director for North Africa and the Middle East); IACD President Anna Clarke; Country Correspondent Michelle Dunscombe and Regional Director for Oceania, Dee Brooks; UN Youth Representative Alyssa Faulkner; Anastasia Crickely (Regional Director for Europe and UN Representative for IACD); and Clare MacGillivray addresses delegates at WCDC2019.
Women in Community Development — the Fifth SDG
The United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 5 aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Recently, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals Knowledge Platform published the indicators of progress being made toward this goal.
–Recent data from 106 countries show that 18 per cent of ever-partnered women and girls aged 15 to 49 have experienced physical and/or sexual partner violence in the previous 12 months. The prevalence is highest in least developed countries, at 24 per cent.
–The practice of child marriage has continued to decline around the world, largely driven by progress in South Asia, where a girl’s risk of marrying in childhood decreased by about one quarter between 2013 and 2018. In sub-Saharan Africa, levels of child marriage have declined at a more modest rate.
–At least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital mutilation, based on data from 30 countries where the practice is concentrated and where nationally representative prevalence data is available. In these countries, the prevalence of this harmful practice declined by one quarter between approximately 2000 and 2018.
–According to recent data from some 90 countries, women devote on average roughly three times more hours a day to unpaid care and domestic work than men, limiting the time available for paid work, education and leisure and further reinforcing gender-based socioeconomic disadvantages.
–Women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership. As at 1 January 2019, women’s representation in national Parliaments ranged from 0 to 61.3 per cent, with the average standing at 24.2 per cent, an increase from 19 per cent in 2010. At the local level, data from 99 countries and areas show that women’s representation in elected deliberative bodies varies from less than 1 per cent to 48 per cent, with the median of the distribution at 26 per cent. When legislated gender quotas are adopted, significantly higher proportions of women are elected at both national and local levels.
–While women represented 39 per cent of world employment, only 27 per cent of managerial positions in the world were occupied by women in 2018, up only marginally from 26 per cent in 2015. The proportion of women in management has increased since 2000 in all regions except in least developed countries.
–In 51 countries with data on the subject, only 57 per cent of women aged 15 to 49, married or in union, make their own decisions about sexual relations and the use of contraceptives and health services.
–Over the past 25 years, there has been progress in reforming laws towards improving gender equality, yet discriminatory laws and gaps in legal protection remain in many countries. On the basis of data collected across four areas of law in 2018 from 53 countries, almost a third have legal gaps in the area of overarching legal frameworks and public life (e.g., constitutions, antidiscrimination laws, quotas, legal aid); more than a quarter have legal gaps in the area of violence against women; and 29 per cent and 24 per cent have legal gaps in the employment and economic benefits area and in the marriage and family area, respectively.
–Despite progress in implementing gender-responsive budgeting globally, gaps remain in country efforts to establish comprehensive and transparent tracking systems. Based on 2018 data from 69 countries, 13 countries fully met the criteria of having in place a tracking system that measures and makes publicly available gender budget data, and 41 countries approached the requirements.
via https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5
Stay tuned for more news throughout this month on women and community development! You can look forward to our upcoming Women’s Empowerment and Community Development issue of Practice Insights, and our IACD March 2020 newsletter with a special focus on women.
