It is generally agreed by most observers that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have fallen short of achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. Today, women continue to be more likely than men to live in poverty, and more than 18 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa are out of school.Footnote 1 One of the crucial reasons for the failure of the MDGs in relation to women was their inability to address the deeply entrenched and interlocking factors that perpetuate women's disadvantage. The new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as articulated in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, constitute an improvement over the MDGs. Goal 5, which enshrines the stand-alone goal on gender equality, is comprised of nine specific targets, including the elimination of gender-based violence and access to reproductive health. In addition, gender equality is mainstreamed into numerous others goals.Footnote 2 Given that the global community is now poised to implement the SDGs, the challenge is how best to integrate a transformative approach into the planning, implementation, and delivery of the specific targets so that the SDGs contribute to achieving gender equality and women's empowerment.Footnote 3
The human rights framework holds significant and still underutilized potential to develop such a transformative approach to the SDGs. In particular, the four-dimensional model of transformative equality pioneered by Sandra Fredman (a co-author of this essay) provides such a structure for ensuring a comprehensive approach to gender equality.Footnote 4 Using the SDG commitment to realizing gender equality in education as a case study, we show how the targets can be developed according to Fredman's model. We argue that it offers a comprehensive methodological framework for policymaking and monitoring in relation to all of the SDGs—in both developing and developed countries.Footnote 5
The first section of this essay reflects on the failures of the MDGs, and argues that one of the reasons for the only limited success of MDG 3 on gender equality was its inattention to the interlocking structural factors that perpetuate and deepen inequalities. Section two makes the case for the continued development of a human rights-based approach to the SDGs and maps out the four-dimensional model of transformative equality. Section three applies the transformative equality framework to demonstrate how realizing gender equality in education can meaningfully contribute to realizing women's empowerment.
The Failures of the MDGs in Addressing Gender Inequalities
MDG 3 committed states to promoting gender equality and empowering women. The set of indicators to monitor progress was very narrow, and included the following: the ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary, and tertiary education (3.1); the share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector (3.2); and the proportion of seats held by women in national parliament (3.3). It is widely recognized that while some aspects of the indicators have been realized, the sad reality is that gender inequality remains deeply entrenched—even where targets have been met. For instance, although women have achieved a higher level of education in some countries, they continue to have a higher unemployment rate in comparison with men of comparable education.Footnote 6 Ultimately, MDG 3 inadequately conceptualized the challenges that remain for women and its measures of progress were too narrow.
Women's inequality and disadvantage is inherently multifaceted. A national constitution may exempt personal or customary laws from gender equality provisions, resulting in continued disadvantage to women in relation to marriage, divorce, widowhood, property ownership, and succession.Footnote 7 Limited access to economic resources can also contribute to women's unequal role in both public and private decision-making.Footnote 8 Furthermore, market economies do not come with intrinsic mechanisms that automatically ensure gender equality. Thus, without political steering, markets too can contribute to inequality and disadvantage. Currently, the global average proportion of women in parliament stands at only 22 percent.Footnote 9
Gender stereotypes mean that women perform the majority of unpaid care work, which prevents them from engaging in empowering opportunities such as education and formal employment. Across developing countries, women tend to hold more precarious jobs than men, with lower pay and fewer social benefits;Footnote 10 women lack both legal and cultural control over their sexual and reproductive health;Footnote 11 and child marriage remains pervasive.Footnote 12 Girls in early marriage are often excluded from education and are at higher risk of maternal morbidity and domestic violence.Footnote 13 Indeed, under the MDGs the incidence of avoidable maternal mortality has barely been dented and remains at catastrophic levels in parts of the world.Footnote 14 Gender-based violence is also alarmingly high. Over 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence,Footnote 15 and sexual violence against a wife or partner continues to be both culturally and legally accepted.Footnote 16 In sum, gender inequality is the result of a complex web of factors that includes inadequate legal protection, economic policies, cultural norms and attitudes, and deeply entrenched patriarchal structures. Ultimately, these complexities were inadequately recognized and integrated into the MDGs and associated targets.
