Women in Development

A/RES/66/216View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 23bWomen in development, published in 2011.

What other versions does this mandate have?

15 versions · 1996–2024

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/79/223

2024A/RES/79/223Women in developmentLatestCompare with previous version
2022A/RES/77/181Women in developmentCompare with previous version
2020A/RES/74/235Women in developmentCompare with previous version
2018A/RES/72/234Women in developmentCompare with previous version
2016A/RES/70/219Women in developmentCompare with previous version

Versions are identified automatically by matching titles within the same organ (~97% accuracy on a manual audit).

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2013.

2013A/68/271Women in development report of the Secretary-General

Identified automatically from the metadata in each report’s UN Digital Library catalogue record.

What does this mandate say?

44 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General on integrating a gender perspective into national development strategies;

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations system and other international and regional organizations, within their respective mandates, and all sectors of civil society, including non-governmental organizations, as well as all women and men, to fully commit themselves and to intensify their contributions to the implementation of the Beijing Declaration2 and Platform for Action3 and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly;4

Recognizes the mutually reinforcing links between gender equality and poverty eradication and the achievement of all of the Millennium Development Goals, as well as the need to elaborate and implement, where appropriate, in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, comprehensive gender-sensitive poverty eradication strategies that address social, structural and macroeconomic issues;

Emphasizes the need to link policies on economic and social development to ensure that all people, including those living in poverty and in vulnerable situations, benefit from inclusive economic growth and development, in accordance with the goals of the Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development7 and the Doha Declaration on Financing for Development: outcome document of the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus;9

Urges Member States, the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations to accelerate their efforts and provide adequate resources to increase the voice and full and equal participation of women in all decision-making bodies at the highest levels of government and in the governance structures of international organizations, including through eliminating gender stereotyping in appointments and promotions, to build women’s capacity as agents of change and to empower them to participate actively and effectively in the design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting of national development, poverty eradication and environmental policies, strategies and programmes;

Encourages Member States to continue to increase, as appropriate, the participation of civil society, including women’s organizations, in Government decision-making in national development policy areas;

Encourages Member States and the United Nations system to ensure systematic attention to, recognition of and support for the crucial role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflict, in mediation and peacebuilding efforts and in the rebuilding of post-conflict society, inter alia, through promoting women’s capacity, leadership and engagement in political and economic decision-making;

Stresses the importance of the adoption by Member States, international organizations, including the United Nations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other stakeholders of appropriate measures to identify and address the ongoing adverse impacts of the world financial and economic crisis, volatile energy prices and the food crisis, and the challenges posed by climate change for women and girls, and of maintaining adequate levels of funding for the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women;

Also stresses the importance of the creation by Member States, international organizations, including the United Nations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other stakeholders of a favourable and conducive national and international environment in all areas of life for the effective integration of women in development, and of their undertaking and disseminating a gender analysis of policies and programmes related to macroeconomic stability, structural reform, taxation, investments, including foreign direct investment, and all relevant sectors of the economy;

Urges the donor community, Member States, international organizations, including the United Nations, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other stakeholders to strengthen the focus and impact of development assistance targeting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls through gender mainstreaming, the funding of targeted activities and enhanced dialogue between donors and partners, and to also strengthen the mechanisms needed to measure effectively the resources allocated to incorporating gender perspectives in all areas of development assistance;

Urges Member States to incorporate a gender perspective, commensurate with gender-equality goals, into the design, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and reporting of national development strategies, to ensure alignment between national action plans on gender equality and national development strategies, and to encourage the involvement of men and boys in the promotion of gender equality, and in this regard calls upon the United Nations system to support national efforts to develop methodologies and tools and to promote capacity-building and evaluation;

Encourages Member States to ensure inclusive and more effective participation of national mechanisms for gender equality and women’s empowerment in the formulation of national development strategies, including strategies aimed at eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities, and calls upon the United Nations system to support national efforts in this regard;

Also encourages Member States, as appropriate, to strengthen capacities for gender mainstreaming by allocating adequate financial and human resources to national women’s machineries as well as to and within line ministries, establishing and/or strengthening dedicated units for gender equality and the empowerment of women, and providing capacity development for technical staff, and developing tools and guidelines;

Encourages Member States, the United Nations system and donor countries to strengthen gender-responsive planning and budgeting processes and to develop and strengthen methodologies and tools for this purpose as well as for the monitoring and evaluation of investments for gender-equality results, as appropriate, and encourages donors to mainstream a gender perspective in their practices, including joint coordination and accountability mechanisms;

Encourages Member States to adopt and implement legislation and policies designed to promote the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities, including through increased flexibility in working arrangements, such as part-time work, and the facilitation of breastfeeding for working mothers, to provide care facilities for children and other dependants, and to ensure that both women and men have access to maternity or paternity, parental and other forms of leave and are not discriminated against when availing themselves of such benefits;

