Article published on RIO+ Sustainable Development Centre on the Sustainable Development Centre’s website titled ‘Countdown day 13 – SDG 5: Gender equality’, highlighted the W+ Standard as one of the mechanism that can be applied to achieve gender equality. The article emphasizes that gender equality is more than promotion of empowerment and providing access to credit or increasing representation and gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pivotal multiplier for many of the SDGs. The article urges the readers to think beyond asking ‘what of the SDGs’ but ‘how’ and listed various initiatives including the W+ Standard.
- TheHeforShe Campaignby UN Women, a solidarity movement for gender equality, of men and women, numbering more than 460,000 people worldwide and benefitting from spokespersons such as the Prime Minister of Japan;
- TheLima Call to Action on Genderat COP 20 in Peru;
- The investments and increasing sophistication ofgender-based budgetingover the last two decades including its applicationto a number of economic, social and environmental challenges;
- TheGender and Environment Indexby IUCN which tracks governments’ progress on gender responsiveness in key areas of the environment;
- The campaign to ensure thatland rights targets in the SDGsreflect not just ownership but security of tenure rights recognizing the multiple forms of deprivations experienced by women and indigenous peoples;
- TheOECD’s Gender Initiativefocused on education, empowerment and entrepreneurship;
- The elaboration of the1stGlobal Gender and Environment Outlook, a decision from the 2012 RIO+ 20 Conference;
- TheW+ Standardlaunched by WOCAN and the increasing availability of results-based finance and crowdsourcing initiatives that focus on women’s economic empowerment.
Read full article:http://riopluscentre.org/2015/09/21/countdown-day-13-sdg-5-gender-equality/