THE GENDER SNAPSHOT REPORT 2024

Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals

Yesterday saw the launch of the Gender Snapshot report on the progress on the Sustainable Development Goals at Parliament in Westminster, London. We were invited by UN Women UK to participate.

The report is excellent as a quick update on the latest statistics across all UN’s SDGs, but with an emphasis on gender equality – which really is an essential foundation for reaching all 17 goals.

This is quite a depressing and shocking report though, and not a very light-hearted read – and for many of us in the room, unfortunately not particularly surprising.

The eminent panel of spokespeople were Kate Osborne MP, Executive Director of UN Women UK Tabitha Morton, Chair of UN Women UK Michele (Mitch) Oliver and a supportive group of knowledgeable connections across several industries and organisations.

The Snapshot Report was gathered and presented by the Chief of the research and Data section at UN Women, Papa Seck.

READ THE FULL SNAPSHOT REPORT HERE:

https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/gender-snapshot/2024/GenderSnapshot2024.pdf

With these depressing statistics, you may even ask if Gender Equality is possible?

According to UN, we’re looking at another 134 years to reach gender parity if we don’t step up our game.

At current rates, it will take an additional 137 years to end extreme poverty among women.

But we truly believe we can do it faster – because a huge number of grass-root organisations are now stepping forward to set examples, demanding change on a government level and creating ripple effects across the whole planet.

We need to do this as a collective, nothing else will work. Everybody needs to understand that gender equality favours all of us, not just women. We’re not here to take over the world in some sort of a depressing Barbie fantasy way –

We’re here because we believe equal really means equal; nothing more – nothing less.

Why do we want to create change for women? Here’s a snapshot of the snapshot:

The UN confirmed a 50% increase in cases of conflict-related sexual violence since 2022, with women and girls suffering 95% of these crimes

54% of countries do not have laws that base the legal definition of rape on the lack of freely given consent

Today, 119.3 million girls remain out of school, down by 5.4 million since 2015, but still 119.3 million too many

The annual global cost of the education skills deficit surpasses $10 trillion, more than the GDP of France and Japan combined

Women and girls spend 250 million hours per day on water collection, over three times more than men and boys

If left unaddressed, the global gender gap in Internet use could cost low- and middle-income countries an estimated $500 billion over the next five years

On this International Day of the Girl Child, we would like to particularly highlight the following global numbers:

1 in 5 women in the world was married before the age of 18.
12 million girls are still married before the age of 18 each year
That is 28 girls under 18 married every minute
Over 650 million women alive today were married as children
72% of countries set the minimum age of marriage below age 18, with no legal exceptions, for both women and men

It will take 300 years to end Child Marriages if we don’t do something radical right now.

Lebanon allows girls to be married as young as 9, Sudan permits the marriage of girls at puberty, Iran sets the minimum age for girls at 13.

16 countries set the minimum age of marriage at 16 or 17.

We can only guess that a girl of nine isn’t the person asking to get married with all what that involves, which she will not even understand yet.

It demands global support from male allies on a government level across all countries in the world to change this abysmal system of young women and girls being exploited.

All discriminatory laws must be eliminated and strong legal frameworks that fully uphold gender equality and women’s right established in all areas.

These should be backed by vigorous implementation, monitoring, adequate resources, and the building of necessary infrastructure and capacities.

EyeStorm Women is a community for women where we take conversation to action. We offer support and opportunities for women to confidently step forward and use their voice to create change for the better, on all levels; from home, to community, work and at government level.

As a small grass-root organisation, we know the importance of the collective force to create a global ripple effect towards gender equality.

You can join our free Facebook group here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/EyeStorm