Global Development Trends by Women Deliver, agencies   In our Listening Tour - drawing on responses from 20 countries, Women Deliver asked about global trends for girls and women, opportunities for change, and what’s needed to drive progress.   Some of the many trends identified through the Listening Tour are as follows:   Pervasive Inequalities Stalling Progress. Persistent inequality along the lines of gender, geography, and access to data and technology are stalling progress. Damaging gender norms perpetuate harmful practices like child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), and other forms of violence against girls and women.   Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights under Threat. The global political climate is precarious, and there is a growing and troubling chilling effect on girls’ and women’s rights in many places. While some recent gains have been made, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including the right to safe abortion, are under threat in many places.   Challenges for Safe Space for Girls and Women. In some parts of the world, funding for girls’ and women’s health and rights is dwindling, and political space for civil society organizations -not least women’s groups is declining, just as women who speak up publically are trolled, and in the worst cases, killed. These shifts often result in weaker and/or fewer programs for girls and women, or the silencing of women’s groups. This constitutes a major setback for gender equality without a counterbalance.   Groundswell of Activism. Despite the negative trends, the world is also witnessing the rise of powerful movements for women’s rights, youth rights, and gender equality. Women- and youth-led action, like the global Women’s Marches, #MeToo, Ni Una Menos, and #BringBackOurGirls, combined with a growing sense of urgency, is contributing to a rise in confidence among those who are working for girls’ and women’s rights. However, while these movements are holding the powerful to account in some parts of the world, the fear of consequences and retaliation for speaking out continues to silence too many individuals and the full-scale witness to these movements is not universal in all places.   Men and Boys Key to Achieving Gender Equality. As women-led movements gain momentum, there is a continued and growing acknowledgement that men and boys are crucial to advancing gender equality, shifting gender norms, and fighting extremism. Gender equality is not a “women’s issue,” it is a societal issue and everyone must be involved to reach a more equal world.   Working Across Sectors to Accelerate Progress. Powerful examples prove the model of working across traditional issues and sectors to work in a more integrated fashion. There is a narrative shift towards recognizing the significance of working with new and unusual partners in order to drive progress for girls and women—and development writ large. Collaboration must include governments, the private sector, civil society, and young people all joining together.   Looking at the current state of the world for girls and women, Listening Tour participants identified a wealth of needs and strategies required to drive progress for gender equality:   Break down social and gender norms in existing power structures – from governments to families to religious institutions – which hold girls and women back. Listening Tour participants identified shifting social and gender norms as a key solution to entrenched power inequalities, and especially called out the need to work with community “gatekeepers and guardians.”   For example, advocates should work with men and community leaders to shift negative gender norms and highlight the importance of issues like family planning and contraception to family wellbeing. Advocates should also work with faith groups to reframe religious narratives that harm and hold girls and women back from realizing their human rights, as well as male political decision-makers to prioritize girls’ and women’s health, education, role in decision-making, and women’s professional development.   Drive investments that benefit girls and women. Listening Tour participants stressed the need for more and better funding for programs and policies that impact girls and women. They echoed the notion that when the world invests in girls and women, there is a ripple effect that benefits entire societies.   They also noted that there is a need to look at the whole girl and the whole woman, including, but not limited to, her sexual and reproductive health and rights. The world should therefore explore stronger investments in a variety of areas that impact girls and women, such as programs to ensure workplace readiness; affordable, safe, and quality education and childcare; and access to financial services like bank accounts, credit, and insurance.   Increase the numbers of women in decision-making positions at all levels, in all sectors. If women are not at the table when decisions about their lives are being debated and made, their needs will never be properly addressed – and that holds the whole society back. Listening Tour respondents stressed the importance of women in decision-making positions, especially those that have influence on policies and budgets – from local governments to national office and the parliament, from community NGOs to UN bodies and the private sector.   Specific to political leadership, more funding is required for grassroots organizations who develop and train female politicians, increase the quantity and diversity of role-models, and build more support for female candidates within their parties.   Engender bold political leadership. Participants pointed out the urgency of building greater political support among decision makers who understand the many reasons for gender equality—the moral and social costs of holding women back; the socio-economic costs of violence against girls and women; how health is the foundation to strong business and economies; and how mainstreaming gender equality across the work of government and private sector processes are vital to driving gender equality.   Advocates must also hold elected officials accountable to those who elected them, ensuring they invest in women and young people in the budgets they set.   For a sustainable way forward, we need greater country ownership for funding gender equality – including sexual and reproductive health and rights – rather than relying on unpredictable donor funding.   Better implement the laws and rights “on the books” that support gender equality. Respondents noted that in many cases the right policies and laws are already in place, but the challenge is a lack of implementation. Therefore, girls, women, and young people need to be educated about the laws that affect them, and emboldened to act to protect themselves. Through education and advocacy training, girls, women, and young people can learn about the existing laws in order to defend and claim their rights to them. Boys and men should also be educated about what is and is not legal, right, or acceptable in order to change their behavior and social paradigms.   Gather better data to address gaps for girls and women. Listening Tour participants noted that better age- and sex-disaggregated data are essential for informing policies and planning, and called out specific needs.   These needs included data on the measurement of gender norms, research on the importance of grassroots change, data on the effects of women in decision-making positions; either through a natural evolution or via transitional quota systems – and data on adolescents, particularly around early/forced marriages, unintended pregnancy, the rates of sexually transmitted infections, HIV, access to youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services and education, and the incidence of violence against them.   