Millennium Development Goals: Women and Girls

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the United Nations Women analysis of the progress made towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Northover) (LD)]

My Lords, despite many gains, progress across the millennium development goals has been uneven for girls and women. The MDGs did not effectively address the factors which underpin gender inequality. The United Kingdom is pushing for a post-2015 framework that has a strong and explicit commitment to gender equality and that will seek to transform outcomes for girls and women.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her response and agree that we must build upon what has been achieved by the MDGs but acknowledge those goals’ shortcomings up until now, particularly on gender equality, women’s empowerment and violence against women—three major issues which have been neglected. The Minister will be aware that women across the world continue to face economic, social and political exclusion. At the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to reach parity in the workplace and more than 75 years to reach equal pay for work of equal value. Will the Minister clarify whether the Government have responded to the UN Women position paper on the post-2015 development agenda, which advocates a stand-alone goal geared to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment? Has the UK responded to the UN Women proposal that there should be rigorous mainstreaming of gender equality concerns across the other priority areas and goals of the post-2015 agenda?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness is right to note that very uneven progress. We are indeed committed to the standalone goal and to mainstreaming.