The “Gender Equality and the Sustainable Development Goals in Asia and the Pacific: Baseline and Pathways for Transformative Change by 2030” joint report was issued at the ongoing ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Women in Hanoi, on October 25. It is the first comprehensive review of the status of women and girls in Asia and the Pacific under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework, which highlights the remaining challenges facing women and girls and how improving their situation can help to achieve the SDGs. The report shows that, while Asia and the Pacific have made progress in certain areas of gender equality, there remains significant inequality for women and girls. As many as one in two women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in the past 12 months. Women and girls also spend as much as 11 times more of their day than men and boys on unpaid care and domestic work, while progress on reducing the maternal mortality rate has also been uneven. In addition, women in the Asia Pacific region have less access to financial services and productive assets, while girls are less likely than boys to be in organised learning before primary school. Asia and the Pacific is the only global region where the gender gap in labour force participation is increasing. Women also remain underrepresented in decision making and leadership roles with fewer than one in five parliamentarians in the region being women. The report also identifies the lack of gender data to… [Read full story]
Leave a Reply