A Human Rights-Based Approach to Sustainable Development
A human rights-based approach to development can be understood to provide a “conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights.”Footnote 17 Various human rights principles, including participation, transparency, accountability, equality, nondiscrimination, indivisibility, and interdependence, have been utilized in the construction of a human rights-based approach to development.Footnote 18 All things considered, however, the merging process has been far from straightforward and uncontroversial. The MDGs and human rights have remained two imperfectly integrated frameworks.Footnote 19 The MDGs have been criticized from a human rights perspective for (among other things) their top-down design, for providing a “fig leaf of legitimacy” to authoritarian regimes with poor human rights records, for enshrining goals that are less ambitious than those present in the human rights paradigm, and even for undermining international human rights law standards.Footnote 20
The new development agenda consists of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets. The text of the agenda enshrines the basic premise of the human rights-based approach, which is that human rights constitute the foundation and the aim of development. It states that the agenda is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights treaties, and that the SDGs seek “to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.”Footnote 21 The new agenda also explicitly emphasizes the importance of women's human rights for development, noting that “the achievement of full human potential and of sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full human rights.”Footnote 22
An important lesson of the MDGs is that further work still needs to be done to integrate the two paradigms. Here, we wish to focus in more detail on the role of one particular human rights principle in the SDGs, equality. In his contribution to this roundtable, Edward Anderson provides an insightful analysis of the role and different conceptual models of equality that are implicitly contained in the SDGs. The principle of equality, while a central commitment in international and domestic human rights instruments, is not defined.Footnote 23 There are competing models of equality, but it has been extensively argued that a “purely formal, legal approach is not sufficient to achieve women's de facto equality with men,” and that equality needs to be understood as including substantive equality.Footnote 24 While the new agenda does not explicitly refer to “substantive equality,” the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has emphasized the importance of interpreting equality in the new agenda in this way.Footnote 25
The four-dimensional model of transformative equality provides a helpful framework for comprehending the content of substantive equality. This multidimensional model pursues four overlapping aims, which are to (1) break the cycle of disadvantage, (2) promote respect for dignity and worth, (3) accommodate difference by achieving structural change, and (4) promote political and social inclusion.Footnote 26
First, breaking the cycle of disadvantage recognizes that individuals and groups have suffered because of their personal characteristics, and that specific and positive measures are required to redress this imbalance.Footnote 27 Second, the dignity dimension addresses recognition harms such as harassment, prejudice, stereotypes, stigmas, negative cultural attitudes, and humiliation.Footnote 28 Third, the need for structural change entails “a redistribution of power and resources and a change in the institutional structures that perpetuate women's subordination.”Footnote 29 Addressing structural disadvantage is not dependent on correcting the actions of individual perpetrators. Fourth, the participation dimension requires the inclusion of women in all public, private, political, and social decision-making processes.Footnote 30 One of the strengths of the transformative equality framework is its ability to capture the interaction between dimensions. Placing these four elements together highlights the connections among redistribution, recognition, and exclusion harms.
From Aspirations to Reality: A Case Study in Gender Equality in Education
The experience of the MDGs demonstrates that the meaningful advancement of gender equality lies not only in the choice of targets but in the way in which those targets are planned, implemented, and delivered. All policies undertaken to reach the post-2015 benchmarks for gender equality need to be evaluated on the basis of the existing human rights paradigm. Using Target 4.1—ensuring all girls and boys complete free, equitable, and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes—the following discussion demonstrates how the four-dimensional model of transformative equality can capture women's crosscutting disadvantage and offer a crucial pathway to achieving gender equality and women's empowerment (SDG 5).
