Goal #2Women and the Millennium Goals
Background
The world now stands at the halfway point towards making the Goals a reality, but results have been uneven. To ensure the world realizes its potential to make poverty history, significant progress must be made to ensure gender equity.
Women disproportionately suffer from hunger, disease, environmental degradation and impoverishment. As a result, poverty remains stubbornly “feminized”, with women accounting for a vast percentage of the world’s absolute poor.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, it is important to highlight the interconnectedness of women’s issues to all of the Millennium Development Goals.
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By the Numbers
- Goal 1: End Poverty and Hunger
Women earn only 50 cents for every dollar that a man is paid for the same work. - Goal 2: Universal Primary Education
57% of the 72 million children who do not attend primary school are girls. - Goal 3: Promote Gender Equity
In 2006, women only held 15% of seats in national parliament - Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Up to 90% of infant mortality could be prevented through breast feeding, oral rehydration therapy, malaria prevention, proper diet and access to antibiotics and vitamin supplements, but many women simply lack the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. - Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
The chance of dying because of pregnancy in Sub-Saharan Africa is 1 in 16, but only 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. - Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDs and Other Disease
Young women aged 15-24 are being infected with HIV/AIDS three times faster than their male peers. - Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
On average women and children travel 8 hours (covering10–15 km) per day collecting water
Voices and Views
UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon: This failure of funding holds back our efforts to reach all the Millennium Development Goals.
Unifem Statement on Women's Day: Achieving Millennium Development Goal 3 on gender equality and women's empowerment is central to achieving all other development goals.
Resources and Links
- Fact Sheet: 2008: Status of Women and the MDGs
- GCAP: Women’s Day Actions and Updates
- GCAP Video: Video showcasing gender equality campaign initiatives
- UN Report: The Feminization of Poverty
- UNDP Report: En Route to Equality: A Gender Review of National MDG Reports 2005 (pdf)
- Oxfam: Learning to Survive: How Education for All Would Save Millions of Young People From HIV/AIDS (pdf) Youth Resource: UN Cyberschoolbus Int’l Women’s Day Site
Goal News
The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) is mobilising worldwide on International Women’s Day to call for gender equality to end poverty. With women representing 70% of the worlds poor, the issue of gender equality in the fight to end poverty has been carried by campaigners to the doors of governments and multilateral instiutions by GCAP coalitions since 2005.
UNICEF is marking International Women’s Day 2008 (8 March) by drawing attention to the need for improvements in maternal health care.
Better access to maternal health care will reduce the estimated half a million pregnancy related deaths that occur each year and also help reduce child mortality rates.
When the 189 UN Member States adopted the Millennium Declaration in 2000, they committed their respective governments to drastically cut the incidence of poverty by half and make the world a better place for everybody to live not later than 2015. The commitments in the declaration are espoused in a set of eight goals with achievable targets, commonly referred to as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Interview with Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
The past year has marked the half-way point for realisation of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) . The eight goals were agreed on by global leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, with 2015 set as the deadline for achieving the MDGs.
Denouncing violence against women as “one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world,” United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has vowed to lead a campaign against the scourge.
In a message marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, commemorated on 25 November, Mr. Ban hailed progress in addressing the issue, but said there is “so much left to do to tear down the veil of tolerance which still sometimes surrounds it.”
