Goal 5: Gender Equality

What Goal 5 asks for

Goal 5 begins with the legal position, asking countries to end all forms of discrimination against women and girls, and then moves to the things that discrimination produces. One target is the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls in both public and private spheres, explicitly including trafficking and sexual exploitation. Another is the elimination of harmful practices, naming child, early and forced marriage. A third, and one of the most consequential in economic terms, is recognising and valuing unpaid care and domestic work through public services, infrastructure and social protection, and through shared responsibility within the household. The goal treats unpaid work as an economic issue rather than a private arrangement, because the hours a woman spends fetching water, cooking and caring are hours unavailable for paid work or study.

The remaining targets concern power and resources. One asks for women's full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life. Another asks for universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. The implementation targets ask for reforms giving women equal rights to economic resources including ownership and control over land and other property, financial services and inheritance; for wider use of enabling technology, particularly information and communications technology; and for sound, enforceable legislation to promote gender equality.

Goal 5 in India

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has consolidated much of its work into Mission Shakti, which runs in two parts. Sambal covers safety and security through One Stop Centres, the Women Helpline on 181, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and Nari Adalat, an alternative forum for resolving matters such as harassment and rights violations at community level. Samarthya covers empowerment through Shakti Sadan relief and rehabilitation homes, Sakhi Niwas hostels for working women, Palna creches for the children of working women, and the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana maternity benefit, which now supports a second child if that child is a girl. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao itself was launched on 22 January 2015 at Panipat, Haryana, to address the declining child sex ratio and gender-biased sex selection; the Ministry reported the national sex ratio at birth improving from 918 in 2014-15 to 930 in 2023-24, and the gross enrolment ratio for girls in secondary education rising from 75.51 per cent in 2014-15 to 78 per cent in 2023-24. District funding under the scheme is deliberately skewed, with the largest annual allocation going to districts with the worst sex ratio at birth.

The parts of Goal 5 that state programmes reach least well are where non-profits concentrate. Women's collectives and self-help federations work on income, savings and negotiating power inside the household. Legal aid and paralegal work covers maintenance, domestic violence, inheritance and land titles, where a woman's formal right often exists on paper but has never been exercised. Other organisations run shelters and counselling, work on preventing child marriage and keeping girls in school through the secondary transition, provide menstrual health and reproductive health services, and address unpaid care directly by running childcare so that mothers can take paid work. Work with men and boys on norms, and with panchayats on how local decisions are made, belongs to the same goal even though it produces no countable service.