Path to equal: New measurement framework on gender equality and women’s empowerment
Event description
In 2021, a series of Voluntary National Review (VNR) labs were convened on the margins of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) to provide an informal platform for experience sharing and reflection on the Voluntary National Review process. The labs were held under the Chatham House Rules and were open to Member States, the UN system, and representatives of major groups and other stakeholders.
UN Women organized a VNR lab titled “Path to equal: New Measurement Framework on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” on 15 July 2021.
Only nine years remain to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and greater efforts are needed to diagnose the root causes of structural gender inequality, identify game-changers, and spur further commitments. A new measurement framework for gender equality and women’s empowerment developed by UN Women and UNDP provides a powerful tool for this pursuit. It illustrates a country’s status in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment through a dashboard of indicators. The dimensions and most of the indicators selected for quantifying the dimensions are SDG indicators and thus complement the policy efforts of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
This lab highlighted some of the findings from this work and its relevance for the preparation of VNRs, particularly in their assessment of the different forms of discrimination that women and girls face and their impact on society, and on accelerating progress in achieving the SDGs. The findings also put a spotlight on intersectionality through a comparison of outcomes for women and girls from different wealth/income quintiles for more than 100 countries. It also featured speakers from Member States, including from national statistical offices.
Speakers:
- Ms. Céline Jacquin, Head of the Department of Evaluation of Geographic Information and the Environment, National Institute of Statistics and Geography, Mexico
- Mr. William Komu, Chief Economist, SDGs Coordination Directorate, The National Treasury and Planning, Kenya
- Ms. Jeyran Rahmatullayeva, Head of the Apparatus of the State Committee for Family, Women and Children Affairs, Azerbaijan
- Ms. Ginette Azcona, Lead, Data and Statistics, Global Reports, Research & Data Section, UN Women – Presentation (PDF, 1.4MB)
The session was moderated by H. E. Ms. Hoda Al-Helaissi, Member of Saudi Arabia's Shura Council.
UN Women and the United Nations Statistics Division published the 2021 edition of the “Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot” in September 2021, ahead of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly.