Focus AreasResourcesSearch |
Poverty Reduction and Achieving the Millenium Development GoalsWhere men and women have equal opportunities and freedom, economic growth accelerates and poverty rates drop more rapidly for everyone. Reducing inequalities between women and men is therefore critical to achieve the first MDG of cutting by half the number of people living in absolute poverty by 2015. With this aim, UNDP works with national partners to:
"When we look at the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), they're not just gender-related.
Gender inequality is often the root cause of the problem."
Resources Written for the High-level Event "Partnership Meeting on the MDG3 Global Call to Action, this document addresses the lack of progress on women's economic empowerment.It highlights promising and innovative approaches from all regions of theworld,illustrating the range and combination of activities and ways in which these activities address and contribute to women's economic empowerment.  The purpose of this document is to present our findings on the economywide impact of creating new jobs in areas that reduce existing burdens of unpaid work, including care work.  This exercise serves as a hypothetical policy experiment and its aim is to identify orders of magnitude of economy-wide impacts should scaling-up be implemented.  This study has been undertaken in India with a view to assessing the impact of substituting portions of unpaid work of men and women in a village through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.  The overall objective of this project is to record current living customary law and, in particular, ways in which it is changing in progressive directions so that this information can be used by women in their struggles for justice.  This paper covers the increasing evidence that investing in gender equality - such as increasing women's access to health care, employment and credit - can accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty; and that persistent gender inequalities reduce prospects for economic growth.  The meeting provides an opportunity to explore ways to bring this knowledge into the work of the Sarkozy Commission. Kemal Dervis, UNDP Administrator, who is a member of the Sarkozy Commission, has confirmed his participation at the meeting. Another member of the Commission is also invited.  The UNDP Gender and Poverty Teams organized an international conference on Gender and Taxation: Improving Equity and Revenue Generation, in collaboration with the American University and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and hosted by The World Bank, from 11 to 12 December 2008 in Washington D.C. `Reorienting development "engendering employment strategies" by Selim Jahan, Working Paper no. 5, International Poverty Centre (IPC), UNDP, Brasilia, February 2005. |
Stories from the Field
VideoA UNDP Deputy Resident discusses the challenges that women face in Liberia. |
