Policy and investment must support women's economic empowerment — John Hendra

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Your Excellency, First Lady Madame Kim Simplis-Barrow,

Your Excellency President Banda,

Madame Moderator, Excellencies, First Ladies, Distinguished Panelists, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I am very pleased to be here this morning, on behalf of UN Women, to speak on the vitally important issue of women’s economic empowerment. After three and a half years working at UN Women, I have become somewhat used to being the only man on a panel, but I still very much appreciate the privilege and importance, especially among such powerful and dynamic women.

As President Banda so eloquently highlighted, there is no doubt that if we are to achieve a new generation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we must ensure women can participate fully in all three dimensions of sustainable development, and in economic, political and social life.

The facts speak for themselves. We know that women’s economic participation is good for families, as well as for societies and economies. According to the consultancy Booz-Allen, there are one billion women with potential to contribute more fully to their national economies. Reducing barriers to female labour-force participation would increase GDP by five per cent in the United States, by nine per cent in Japan and 15 per cent in many more economies.

We also know that increasing women’s income and their control over family spending leads to improvements in child nutrition, health and education, and can help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. And investing in girls’ education is probably the single most important investment you can make for economic growth and human development.

Yet, as we have also heard, women’s economic empowerment is far from a reality. It’s therefore critical that we create an enabling environment for women’s economic participation. And this means we need to have much more inclusive macro-economic policies and macro-economic decision-making. Yet, unfortunately, macro-economic policy remains largely blind to gender issues and women remain severely underrepresented in economic policymaking. 

Further, all too often macro-economic policies exacerbate existing inequalities, including gender inequality. The economic crisis, and the austerity measures adopted in many countries as a result of the crisis, have only deepened existing gender inequalities. For example, cuts to pensions, public services and social protection have only increased women’s concentration in vulnerable employment and deepened their unpaid care work burden. 

Yet gender-sensitive policy measures that promote inclusive economic growth and support women’s access to decent work and social protection, as well as equal pay for work of equal value, affordable basic services, progressive tax systems and non-discriminatory legislation that enables women’s economic participation — as President Banda highlighted — are all key to promote women’s economic empowerment and achieve gender inequality. Increasing investment in much needed infrastructure, which can really boost women and girls’ participation in employment and education, and help reduce their unpaid care burden, is also vital.

That said, however, experience shows that we cannot view women’s economic empowerment and women’s rights in isolation, as First Lady Barrow so clearly highlighted. If women and girls are to achieve financial health and well-being, they must be able to live lives free of discrimination, poverty and violence, access health care, and participate in decision-making at all levels. Yet globally, as we know, that is still far from the case.

Women still constitute just 22 per cent of members of parliament. Eight hundred women die each day from preventable causes during pregnancy and childbirth. More than 64 million girls worldwide are married under the age of 18. And one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, most often at the hands of an intimate partner.   

Gender inequality then is clearly a universal problem that exists in every region and every country, including my own — Canada. We can’t promote women’s economic empowerment or achieve broader development goals unless we really tackle the structural inequality and discrimination, unequal power relations between women and men, and deeply held attitudes and beliefs and gender stereotypes that underpin and reinforce gender inequality.

That’s why UN Women was very pleased to see the Open Working Group proposal on the SDGs include a strong, dedicated gender equality goal. The proposed targets in the gender goal go much further than Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3, by addressing key structural constraints to gender equality, including: gender-based discrimination; violence against women and girls; harmful practices such as early, child and forced marriage; women’s disproportionate share of unpaid care work; lack of equal participation in decision-making in political, economic and social life; and lack of access to sexual and reproductive health and rights. 

It was also very welcome to see important gender equality targets included in other goals. Commitment and action in all these areas really has the potential to transform gender relations and the lives of women and girls everywhere. 

That said, as UN Women is going forward, we would still like to see stronger language in some targets, to deliver real change for women and girls. Specifically, we would like to see included a stronger target on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, which recognizes that these concepts have advanced since the

Beijing Platform for Action and International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), as well as a substantive target on access to resources, including land. This is so important, as equal rights to inheritance, assets and resources are vital for women’s economic empowerment.

Looking forward, we now need to also focus much more on not only the “what”, but also the “how” — the means of implementation. Let me very briefly highlight three key issues in this regard.

First, we must ensure that we have robust data and evidence that can demonstrate whether progress is being made, and for whom. Data for all targets and indicators in the post-2015 development agenda must be disaggregated by sex, income, social group, age, disability and socioeconomic status, to really capture inequalities and disparities. However, we don’t just need a data revolution, we need a gender data revolution if we’re really going to measure progress and ensure women’s rights are fully realized.

This means we need to urgently roll out — in every country — the 52 standard indicators for gender equality and women’s empowerment, including 19 important indicators on economic structures, productive activities and access to resources, together with the nine standard indicators for violence against women, which have been adopted by the UN Statistical Commission. We must make sure that by 1 January, 2016 we are all ready to “measure what we treasure”.

Second, as countries are localizing the goals and targets, it’s vitally important that we have an enabling environment in place to support new gender equality commitments. This means ensuring supportive national laws and policies are in place, in line with international human rights commitments. Most urgently, it means amending or overturning laws and policies that continue to discriminate against women, including laws that constrain women’s full economic participation.

Third and finally, we must have adequate investment in gender equality and women’s rights.  This is vital if new commitments to gender equality are to become a reality. Because, as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) analysis has shown, while funding for gender equality has increased between 2002 and 2012, in some sectors such as women’s role in peace and security, women’s leadership, and sexual and reproductive health and rights, it remains very low. And very worryingly, funding for economic empowerment has stalled since 2007. This has to change. 

This is why UN Women not only has economic empowerment as a priority area of work, but also a specific focus on gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) and increasing allocation of resources for gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as a dedicated Trust Fund for Gender Equality, which supports civil society and government initiatives around the world that target women’s economic and political empowerment.

As the post-2015 development agenda is finalized in the year ahead, and as governments prepare for implementation, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity — a call to action — to invest in gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment, including the priority area of women’s economic empowerment.

As President Banda said, we have to seize this opportunity and ensure the new post-2015 development agenda really delivers not only financial health for women and girls, but healthy and sustainable financing for gender equality.

Thank you.