Women's Empowerment, Gender Equality and the MDGs: A WEDO Information and Action Guide

How have women responded to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Gender equality and women's rights advocates are using the MDGs as another avenue of engagement for monitoring the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) and other key international policy agreements. This Information and Action Guide makes a goal-by-goal case for gender equality to be seen as essential for achieving all the MDGs not only as a goal in its own right. The MDG process offers three main challenges to gender advocates: to ensure a gender-sensitive approach to implementation at the national level, integrating gender across all goals; to demand adequate resources and equitable global economic policies that are consistent with social and environmental needs; and to link the MDGs to other ongoing global and national policy processes, particularly the 10 year review of the BPfA in 2005. In the final section 'Bring back Beijing' it identifies 'Actions you can take'. It focuses on two questions: how to engender targets and indicators so that any discussions on attaining the MDGs can start with an understanding of the different positions of women and men in society; and how gender advocates can monitor government progress.