UNITED NATIONS: From the fight against poverty to education access, from political representation to economic opportunity, the world is “failing women and girls,” the United Nations warned in a report on gender equality released on Thursday.

The report from UN Women reviewed the progress made on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), adopted by the body’s members in 2015, which were meant to create a better world for all by 2030.

The results of the review are grim. “When we look at the data, it does look like the world is failing to advance and achieve gender equality,” deputy executive director of UN Women Sarah Hendriks said.

“And it is becoming, I’d say, an increasingly distant goal,” she added.

The goal focused on gender equality aims by the end of the decade to eliminate gender discrimination, violence against women, forced marriages and genital mutilation, to make domestic work more equal, to guarantee access to reproductive health care and to ensure women’s participation in political and economic life.

But “halfway to 2030, the world is failing women and girls,” the report warns, with most of the goal’s targets falling behind.

Every year, 245 million women over age 15 are victims of physical violence by their partners, one in five women are married before age 18, women spend 2.8 more hours per day doing unpaid housework than their male counterparts and women represent only 26.7 per cent of all lawmakers worldwide.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2023