Global indicators for gender equality.
In today’s world, women still cannot reach their full potential. According to a United Nations report, women achieve, on average, only 60% of what they would earn if they had the same opportunities as men.
This gender gap is reflected in all areas of life, from health and education to economics and politics.
The World Economic Forum’s overall gender gap score in 2023 for the 146 countries included in this edition stands at a close 68.4%. Considering the constant sample of 145 countries included in the 2022 and 2023 editions, the overall score has risen from 68.1% to 68.4%, an improvement of 0.3 percentage points from last year’s edition.
This gender gap is reflected in all areas of life, from health and education to economics and politics. This invites me to continue working to contribute some actions towards closing them.
For this reason, I carefully read the report entitled “THE PATHS TO EQUAL Twin Indices on Women’s Empowerment and gender equality,” which analyses the situation of women in 114 countries, published last July by UN Women and the UN Development Programme.
This text shows that the results are discouraging, with only 1% of women and girls living in countries with high levels of female empowerment and a narrow gender gap.
Women occupy fewer leadership positions in the economy and politics and are more vulnerable to violence and discrimination. You may have read this on this network and many others.
Women occupy fewer leadership positions in economics and politics, also with higher rates of vulnerability to violence and discrimination. You may have read this on this network and many others. So, I focused on the analysis with the following questions:
What do the indicators measure, who are my stakeholders, what contribution will they make, what risks will they mitigate, what will they mitigate?
The Indicators presented by UN Women and UNDP.
The Women’s Empowerment Index WEI focuses exclusively on women, measuring their power and freedom to make decisions and take advantage of life’s opportunities.
The Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI)
The Global Gender Parity Index GGPI assesses the situation of women relative to men in basic dimensions of human development and highlights parity gaps between women and men.
The Global Gender Parity Index (GGPI)
The GEM and the GGPI have been designed as twin indices to be used together to provide a more complete picture of countries’ trajectories towards women’s empowerment and gender equality.
These indices are a crucial contribution to taking stock of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a means to advance efforts to achieve SDG 5 on gender equality, for which the private sector is also responsible for delivering and closing gaps, as we have seen in this text.
The GEM and the GGPI have been designed as twin indices to be used together to provide a more complete picture of countries’ trajectories towards women’s empowerment and gender equality.
These indices are crucial to taking stock of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and advancing efforts to achieve SDG 5 on gender equality. The private sector is also responsible for delivering and closing gaps, as seen in this text.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDG).
Latin America and the Caribbean: Number of SDG series according to the likelihood of reaching the defined threshold by 2030.
With only seven years left to achieve the SDGs, it is necessary to redouble efforts to diagnose the root causes of structural poverty, to diagnose the root causes of structural gender inequality, to identify changes, and to stimulate new commitments.
For this reason, those of us who participate in the current global agenda for the Development of societies as tertiary actors it is an opportunity to provide organizations with evidence:
How their business contributes to advancing Sustainable Development.
Given this reality, I use the term “Glocal” by the Scottish sociologist Roland Robertson, which can be an alternative for the future of different companies and organizations.
This term, born from the union between globalization and localization, consists of adopting global patterns to local conditions and acting by focusing on actions that can be addressed locally while taking elements of global strategies. It may have been heard as “Think globally and act locally.”
This is by meeting targets and indicators related to the private sector, thereby maximizing positive impacts on people, peace, and prosperity while minimizing their negative actions.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs).
With seven years left to achieve the SDGs, we need more substantial political commitment, long-term energy planning, increased public and especially private finance, and appropriate regulatory and fiscal incentives to stimulate the faster deployment of new technologies to enable us to address structural gender inequalities, to identify the changes and encourage new commitments that we are generating.
Now, this analysis is closely related to and takes elements of relationship with the excellent framework for Sustainable Development, which we identify as the so-called 2030 Agenda, the SDGs (the post I wrote some time ago, “The 2030 Agenda (SDGs), closer than you think”), so I am moving forward with the relationship of the indicators with the SDGs.
So, those of us who participate in the current global agenda for the Development (with a capital letter) of societies as tertiary actors have the opportunity to contribute to the organizations so that they can demonstrate the following:
How does the private sector contribute to progress towards the SDGs?
Agenda 2030 — SDGs
The private sector is central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): creating jobs, developing skills, stimulating innovation, providing essential infrastructure, and delivering affordable goods and services.
The private sector is also crucial to achievement as a much-needed capital investor. While the SDG Summit in September 2023 must mark a real turning point.
It must mobilize the political commitment and breakthroughs our world desperately needs, presenting a rescue plan to secure people’s dignity, opportunity, and rights.
Advanced green and digital economies and resilient trajectories compatible with the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
While states and governments must renew their commitment to seven years of accelerated, sustained, and transformative action nationally and internationally, we cannot leave it to the former, as happened with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), where only states made progress.
To deliver on the promise of the SDGs, the private sector must take more concrete action.
