Priority Themes

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Since the first UN women’s conference in 1975 in Mexico and several decades of efforts to eliminate the discrimination of women and girls and gender disparities, considerable progress has been achieved, but gender disparities still remain in many areas, even in rich countries. The most persistent and shocking gaps include the excess deaths of girls and women, the disparities in girls schooling, unequal access to economic opportunities, sex segregation in economic activity, earning gaps between men and women, gender inequalities in the responsibilities for unpaid household and care work, gender differences in voice in household and society, the underrepre-sentation of women in the upper echelons of politics and management, the gender imbalance in the allocation of public funds and the insufficient funding for measures and services needed to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women.

The member states of the United Nations, including Switzerland, have made multiple commitments to eliminate to achieve gender equality through the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) , to which 185 countries subscribed; the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (PFA) ; the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and follow-up resolutions, and the Millennium Development Goals especially MGD 3. The commitments of Switzerland are also reflected in the SDC policy on gender equality.

The World Development Report 2012 of the World Bank postulates that the patterns of progress and the persistence of gender inequalities matter, both for development outcomes and policy making. According to the World Bank, gender equality is a core development objective in its own right, but it is also smart economics. Greater gender equality can enhance productivity, reduce poverty, improve development outcomes for the next generation, and make institutions more representative. It recognizes that income growth by itself does not deliver greater gender equality on all fronts and that special effort and measures are necessary to eliminate discrimination and advance gender equality.

Focus and Contribution from the SDC UN & MDB Section

• Support UN Women in its mandate to reduce gender inequalities and to support UN Funds and Programs to promote gender equity

• Promote the monitoring and accelerated implementation of the gender equality policies of the SDC priority multilateral organizations, improving the measurability of the impact through the strengthening of gender indicators.

• Promote the development of a stand-along goal on gender equality and the inclusion of gender equality and women’s empowerment as a cross-cutting theme in the Agenda 2030 sustainable development agenda of the UN.

• Contribute to strengthening the institutional cooperation between members of the WB group and relevant UN organizations such as UN-Women to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women.

• Promote the development of specific partnerships with UN Women and between the WB and UN-Women in regards to gender equality in such areas as women’s economic em-powerment, governance and national planning and budgeting

• Contribute to strengthening the UN coordination on gender equality and women’s em-powerment in general and on specific themes such as women’s political participation, economic empowerment and violence against women and girls in particular.

• Contribute to the implementation of the WDR 2012 through an active follow-up and con-tribution to the Umbrella Facility on Gender Equality.

• Actively participate in SDC Gender Network in order to bring the multilateral perspective and deepen the synergies between multilateral and bilateral cooperation.
  

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