Gender equality overview

Gender equality is essential to ensure that every child – girl and boy – has a fair chance in life.

Gender equality means that women and men and girls and boys enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections. Investments in gender equality contribute to lifelong positive outcomes for children and their communities and yield considerable inter-generational payoffs, as children’s rights and well-being often depend on the rights and well-being of women.

 

Notes on the Data

  1. Of 44 Sustainable Development Goal Indicators that are directly relevant to children’s rights and welfare, 26 explicitly call for disaggregation by sex or specify women or girls as the target population while the remaining indicators are relevant to the wellbeing of both girls and boys. Note that the 44 indicators are not all official SDG indicators, but have been modified to focus on children, and to separate different topics.
  2. OECD, The Pursuit of Gender Equality: An Uphill Battle, Paris, 2017.