Gender Equality

  Gender equality is ensuring that all people, regardless of their gender, are able to access all available opportunities and resources. Furthermore, everyone should be able to seek social, political and economic benefits that a society has to offer without being discriminated against due to one’s gender. Women’s and girls’ empowerment are the deliberate and proactive actions of enabling them to participate in the decision-making process that they had no prior access to. In recent years we have seen that some areas of gender equality are moving in the right direction and showing some positive indicators. For example, there has been a decline in female genital mutilation and in early age marriages. Unfortunately, most other indicators show little or no progress and as a result are undermining the Sustainable Development Goal 5. Areas such as legal discrimination, unwillingness of the political class to participate, lack of decision making on women’s reproductive health and negative attitudes and social norms are some of the structural challenges facing the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 5(Sustainable Development Goal 5,2019).

Source: https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2019/progress-on-the-sdgs-the-gender-snapshot-2019-single-pages-en.pdf?la=en&vs=5813

      Traditionally the focus has always been on women to achieve gender equality since it is usually created by unequal power dynamics between men and women. However, when we make efforts to include men into the discussion there is a possibility of greater success. This shift in dynamics will encourage behavior change in men by engaging them as allies and therefore giving us a better chance to make progress on Sustainable Development Goal 5(Amaya, Schroder, Medrano & Geertz, 2019).

Blog 1: Country Focus Rwanda

Rwanda is a small, landlocked, Central African country with a population of roughly 12 Million people and an area of about 26,000 square kilometers. In 1994, the country was involved in one of the most egregious genocides in modern history with one million people slaughtered in less than 100 days. For several years post the war, Rwanda was considered a failed state but today it is one of the most successful countries in Africa and ranks in the top 5 countries in the world in gender empowerment (Warner,Gregory,NPR,2018).

    The Millennium Development Goals 2000 were very crucial to Rwanda as it served as a foundation and a development guide that helped the post war reconstruction of the country. Rwanda was very successful in implementing the Millennium Development Goals 2000 as they integrated it into their national development plan. Consequently, Rwanda gained valuable experience to move to the Sustainable Development Goals 2015 (SDGs) which were more comprehensive and detailed in nature (Bhowmick, Soumya, 2019).

     The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals 2015 (SDGs)was propelled further in 2016 when the SDG Center for Africa was established in Rwanda’s capital Kigali. However, there still remains several challenges in implementing SDGs. Firstly, at the grassroots level there remains a huge knowledge gap regarding the implementation of the sustainability goals. This is concerning as there is an inability to monitor progress or relay information. To counter this the government is relying on the youth through the availability of digital devices to mitigate this. 

    Secondly the capacity to accurately are efficiently measure development has been a key implementation hindrance. The government has invested hug sums of money to build Information technology centers focused on data management and analytics. Implementation of SDGs is a very resource intensive exercise. Rwanda is still a low-income nation and therefore there are major financial gaps in the implementation of SDGs. Rwanda has focused on mobilizing the private sector in public/private partnerships. This is especially valuable for investors thinking of long-term gains. As part of the long-term goal plan for gender equality, Rwanda passed a new constitution that guarantees female representation of 30% in all government decision making organs including the legislature. This is one of the few countries that have actually enacted laws that favor gender equality. As a consequence, 64% of all legislative seats in the lower chamber of parliament are held by women.

Rwanda continues to be a benchmark example of progress not only for the rest of Africa, but also other developing nations in the world. 

References :

Amaya,L.,Schroder,C., Medrano,S. & Geertz,A.,March 11,2019.Gender Equality is Not Just a Women’s Issue.Retrieved from: https://www.fsg.org/blog/gender-equality-not-just-women%E2%80%99s-issue.

Sustainable Development Goal 5, 2019. Retrieved from  https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5

Warner,Gregory/NPR,2018.Rwanda Ranks In The Top 5 For Gender Equity. Do Its Teen Girls Agree?. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/10/577018509/rwanda-ranks-in-the-top-5-for-gender-equity-do-its-teen-girls-agree

Bhowmick,Soumya, May 17, 2019.Toward the SDGs: The Rwanda story. Retrieved from https://www.orfonline.org/research/toward-the-sdgs-the-rwanda-story-50935/