SI’s Global Policy Advisor, Francesca Fletcher Williams blogs about the current progress made towards Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) on Gender Equality.

“It is now the second time the UN’s High-Level Political Forum has reviewed progress towards achieving SDG5 on gender equality. Under the broad banner “achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”, SDG5 covers ending all forms of discrimination, eliminating violence, harmful practices like child marriage and FGM, economic empowerment, women’s leadership, recognising unpaid caring and household responsibilities and reproductive health and rights. These are all key issues that many Soroptimist International projects engage with, and some of these have been shared with the UN via SI’s HLPF report.

A lot has changed since 2017, the last time SDG5 was reviewed, but unfortunately many of these changes have not benefited women and girls and the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination they experience. COVID-19 has created a “shadow pandemic” of gender-based violence. Before the pandemic, 1 in 3 women experience physical or sexual violence. Globally, data gathered during the pandemic showed that violence was intensifying, women and girls were put at increased risks of violence due to economic insecurity and poverty, poor living conditions, being isolated with abusers, and unsafe public spaces. That gender-based violence is a global problem, and that it has been getting worse, clearly demonstrates that the violence women and girls experience is a public problem which needs public solutions. Too frequently, because violence happens behind closed doors or in private it has been tackled as a ‘private problem’ and viewed as an issue between two people. Individual instances of violence are not viewed as a widespread social issue, which is exactly what gender-based violence is. To address this challenge moving forward, it is vital that transformative, system-wide changes are made and that more is done to focus action on those who are most likely to perpetrate this violence –– men and boys.

This will require training those in the policing and justice systems, reforming laws and policies, and strong social programmes to support women and girls and address violence. There needs to be dedicated resourcing, and more organisations already expert in helping women and girls must be better funded. Despite demand for services increasing, the resources have decreased. It is difficult not to interpret this as meaning gender equality – and therefore half the world’s population – is simply not a priority for governments.

Unfortunately, the bad news does not stop there. The COVID-19 pandemic has set women and girls back both at home and in the workplace. Changing social attitudes had meant the there was a steady redistribution of household and caring responsibilities, with men taking on more of these responsibilities. However, the social pressures that COVID-19 brought with it saw a regression of this redistribution. Women were expected to be carers, teachers and maintain their work, something that is totally unsustainable and simply impossible for many. While it would have taken nearly 100 years to have closed the gender gap pre-COVID, it now will take at least 136 years at our current rate of progress. Women have found it harder to progress in the workplace, find employment which works with their responsibilities, access equal pay and take-up leadership opportunities. Many have had to leave employment and leadership positions because of pressures at home. We do not see the same impacts affecting men in the same way.

Pre-existing inequalities and discrimination have been amplified and driven these asymmetric impacts of the pandemic. As the impacts were asymmetric, then the actions to solve these negative effects will have to be too so that equality can be achieved. Women and girls need specific and targeted support to facilitate their choices and ambitions. Childcare access and affordability must improve, employers need to adjust their workplace policies and men must commit to taking on the same responsibilities that women do at home. Furthermore, it should not only be considering the responsibility of women to create equality. We know women have the skills and ambitions to live their lives the way they want. However, too often there are insurmountable barriers to women and girls making the choices they want to. Individuals cannot be asked to overcome system-wide challenges to achieve gender equality, there needs to be transformative change. Governments are able to make those changes but in a world with many crises are being slow to do so.

Given all these impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is only appropriate that the HLPF this year is focusing on global recovery from the pandemic, ensuring that sustainability and gender equality is built-into approaches and policies aimed at trying to create a ‘new normal’. While headlines about gender-equality issues have been somewhat depressing over the last few years, there may be hope for quiet optimism. By revealing how widespread and ingrained challenges to gender equality are, there is increasing appetite for innovative and transformative solutions. While finding agreement on those may be difficult, advocacy at the global and national levels can make a real difference at this moment in time. Public groundswells in demanding action have the potential to change what the world will look like and how sustainable development may be achieved.

It is a cliché to say women are half the world, but it is also true. This puts women in a potentially powerful position when we work collaboratively. The HLPF can provide such an opportunity in a global policy context where civil society organisations, like SI, work together to advocate for the kind of systemic, transformative changes described in this blog. After the HLPF closes this week, the next challenge is making sure states act on their commitments at the national level. Too often this can seem like a mammoth task, but it is very achievable, especially with evidence of what works gained through the projects already done by Soroptimist International clubs in their communities. So, while taking stock of the barriers to gender equality, we also have to ask, what can we do to eradicate inequality?”