Achieving Sustainable Development By Prioritizing Gender: An Interview with Ginette Azcona

On January 1, 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—adopted by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2015—officially took effect. Among the goals is a commitment to achieve gender equality and end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere. In February 2018, UN Women published an SDG monitoring report titled “Turning promises into action: Gender equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” The report, the first of its kind, aims to assess the challenges and successes of the SDGs through a gender equality lens.

Ginette Azcona is a Research and Data Specialist at UN Women and one of the principle authors of UN Women’s 2018 report Turning Promises into Action. She joined UN Women in 2010 to work on its flagship report Progress of the World’s Women. Before this, she was part of the research and writing team for UNDP’s 2009 Human Development Report, Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. She has authored numerous publications on human development, human rights, social justice and gender and development data, and currently leads the data and statistical work for UN Women’s flagship reports. She holds a Master’s degree in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

First, some background: Can you contextualize the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs within the history of UN development programs? In what ways do the SDGs build off, or differ from, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

The 2030 Agenda and the SDGs are in many ways a reflection of the success and limitations of development campaigns that came before. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the predecessor to the SDGs, contributed in real ways to greater global policy coordination in key areas, from poverty eradication and child mortality to maternal health and gender parity in school enrollment. Yet despite these successes, by 2015 many of the aspirational goals and targets remained unmet.

The SDGs seek to build on the lessons learned from the MDGs and complete what these did not achieve. They address sustainable development in a comprehensive and integrated manner, while addressing the rights and needs of the most disadvantaged groups as a matter of priority. The universal approach embedded in the framework means the goals are applicable to every country, rich and poor alike.

What was the impetus for this report? What were the major findings?

The report sets out to monitor progress, gaps and challenges in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda from a gender perspective—asking concretely, how are women and girls fairing when compared to men and boys on key SDG outcomes of interest? Are some being left behind more so than others? And from a policy perspective, what is needed to bridge the gaps between rhetoric and reality? In response to these questions, the report looks at progress or lack thereof across all 17 goals and provides concrete guidance on policies in two strategic targets under SDG 5: Target 5.2 on violence against women and girls and Target 5.4 on unpaid care and domestic work.

This first edition of the global monitoring report makes some startling findings and demonstrates through concrete evidence and data the pervasive nature of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere. For instance, laws protecting women from domestic violence are lacking in 49 countries, and in 37 countries, rape perpetrators are exempt from prosecution if they are married to or subsequently marry the victim. Using case studies, the report shows how intersecting inequalities based on gender, ethnicity, geography and wealth result in a form of disadvantage that is acute and uniquely felt by women who stand at these intersections. For example, in the United States, Black, Hispanic, and Native American/Alaska Native women aged 18-49 are far more likely to live in poverty than are white and Asian women.

Gender equality is enumerated specifically as Goal #5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. However, the authors of “Turning promises into action” argue that gender equality must also be threaded throughout all 17 SDGs in order for sustainable development to be achieved. Can you explain why?

A key lesson from the MDG era is that there is no magic key, such as girls’ education, that will unlock the door to gender equality. Instead, gender equality needs to be addressed across the three dimensions of sustainable development—economic, social and environmental. Furthermore, women and girls are half of the world’s population and, as a result, hold half of the world’s human potential. When their lives are improved, the benefits reverberate across society; when they are denied rights and opportunities, progress will falter.

Gender equality is not only an indivisible dimension of sustainable development, it is a key driver, and without it the 2030 Agenda as a whole will be in jeopardy.

 A major concern cited in the report is that of uneven data collection and statistical monitoring between, and even within, countries. What would ideal gender-responsive data collection look like on a global scale? How far are we currently from that ideal, and what’s holding us back?

In the report we identify three main challenges which constrain monitoring of the SDGs from a gender equality perspective: first, uneven coverage of gender-specific indicators, with some goals lacking indicators to capture gender equality outcomes; second, gaps in gender data including data on women and girls experiencing multiple and intersecting inequalities; and third, challenges in quality and comparability of available data across countries and time.

Over the past 40 years, there have been vast improvements in the generation and use of gender statistics. Yet, despite advances, gaps remain. The report calls for additional gender specific indicators and argues for a mapping of existing data sources, where inventories of sex-disaggregated statistics and gender-specific indicators are developed, and existing data is used to analyze the SDGs from a gender perspective. The report also argues for collection of data on targeted groups, such as individuals with diverse gender identities and women and girls with disabilities, and for disaggregation of outcome indicators by multiple dimensions, including by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant to national contexts. Greater investments in and support to national statistical systems, as well as greater collaboration and partnerships between producers of official statistics and other producers and users of gender data, will be essential to improving the collection of global gender statistics.

Do you have any advice for students who seek careers at the intersection of development and gender?

My advice would be to engage now in social justice and gender equality issues—don’t wait! Gender inequality is pervasive, it starts early in life and impacts women and girls and men and boys in rich and poor countries alike. It’s not a development issue but a universal concern faced by all countries—we all individually and together need to play a role in addressing it.

This interview was edited for clarity.

Featured photo: cc/(borgogniels, photo ID: 527839055, from iStock by Getty Images)