The first element of substantive equality, redressing disadvantage, recognizes that differential treatment is required to achieve gender equality in education. Poverty, gender, and living in rural areas are the most pervasive factors linked to disparities in education.Footnote 31 Even free schools may charge fees or require indirect costs (uniforms, food, textbooks) that make education unattainable for girls in poverty.Footnote 32 For example, in Kenya, “higher school fees increase dropout probabilities for girls but have no effect on boys.”Footnote 33 Furthermore, girls may be pulled out of school or have limited time to invest in their studies because they have to help the family with “domestic responsibilities such as cooking, fetching water and firewood, and childcare.”Footnote 34
There are numerous steps that can be taken to address gender disadvantage in education. The MDGs focused on providing primary school free of charge, with no indirect costs.Footnote 35 This is a crucial starting point and it remains important that this target is met; but as the SDGs recognize, it is essential to move beyond access and also to focus on providing high quality education.Footnote 36 One of the strengths of the transformative equality framework is that the synthesis of its different dimensions allows for a holistic approach to remedying gender inequality in education. Ensuring high-quality education for girls requires not only addressing deeply entrenched recognition harms, canvassed below, but also breaking the cycle of disadvantage. For example, it is crucial that teachers be adequately trained and that teaching resources and supplies are targeted toward girls in poverty. States also need to invest in the provision of services such as adequate potable water and gender-specific toilet facilities in schools so that girls are not forced to drop out upon reaching puberty. The provision of child care for young mothers and of school feeding programs can also be powerful tools to achieve gender equality in education,Footnote 37 as can be scholarship programs or conditional cash transfers (CCTs) that target poor rural girls.Footnote 38 Bangladesh, for example, saw an impressive increase in girls' education when secondary school scholarships were linked to attendance, performance in school, and the requirement to remain unmarried until the completion of school.Footnote 39 Fredman, however, questions if these conditions are necessary, and argues that “women given the appropriate capability set [such as good quality schools situated nearby] would make the best decisions . . . without the need for a condition.”Footnote 40 We believe that states should give serious consideration to providing unconditional cash transfers.Footnote 41 SDG policies also need to ensure that poor rural girls are able to access schools by building them in strategic locations or providing free transport.Footnote 42
To fully realize gender equality in education, it is also crucial that laws and policies redress stereotyping, stigma, humiliation, and violence, and that they promote dignity and worth—the second dimension of the transformative equality framework. There are three pervasive elements that need to be addressed in this regard: stereotypes that lock women into reproductive roles; stereotyping in the classroom; and violence against women and girls.
First, deeply entrenched cultural attitudes and norms operate to lock girls into traditional gender roles. Parents may discourage girls from pursuing formal education due to their belief that it is harder for an educated woman to get married and concerns that she will remain a financial burden to her family.Footnote 43 According to 2015 data, 86 percent of parents in West Bengal want their daughter to be a housewife or whatever their in-laws decide for her.Footnote 44 Due to discriminatory stereotypes, pregnant learners and new mothers can be expelled from school; and even if there is no policy expelling them, there are “reports of shaming, punitive measures” that make it impossible for them to return to school.Footnote 45
Second, it is critical to evaluate how stereotypes in the classroom perpetuate traditional gender norms. Textbooks can reinforce dominant versions of masculinity and submissive versions of femininity,Footnote 46 and the attitude of teachers also plays an important role. For example, in Benin “the majority of teachers surveyed believed science was less important for girls than boys.”Footnote 47 Further, schools often encourage girls to pursue traditional female jobs,Footnote 48 thus denying them a quality education and forcing them into low-paid and precarious employment.
