8th March: there is no sustainable development without gender equality and trust in its progress without reliable indicators

The 8th March is a day especially indicated to reflect on gender equality in all its dimensions, on its variations from country to another and population sectors, on the lack or unreliability of specific indicators for evaluating essential gender dimensions and gender inequality. Achieving in 2030 the aims and objectives for sustainable development of the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 (Sustainable Development Goals, SDG) is the great challenge the global community must face in the next years to be able to transform the functioning of society, economy and the way we interact with our planet. For this to persist, it is essential that governments and institutions support the work associated to caring for life, which are basic for meeting group needs and survival, work which is essentially carried out by women. Most low and middle income countries have no care indicators available, while in most European countries these indicators have worsened.

The image shows a group of mothers and fathers sharing the looking after of their children on a bank holiday. For most countries in the world, indicators for care do not exist, nor for gender violence. They are available for the European Union in the 2017 Report, on the index of Gender Equality, published by the European Institute for Gender Equality. Their analysis shows that time spent on care and leisure is the only gender dimension of the seven in the global index (knowledge, health, work, money, power, violence and time)  which has regressed in the whole of Europe, affecting 10 countries, including Spain, where it fell by 1.8 points between 2012 and 2015.

Two years after the launch of the Agenda 2030, the report Index and panels of the SDO 2017, was published jointly by the BertelsmannStiftung Foundation and the Network of Solutions for Sustainable Development, providing the first evaluations for the global index and for each objective. That corresponding to SDO-5 for Gender Equality (to achieve equality between genders and empower all women and girls) shows that of the 154 for which data is available, none has achieved the maximum desired points. The best marks correspond to the 5 Nordic countries (led by Norway) and the worst 5 marks to countries with different geographical locations (Mali, Chad, Afghanistan, Niger and, last of all, Yemen). Spain is in thirteenth place. It is important to remember that the evaluation of ODS-5 is based on five indicators, none of which measures care, so we have no available comparative picture of the global situation for an essential aspect of the commitment and daily toil of women.

The recent UN report on women, Make promises reality: gender equality in the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (2018) makes a devastating critical review of the indicators available for evaluating gender progress through the SDO. The final proposal is a call to all political and civic sectors to join a necessary “data revolution” –already put forward in the Global Action Plan 2017 for Sustainable Development—, supporting the creation of reliable national data records providing new indicators to cover the flaws detected and help their rapid spread, given that if this revolution in the information available on gender inequality does not succeed, efficiency in evaluations, accountability and democratic governability cannot be guaranteed.

Cristina Bernis, Professor of Biological Anthropology, honorary professor of the Department of Biology of the Autonomous University of Madrid, chairs the Association for the Study of Human Ecology and is co-director of the Virtual Museum of Human Ecology