Gender and the Millennium Development Goals (Oxfam Focus on Gender) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 085598550X ISBN 13: 9780855985509

Verlag: Oxfam Professional, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

The progress of the world’s governments towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be reviewed in 2005. This timely collection of articles provides feminist perspectives on the MDGs and critically evaluates their potential impact on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Authors differ in the degree of engagement with the MDGs they advocate, but many point to the urgent need to explore the linkages between the Goals and other international women’s rights instruments like the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform for Action.

Contributors include: UN Development Fund for Women Director Noeleen Heyzer, Naila Kabeer, Carol Barton, and Peggy Antrobus

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Caroline Sweetman is Editor of the international journal Gender & Development and works for Oxfam GB.

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Gender and the Millennium Development Goals

By Caroline Sweetman

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 2005 Oxfam GB
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-550-9

Contents

Editorial Caroline Sweetman, 2, 
Making the links: women's rights and empowerment are key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals Noeleen Heyzer, 9, 
Gender equality and women's empowerment: a critical analysis of the third Millennium Development Goal Naila Kabeer, 13, 
Where to for women's movements and the MDGs? Carol Barton, 25, 
Approaches to reducing maternal mortality: Oxfam and the MDGs Arabella Fraser, 36, 
The education MDGs: achieving gender equality through curriculum and pedagogy change Sheila Aikman, Elaine Unterhalter, and Chloe Challender, 44, 
Not a sufficient condition: the limited relevance of the gender MDG to women's progress Robert Johnson, 56, 
Out of the margins: the MDGs through a CEDAW lens Ceri Hayes, 67, 
Linking women's human rights and the MDGs: an agenda for 2005 from the UK Gender and Development Network Cenevieve Renard Painter, 79, 
Critiquing the MDGs from a Caribbean perspective Peggy Antrobus, 94, 
Resources Compiled by Kanika Lang, 105, 
Publications, 105, 
Websites, 109, 
Electronic resources, 110, 
Tools for advocacy, 115, 
Organisations, 115, 

CHAPTER 1

Making the links: women's rights and empowerment are key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals

Noeleen Heyzer

Men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and from fear of violence, oppression or injustice.

Millennium Declaration (UN 2000a, 2)

The Millennium Declaration, adopted by all UN Member States in 2000, outlines a vision of freedom from want and freedom from fear. Together with the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which make that vision concrete, the Millennium Declaration commits states to 'promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger, disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable' (UN 2000a, 5).

The recognition that women's equality and rights are central to achieving economic and social priorities is important. But it is not by chance that this has come about. It is the result of work by women's human rights advocates over decades, creating a groundswell of activism for gender equality at global, regional, and national levels. The commitments to women made in the UN World Conferences of the past two decades – in Beijing, Cairo, Vienna, and Copenhagen, as well as the Special Session on HIV/AIDS in New York in June 2001 – are fundamental to the vision embedded in the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs.

So, too, is the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an international women's bill of rights – now ratified by 179 countries – which obligates governments to take actions to promote and protect the rights of women (UN 1979). It is crucially important that the specific and detailed commitments and obligations contained in these documents are not lost as governments and the international community begin to organise around goals and targets selected to track progress on the MDGs.

The power of the MDGs lies in the unprecedented global consensus and commitment that they represent. They establish a common index of progress, and a common focus for global partnership for development, which emphasise the needs of poor people. The MDGs also provide an opportunity to raise awareness about the connections among the eight Goals and the rights and capacities of women. The year 2005, which will mark the ten-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action and the five-year review of the Millennium Declaration, will present an opportunity to assess progress in implementing both the Platform for Action and the MDGs, especially Goal 3.

As governments and civil society come together to track progress towards achieving the MDGs, we have an opportunity to re-energise gender-equality initiatives, by insisting on the central importance of Goal 3 and the Millennium Declaration itself. As a recent World Bank report notes: 'Because the MDGs are mutually reinforcing, progress towards one goal affects progress towards others. Success in many of the goals will have positive impacts on gender equality, just as progress toward gender equality will help other goals' (World Bank Gender and Development Group 2003, 3). It is thus absolutely essential to ensure that tracking progress towards all of the eight Goals relies on sex-disaggregated data and gender-sensitive indicators. Many agencies and advocates for gender equality are producing reports that will contribute to understanding the gender dimensions of many of the goals and targets.

Progress, however, will again depend on the energy and commitment of women. How then, do women's equality advocates view the MDGs? In order to find out, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), in co-operation with the UN Interagency Network on Women and Gender Equality, the OECD/DAC Network on Gender Equality, and the Multilateral Development Bank Working Group on Gender, hosted a five-week online discussion on gender and the MDGs with more than 400 women's equality advocates, representing UN agencies, bilateral donors, multilateral development banks, and civil society organisations, as well as independent scholars and activists. What did this tell us?

First, women's advocates are dismayed that, despite their success in pushing for recognition of women's rights as human rights by governments through UN conferences, many of these hard-won victories are not reaffirmed in the Millennium Declaration, and are entirely absent in the MDGs themselves. They point to the lack of a goal on reproductive rights, or a decent work standard for women or men, the absence of issues such as violence against women, and the narrow targets and indicators for the gender equality goal.

As a result, many women's advocates have questioned the relevance of the MDGs to their work. Why should women's organisations pay attention to the MDGs when the need to tackle the roll-back in women's reproductive rights, the persistence of violence against women, and the rise in militarisms, extremisms, poverty, and inequality is so urgent? Especially when, at face value, the MDGs are operational and are devoid of any analysis of power relations. Nor do they take into account the inequities within the global economic system that exacerbate existing inequalities.

Several participants in the online discussion observed that, in much of the work on MDGs, the gender dimensions were often missing or treated as an afterthought. As one said: 'We have been witness to serious exclusions of a gender perspective in MDG Task Forces, MDG Reports and PRSPs [Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers]. This is just one symptom of a larger epidemic, that puts gender and human rights on a back burner.'

This has begun to change over the last year, as gender advocates made themselves heard in the Task Forces working on strategies for achieving the Goals, and in the statistical agencies working on better data and indicators for monitoring progress. States are already under formal, legal obligations to realise gender equality, particularly those states that have ratified CEDAW. For every area covered by the MDGs, there is direction on gender equality that exists in the core human rights treaties, and through the concluding observations and recommendations of the treaty bodies and...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Oxfam Professional
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 085598550X
• ISBN 13: 9780855985509
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 117
• Herausgeber: Sweetman Caroline
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland