A readers’ guide to the report

This first edition of the global monitoring report:

 ● Provides an overview of the follow-up and review process, showing how accountability for gender equality commitments can be strengthened at the global, regional and national levels. 

 ● Explains the global indicators framework and the key statistical challenges for monitoring progress from a gender perspective. 

 ● Reviews starting points and preliminary trends at the global and regional levels across a range of gender-specific indicators for all 17 SDGs. 

 ● Proposes a survey-based strategy for identifying groups of women and girls who experience multiple forms of discrimination and deprivation in diverse national contexts. 

 ● Offers concrete guidance on how to achieve and finance progress in two critical areas under SDG 5: 

eliminating violence against women and girls; and recognizing and redistributing unpaid care and domestic work. 

Future editions will build on this framework by providing updates on global and regional progress on key indicators, extending policy guidance to other areas and analysing the dynamics of national implementation through in-depth country case studies. Over time, it is hoped that the reports will build a robust body of evidence on the impact of the 2030 Agenda on gender equality policies, processes and outcomes. 

Chapter 1 discusses the challenges and prospects for achieving the SDGs. It explains the report’s monitoring framework and analyses potential mechanisms for enhancing accountability for gender equality in the follow-up and review process that has been established to track progress at the national, regional and global levels. 

Chapter 2 provides an analysis of the global indicators framework from a gender perspective, identifying 54 official indicators directly relevant to monitoring outcomes for women and girls. In this chapter, readers will find a succinct discussion of the challenges that the global statistical community needs to address to effectively and comprehensively monitor progress on gender equality.

Chapter 3 provides a snapshot of gender equality across all the 17 SDGs, providing evidence of how gender equality matters for each and every one of them. It presents global and regional averages for gender-specific indicators that can serve as baselines for future reporting and highlights the interlinkages between SDG 5 and other goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda.

Chapter 4 provides powerful evidence of how multiple forms of discrimination—including those based on sex, age, class, ability, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or migration status—can compound each other to create pockets of deprivation, often in stark contrast to the average trend in a given country. 

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on two strategic areas under SDG 5: eliminating violence against women and girls (Target 5.2); and unpaid care and domestic work (Target 5.4). Both chapters provide powerful evidence for the interlinkages between these gender equality targets and other parts of the 2030 Agenda, underlining the need to break down policy silos and move towards integrated strategies for implementation. They also provide concrete examples of how policies and programmes can be aligned with the principles of the 2030 Agenda, including universality, human rights and leaving no one behind. 

The two chapters are followed by a short section that provides guidance on how to determine the costs and finance the implementation of genderresponsive policies and programmes under the 2030 Agenda.

Each chapter includes a detailed list of recommendations as well as select monitoring questions that invite readers to reflect on progress, gaps and challenges in their own specific contexts. 

The final section of the report, Moving Forward, is a summary of strategies for strengthening gender-responsive implementation, monitoring and accountability at the national, regional and global levels for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

For ease of reference, the chapters in the report are grouped and colour-coded in line with the strategies for gender-responsive implementation proposed by the report: processes and institutions (Chapter 1, green); data, statistics and analysis (Chapters 2, 3 and 4, blue); and investments, policies and programmes (Chapters 5 and 6, orange).

SDG-report-Gender-equality-in-the-2030-Agenda-for-Sustainable-Development-2018-en.pdf