Promoting Gender Equality And Empowering Women

MDG3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

• Target: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

The MDG target to eliminate gender disparity in education has made progress in many developing regions. Girls are regularly denied access to education, work and politics in many countries. Since the creation of this goal, progress has also been made in women’s representation in politics.

The gender parity ratio in education grew from 91 to 97 between 1999 and 2010 in the Global South, while women’s representation in parliaments and equivalent bodies increased from 11.3 percent in 1995 to 19.7 percent in 2012. Poverty is the primary barrier to primary and secondary education for girls, though gender discrimination is also an issue. The cost of secondary education – and often the view that educating girls is useless and the possibility of marrying off their girls – influences families to educate their sons over their daughters. While women’s opportunities in paid jobs outside of agriculture have slowly grown throughout the past 20 years, struggles are still present. Globally women only account for 25 percent of senior management positions, as they are mostly reserved to men.

Despite important progress, MDG3 will likely not be met by 2015. Regions such as Oceana, Western and Southern Asia, and Sub-Sahara Africa still lag behind in spite of having made significant improvements. Women are overrepresented in informal employment, are not hired for higher level jobs, and without quotas still struggle to advance in political positions.

Nina Mansour is an intern at InterAction.

In the year 2000, after a decade of conferences and summits, the UN created the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a series of eight goals with concrete targets to achieve by 2015. With just three years until December 31, 2015, the world is beginning to evaluate how close we are to achieving the MDGs and to look forward. This eight-part blog series highlights some of the successes and challenges as we close out 2012.