The private sector has played a supportive role in poverty reduction and economic Development, facilitating technological adoption, innovation, and distribution of goods and services in gross terms.
Share good practices and challenges on the private sector’s report on its contribution to SDG implementation; from this, we can look at the cases of Global Compact and its local networks.
Explore ways to align SDG data at the corporate level with relevant SDG indicators at the macro level, including for the Voluntary National Reviews; in the case of Chile, this is the third report to be presented in September in the framework of the HLPF.
Identify gaps and capacity development needs in the public and private sectors in SDG reporting by companies.
An exciting example is what the Sumando Valor team in Chile, led by Daniela Winicki, is doing, where they analyze business cases that are directly linked to some of the 17 SDGs through the fulfillment of targets and indicators that related to the private sector, thereby maximizing positive impacts on people, peace and prosperity, while minimizing their negative actions.
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) aims to promote sustainability reporting in all types of organizations by providing a framework for sustainability reporting — including principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and disclose their economic, environmental, and social performance.
The GRI has developed tools and initiatives that help enable a robust private sector role in measuring and achieving the SDGs, linking and comparing standards with the disclosures that apply to each.
This makes it easier for organizations to use their reporting through the GRI Standards to assess how they impact the SDGs in this vein.
How can we manage Global indicators in our local organizations and stay caught up?
Note: Although it is not the only way of reporting, in my case, I use it as a reference; I also suggest knowing and expanding on others in this document: Standards for sustainability reporting: Where we are and where we will get to by EY 2022.
From Global to Glocal.
Glocal indicators for gender equality.
An opportunity to improve the closing of gaps, as presented in this blog and as we often read in this network, is the opportunity to manage global indicators in our local organizations without stopping at the attempt because “What is not defined cannot be measured, and if it is not measured, it cannot be improved. And if it is not improved, it is always degraded”. William Lord Kelvin was a British physicist and mathematician.
While this sentence works, I’ll keep this one: “The representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their point of view, which they mistake for absolute truth. Simone de Beauvoir” — Caroline Criado-Pérez, The invisible woman: data bias in a world designed for men.
This is why I welcome and align myself with rigorous metrics that allow us to put on the gender lens, to make visible how we can expand knowledge, actions, and actions in pursuit of gender equality until it is no longer an issue but part of our daily organizational life.
Process of analysis from the global to the glocal.
After reading the document, we began to relate the model of the dimensions with their relationship to the SDGs they impact, as referred to in the matrix document.
This allows the indicators to be reduced to metrics linked to the SDGs and, in this case, to measure the closing of gaps, significantly adding them to the organizational strategies and not remaining at the global level.
Measuring Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion.
The tool used for this process is Mapearse, a data-driven-decision tool that measures organizations’ Sustainability, Diversity, and Inclusion footprint.
Mapearse
It allows organizations to analyze, interpret, and suggest opportunities for improvement, taking as a reference the fulfillment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets, especially those that the private sector can contribute, to generate data for decision-making in organizations.
This tool and the process carried out allowed us to identify the relationship between the dimensions of the WEI and GGPI indices, the SDG impacted, its target, which, where indicated, is related to the private sector, and how the private sector can fulfill and influence the 2030 Agenda.
In addition, a relationship with the GRI indicators — in the case of a link between SDGs and GRI, as you can see in the LinkedIn tool — that serves to measure and report their sustainable impact to assess their social and economic impact and make informed decisions in their actions, we use as input the document Linking the SDGs and the GRI Standards (V May 2022), to connect the dimensions, SDGs, and GRI.
This is to create metrics aligned to their core business to measure, evaluate, and eventually improve impact on gender issues as a glocal response (global leading to local) to connect global indicators with local organizations and thus respond to a worldwide concern, which the author of the book we are currently reading herself said.
“All ‘people’ had to do was ask women” — Caroline Criado Perez, The Invisible Woman: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
The relationship between the “Twin indices for measuring gender parity and women’s empowerment,” the contribution to the 2030 Agenda of the SDGs, the metrics of the reporting standard, and the questions that open up new opportunities.
Visualization through Mapearse.
Finally, the analysis presented in the document is summarised visually in this way.
Health Policy supports and promotes healthy lives, focusing on universal access to sexual and reproductive health. WEI — (SDG3, Target 3.7)
If you want to see the whole exercise, click here
Moving from global to local can be done in an orderly, systematic, and appropriate way, so the task is on your side to answer:
How can we manage global indicators in our local organizations without getting stuck in the attempt?, Now, the task is on your side to answer: How can we manage global indicators in our local organizations and stay caught up?, How can we manage Global indicators in our local organizations without getting left behind?
You can find me to talk about this and work together. Let’s talk.
You can access the document that gave rise to this post: The Paths to Equal: Twin Indices on Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality. United Nations Development Programme, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women 2023.
https://hdr.undp.org/content/paths-equal.
