Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The gender snapshot 2023

The report predicts that if present conditions persist 342.4 million women and girls or eight per cent of the world’s female population will be in extreme poverty by 2030. Here, extreme poverty is defined as living on less than 2.15 dollars per day.

By 2030, about one in four women and girls are projected to be food insecure at moderate or severe levels. More than 50 per cent of rice imports in 42 countries originate in India. India’s ban on rice exports is expected to worsen global food insecurity, the report states.

Although the rate of completion of school is still below 100, in total, more girls have completed school than boys. While 57 per cent of boys completed upper secondary level education, the figure among girls was higher at 60 per cent. However, parity does not mean universality. Millions of girls especially from conflict-affected areas never complete their education.

As many as 380 million women and girls are living in a state of high or critical water stress and this number is expected to increase to 674 million by 2050. As per 2022 data, 1.07 billion women (27.1 per cent) did not have access to safely managed drinking water services.

Compared to the 90.6 per cent men in the ‘prime working age’ only 61.4 per cent of similarly aged women were participating in the labour force. Unpaid labour, disrupted careers and care responsibilities meant that of the total income earned globally by all workers, only one-third was earned by women. The report also states that in 2019, for every dollar earned by a man globally, women only earned around 51 cents.

Research found that compared to men, women are two times more likely to report a case of sex-based discrimination and about twice as likely to face marital status-based discrimination.

Only one in four countries worldwide has thorough systems to track women’s empowerment and gender equality. Furthermore, of the total bilateral aid recorded (aid provided directly from the government of one country to another) in 2020-21, only four per cent was in support of programmes with gender equality as their principal objective.

Focus and Factoids by Vasvi Bhardwaj. 

PARI Library’s health archive project is part of an initiative supported by the Azim Premji University to develop s free-access repository of health-related reports relevant to rural India.