Educational centers for rural women in Iraq

SOCIAL PROTECTION TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S AND GIRLS’ EMPOWERMENT

Equitable access to gender-responsive social protection has a significant impact on women’s and girls’ empowerment and opportunities, with wider positive effects for men and boys, their families and communities. Social protection systems that do not address gender inequalities risk exacerbating the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination women and girls face. We urgently need to increase our efforts to ensure social protection explicitly promotes gender equality. Failure to do so will hamper progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals – missing this vital opportunity to improve women’s and girls’ lives.

Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world. There has been progress over the last decades, but the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030.

The social and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation even bleaker. Progress in many areas, including time spent on unpaid care and domestic work, decision-making regarding sexual and reproductive health, and gender-responsive budgeting, is falling behind.

Women’s health services, already poorly funded, have faced major disruptions. Violence against women remains endemic. And despite women’s leadership in responding to COVID-19, they still trail men in securing the decision-making positions they deserve.

Commitment and bold action are needed to accelerate progress, including through the promotion of laws, policies, budgets and institutions that advance gender equality. Greater investment in gender statistics is vital, since less than half of the data required

The window of our organization is small projects for a group of women, and they were given a sewing machine with a kit to work with inside their homes to support their children, and they are a happy solution in these projects