Third, the increasing attacks on girls accessing education are “grounded in and perpetuated by wrongful stereotypes concerning the role and value of girls and women in society,”Footnote 49 and sexual “harassment and violence are major factors in school dropout rates for adolescent girls.”Footnote 50 For example, in Pakistan's Swat district in 2009, “due to the Taliban's attacks and violent threats against girls, 120,000 girls . . . ceased attending school.”Footnote 51 Girls also experience gender-based violence at school. In Togo, 16 percent of children named a teacher as being responsible for the pregnancy of a classmate.Footnote 52 Violence against girls in the context of education has a ripple effect, resulting in poor educational outcomes or the removal of girls from school, thus limiting their potential in the labor market. Removing girls from school also increases their risk of early forced marriage, pregnancy, trafficking, and sexual and labor exploitation.Footnote 53
It is imperative that all relevant stakeholders address negative stereotypes that impede gender equality in education. Girls need to be encouraged to choose nontraditional fields of studies and career paths.Footnote 54 Textbooks and curricula need to be revised to remove discriminatory gender stereotypes. Teachers should be given ongoing gender-sensitivity training to ensure equitable teaching and learning.Footnote 55 Policies that exclude pregnant learners and new mothers need to be repealed and discriminatory attitudes in the classroom that shame these learners need to be addressed, including through education about sexual and reproductive rights.Footnote 56
Comprehensive human rights–based sex education, often denied to girls in both the developed and developing world, is also key in promoting dignity and worth.Footnote 57 In that regard, the standards developed by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education hold that sex education should be from a holistic, scientific, and pluralistic perspective “that does not focus exclusively on biology and ensures that, inter alia, the gender dimension, human rights, new patterns of male behavior, diversity, and disability are included.”Footnote 58 Although there may be lingering uncertainty in the SDGs on the definition of “sexual and reproductive rights,” a transformative equality framework would ensure a comprehensive, human rights-based approach that seeks to transform gender relations and is inclusive of sexual diversity. Finally, national laws and policies need to be targeted to address violence toward girls at school, such as by ensuring the criminalization of forced early marriage.
The third dimension of the transformative equality framework requires changing oppressive institutional structures. There are numerous hidden structures that subordinate girls and women in education. As noted, girls are often excluded from school owing to a lack of proper sanitation facilities;Footnote 59 and girls and women in both developed and developing countries are routinely denied their rights to reproductive health, including access to abortion and contraception.Footnote 60 For instance, schools in Namibia do not accommodate new mothers, offering limited or no day-care facilities or space for breastfeeding.Footnote 61 But there are even deeper structural inequalities. Families may not value education for girls because upon graduation there are no decent, well-paying employment opportunities. In India, 93 percent of women work in the informal labor market, often in precarious, low-paying work without social or legal benefits.Footnote 62 If women cannot be “employed or self-employed, open a bank account, if they are denied freedom [in] marriage, if they are deprived of political representation,” then achieving an equal ratio of girls and boys in primary education will have little effect on the plight of women.Footnote 63 Economic “measures to ensure equality . . . in education should be accompanied by policies and programs to guarantee . . . equal access to labor markets, credit and productive land as well as just and fair conditions of work for women.”Footnote 64
The final dimension of the transformative equality framework is participation. Participation must be meaningful. Women's and girls' voices and agency must have a chance to make a real impact on the design of education law and policies. As Plan International has noted, girls should “play an active and systematic role in identifying their own educational, social, and cultural needs so that they can propose effective solutions based on their knowledge and experience.”Footnote 65 Policies that target disadvantaged learners, that revise cultural norms and attitudes, and that reform educational structures are immensely strengthened by meaningful consultation and student participation. This participative dimension must be understood in light of the other dimensions of the framework. It is necessary to recognize the diversity of girls' and women's experiences and to ensure that the most disadvantaged and marginalized are included in decision-making processes, including political processes that determine education policies and budgets.
Conclusion
While on paper the SDGs constitute an improvement with regard to gender equality, there is no room for complacency when we move to the implementation stage. The deeply entrenched and interlocking nature of gender inequality and women's and girls' disempowerment makes clear that there is no simple panacea for reaching the ideals enshrined in SGD 5. We have taken a step toward leading the way to SDG 5 by considering what a human rights–based approach can bring to policy planning and monitoring. Applying the transformative equality framework to Target 4.1 demonstrates how the specific targets can address women's crosscutting and interlocking disadvantage. Under this framework, the SDGs need to address social services, family poverty, infrastructure, stereotypical gender norms in the home and classroom, gender-based violence, the provision of adequate sanitation and child-care services in school, the restructuring of the labor market, as well as the consultation of girl learners.
As gender equality is mainstreamed across the SDGs, the framework introduced here should be applied comprehensively in efforts to realize all of the Sustainable Development Goals. Overall, the four-dimensional model of transformative equality offers a normative framework for the drafting and scrutiny of policies. Along with other human rights principles—which have not been examined within the limits of this essay—it provides guidelines for policymaking, and applying it permits relevant actors to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of policies aimed at addressing gender equality.
