The World Bank has just issued its 2007 Global Monitoring Report which takes stock of international progress on the Millennium Development Goals - the set of global targets agreed by world leaders back in the year 2000.
The first of these goals is to halve poverty by the year 2015. Other goals include achieving universal primary school education, reducing infant and maternal mortality, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
This year's report, prepared with the International Monetary Fund, focuses on gender equality and empowerment of women (MDG3) which the Bank describes as 'essential for reasons of fairness and social justice'.
The report says that raising the status of women and girls is essential for improving nutrition, for reducing child mortality, for better education, and for access to infrastructure. And reproductive health and access to modern contraceptive techniques are identified as crucial to gender equality and empowerment.
Author Mark Sundberg said, 'Access to family planning allows women to control their fertility, participate in the labour force, and engage in political life, if they choose to.'
He called on all of us to do a better job of monitoring gender equality and empowerment of women - and use what we learn to inform policies and to mainstream gender equality into the programmes and projects of bilateral donors and multilateral development agencies.
Mark Plant, of the IMF, commented: 'We must work to change the disadvantages and rights, resources, and voice that face women. It's not only a question of fairness, but also of smart economics. Gender equality yields a more skilled labour force; it yields higher productivity, and better growth.
'Equally importantly, it advances the other Millennium Development Goals. Educated women lead to healthier children. Greater control over resources by women leads to more spending on health and education.
'How are we doing? The report looks at progress across countries and regions. In some cases, we are doing very well [such as secondary education targets]. On the other hand, in many other dimensions, progress towards gender equality and empowerment of women is lagging. [One of the charts in the report] shows representation in national parliaments. In no region does this exceed 25 per cent, and it has barely moved in the last 15 years.'
The report suggests several ways to improve monitoring of gender equality. According to Plant, 'the message for donors and development institutions is that we need to do a better job of integrating gender equality into the operations and work that we carry out. There need to be realistic and identifiable goals, strong leadership to mainstream this in the institutions, and better financing.'
You can download the whole report, or specific chapters, at: http://go.worldbank.org/YG28BS8BG0
April 2007
