As countries concentrate their efforts on meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, a hot topic is the development framework that will succeed the MDGs. United Nations Member States seeking to shape the post-2015 agenda are considering points of convergence between the initial millennium goals and a possible set of sustainable development goals (SDGs). These points focus on three pillars: economic development, social development and environmental protection. With women central to the achievement of both MDGs and sustainable development, the need is to track progress in a way that measures the impact of development goals on women and the results women achieve.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has stated that 'Social, political and economic equality for women is integral to the achievement of all Millennium Development Goals.' The Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability concurs, saying that ‘Any serious shift towards sustainable development requires gender equality.‘ Yet what the MDGs miss and what we, as global citizens, cannot afford to leave out of the new framework is the inclusion of indicators that measure the impact of goals on women’s economic empowerment. This is of critical importance because when women’s incomes go up, women spend their money on children and the family, on health and education that help break intergenerational poverty. Poverty reduction is, and will remain, a key goal guiding the work of the United Nations. We will never achieve it until and unless women, who constitute the majority of the poor, can be seen to be benefiting from efforts to reduce poverty.
Sustained impact can be achieved if the work of UN agencies, programmes and funds tackles women’s poverty through job creation and enterprise creation for women. But the impact of this work must be measured. Whether programmes set modest targets for contracts to be awarded to women-owned companies for the provision of goods and services, or efforts are made to recruit female employees, or measurements are introduced to capture women’s access to resources and opportunities created by the post-2015 agenda, we need robust indicators to capture progress against goals and reporting frameworks that enable data capture and reporting. In this way, donors can track results, reporting back to constituents that funds are applied in the desired way and are achieving results. Similarly, where the economic empowerment of women is not being affected, impediments can be captured and addressed in an iterative process.
The awareness around women’s contribution to economic growth has grown exponentially since the dawn of the millennium. ‘Forget China, India and the Internet. Economic growth is driven by women,’ proclaimed The Economist in 2006. The World Bank’s 2012 World Development Report was devoted to the nexus between gender and development. In the light of the new dawn and based on knowledge about the links between women’s economic empowerment, growth and development, we need to lock in targets and indicators that focus on results that impact women’s incomes. Incremental steps towards gender equality can be achieved in many ways. To optimize outcomes over the next 15 years, we need to ensure wins for women. In this way, we all win.