Take advantage of the current climate of activism, including mass mobilizations to end violence and oppression. With sexism and misogyny in the glare of the spotlight, there is an opportunity to reshape existing power structures. Participants urged gender equality advocates to harness the daily ways in which people are banding together and organizing. Some participants expressed the need to unify the many unique women’s movements across cultures and geographies towards a common purpose.   Be more inclusive, paying close attention to marginalized groups. To improve the lives of every girl and woman, respondents noted the need to include the most vulnerable and hardest to reach populations. For example, advocates must address the unique needs of girls and women in fragile settings and protracted crises, girls and women living with disabilities, women from indigenous communities, girls and women living in rural settings, girls and women who are trafficked and working without the enjoyment or rights or decent work, girls and women from persecuted groups, and girls and women who live in extreme poverty and other excluded groups. By making space for girls and women who are the most disenfranchised, policies and programs will better address the needs of everyone.   Tap into the individual and collective power of youth. Young people around the world have freed themselves from some of the traditional expectations of gender norms and are speaking truth to power. Listening Tour participants noted that advocates must promote young female leadership, defend female activists, and support girls’ agency.   Work with the private sector on their role in promoting gender equality and scaling up best practices. Strategies include changing hiring practices to reduce conscious and unconscious bias, promoting buying from female owned businesses along the supply chain, strengthening efforts to have more women on boards and in the C-suite, adjusting workplace policies to create more gender-equality parental leave, developing guidelines and regulations to foster equal pay for equal work, and changing marketing practices to challenge gender norms rather than perpetuate antiquated ones.   http://wd2019.org/global-development-trends/ http://wd2019.org/virtual-conference/ http://womendeliver.org/conference/past-conferences/2016-2/solutions-panorama/ http://bit.ly/2EOKXEt http://plan-international.org/blog/2019/05/women-deliver-2019-turning-point-girls-power http://plan-international.org/girls-get-equal http://www.unwomen.org/en/get-involved/beijing-plus-25 http://www.unocha.org/story/gender-based-violence-closer-look-numbers http://www.endsgbvoslo.no/documents http://www.rescue.org/report/wheres-money-how-humanitarian-system-failing-fund-end-violence-against-women-and-girls http://16dayscampaign.org/2019/06/03/statement-violence-and-harassment-against-women-and-girls-in-the-world-of-work-is-a-human-rights-violation-say-independent-human-rights-mechanisms-on-violence-against-women-and-womens-right/ http://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/04/chance-protect-workers-violence-and-harassment http://bit.ly/2Kxzf57 http://community.namati.org/t/webinar-tackling-gender-based-violence-through-legal-empowerment/54276 Visit the related web page
	Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls by Scaling Up Nutrition Network   Malnutrition, much like poverty, is sexist. In virtually every country of the world, gender inequities and cultural norms hold women and girls back and render many unable to fulfil their rightful role as decision-makers – over their own minds and bodies, in their households, at work, and in their communities.   Healthy women and girls, however, are the cornerstone of healthy societies. Provide girls and women access to good nutrition throughout their lives and they will deliver a healthier and wealthier world.   This makes overcoming the obstacles created by gender-based inequalities, unequal access to resources and exclusion ‘the best bet’ for development. It is essential to reach all Sustainable Development Goals and to make sure the vicious cycle of poverty and malnutrition becomes a thing of the past.   Simply put, we will not succeed in scaling up nutrition if we do not address the drivers and impact of gender-based discrimination.   Overcoming the obstacles created by gender-based inequalities, unequal access to resources and exclusion continues to be ‘the best bet’ for development. It is essential to reach all Sustainable Development Goals and to make sure the vicious cycle of poverty and malnutrition becomes a thing of the past. Simply put, we will not succeed in scaling up nutrition if we do not address the drivers and impact of gender-based discrimination.   Promoting gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment must be at the centre of the SUN Movement’s work. Gender inequality means girls get less food, are more likely to get sick, and are less likely to be able to attend school, receive an education and get a job.   They are more likely to marry and get pregnant too young, to be poorly nourished and have under-nourished babies. Women make up more than half of the global agriculture workforce but remain the minority when it comes to decision-making.   For women and girls who work as food producers, gender inequality means they often accept lower paid work and lack access to land, services and social protection. It is essential to target women and girls in efforts to improve nutrition and food security.   More than 60 percent of SUN member countries find themselves in fragile contexts or crisis. In fragile contexts, women and girls are more likely to: reduce their food intake (voluntarily or as a result of external pressure) in favour of other household members, worsening their own nutritional status; and face constraints in accessing essential humanitarian services as a result of insecurity, cultural discrimination and limited mobility. Pregnant and lactating women and adolescent girls are at a higher risk of undernutrition and anaemia due to their increased physiological needs.   Good nutrition will only happen when women and girls are empowered. Actions that recognize and address gender and social inequalities are empowering and effective ways of tackling malnutrition.   At the same time, nutrition investments provide important entry points to address underlying drivers of inequality: educational opportunities; household power and income distribution; sexual and reproductive health and rights; gender-based violence and harmful practices, including child marriage.   Better nutrition and empowerment enable girls to miss fewer school days and be more attentive in class. Improved school performance also helps girls to grow up to become more productive, increase their autonomy and decision-making power. Nutrition provides a foundation for empowerment.   With the knowledge that girls – particularly those in low and lower middle-income countries – are less likely to enrol in secondary school, and an average of 31 percent of girls living in SUN Movement countries are married before they turn 18, targeting this key group offers an essential opportunity to fight malnutrition.   If women and men were to have the same access to resources, including land, it is estimated that agricultural yields would rise by almost a third – resulting in up to 150 million fewer hungry people in the world. Children have significantly better prospects for the future when their mothers are healthy, financially stable and educated.   Much like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an ecosystem – from the household level to the community, its leaders, laws and policies – to empower women and girls. http://bit.ly/2YTHegz Visit the related web page
	View more stories