Expresses deep concern about the pervasiveness of violence against women and girls, reiterates the need to further intensify efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, and recognizes that violence against women and girls is one of the obstacles to the achievement of the objectives of equality, development and peace and that women’s poverty and lack of political, social and economic empowerment, as well as their marginalization, may result from their exclusion from social policies for and the benefits of sustainable development and can place them at increased risk of violence;

Encourages Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and other actors of civil society to promote and protect the rights of women workers, to take action to remove structural and legal barriers to, as well as eliminate stereotypic attitudes towards, gender equality at work, and to initiate positive steps towards promoting equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value;

Urges Governments to develop, adequately resource and implement active labour-market policies on full and productive employment and decent work for all, including the full participation of women and men in both rural and urban areas;

Calls upon Governments to strengthen efforts to protect the rights of, and ensure decent work conditions for, domestic workers, including migrant women, in relation to, inter alia, working hours, conditions and wages, and to promote access to health-care services and other social and economic benefits;

Encourages Member States to adopt and/or review and to fully implement gender-sensitive legislation and policies that reduce, through specifically targeted measures, horizontal and vertical occupational segregation and gender-based wage gaps;

Urges all Member States to undertake a gender analysis of national labour laws and standards and to establish gender-sensitive policies and guidelines for employment practices, including for transnational corporations, with particular attention to export-processing zones, building in this regard on multilateral instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and conventions of the International Labour Organization;

Stresses the importance of developing national strategies for the promotion of sustainable and productive entrepreneurial activities, and encourages Governments to create a climate that is conducive to increasing the number of women entrepreneurs and the size of their businesses by giving them equal access to financial instruments, providing them with training and advisory services in business, administration and information and communications technology, facilitating networking and information-sharing and increasing their participation on advisory boards and in other forums so as to enable them to contribute to the formulation and review of policies and programmes being developed by financial institutions;

Urges all Member States to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women with regard to their access to all types of financial services and products, including bank loans, bank accounts, mortgages and other forms of financial credit, regardless of their economic and social status, to support women’s access to legal assistance and to encourage the financial sector to mainstream gender perspectives in their policies and programmes;

Recognizes the role of microfinance, including microcredit, in the eradication of poverty, the empowerment of women and the generation of employment, notes in this regard the importance of sound national financial systems, and encourages the strengthening of existing and emerging microcredit institutions and their capacities, including through the support of international financial institutions;

Urges Governments to ensure that microfinance programmes focus on developing savings products that are safe, convenient and accessible to women and support women’s efforts to retain control over their savings;

Urges all Governments to eliminate discrimination against women in the field of education and ensure their equal access to all levels of education;

Urges Member States to adopt and review legislation and policies to ensure women’s equal access to and control over land, housing and other property, including through inheritance, land reform programmes and land markets, and to take measures to implement those laws and policies;

Urges Governments to take measures to facilitate equitable access to land and property rights by providing training designed to make the judicial, legislative and administrative system more responsive to gender-equality issues, to provide legal aid for women seeking to claim their rights, to support the efforts of women’s groups and networks and to carry out awareness campaigns so as to draw attention to the need for women’s equal rights to land and property;

Recognizes the need to empower women, particularly poor women, economically and politically, and in this regard encourages Governments, with the support of their development partners, to invest in appropriate infrastructure and other projects, including the provision of water and sanitation to rural areas and urban slums, to increase health and well-being, relieve the workloads of women and girls and release their time and energy for other productive activities, including entrepreneurship;

Also recognizes the central role of agriculture in development, and stresses the importance of reviewing agricultural policies and strategies to ensure that women’s critical role in food and nutritional security is recognized and addressed as an integral part of both short- and long-term responses to food insecurity, excessive price volatility and food crises in developing countries;

Further recognizes the critical role and contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, and their traditional knowledge, in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty;

Expresses concern at the overall expansion of the HIV and AIDS epidemic and the fact that women and girls are still the most affected by HIV and AIDS, that they are more easily infected, that they bear a disproportionate share of the caregiving burden and that they are more vulnerable to violence, stigmatization and discrimination, poverty and marginalization from their families and communities as a result of HIV and AIDS, and taking into account that despite substantial progress, the 2010 deadline of universal access has not been met, calls upon Governments and the international community to urgently scale up responses towards achieving the goal of universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention programmes, treatment, care and support and, in line with the 2011 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Intensifying Our Efforts to Eliminate HIV and AIDS,12 to ensure that national responses to HIV and AIDS meet the specific needs of women and girls, including those living with and affected by HIV and AIDS across their lifespan;

Reaffirms the commitment to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015, as set out at the International Conference on Population and Development, by integrating this goal into strategies for attaining the internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration5 aimed at reducing maternal mortality, improving maternal health, reducing child mortality, promoting gender equality, combating HIV and AIDS and eradicating poverty;

Urges Governments and all sectors of society to promote and to pursue gender-based approaches to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases based on data disaggregated by sex and age in their effort to address the critical differences in the rapidly growing magnitude of non-communicable diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, which affect people of all ages, gender, race and income levels, as noted in the Political Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases,13 and notes that poor populations and those living in vulnerable situations, in particular in developing countries, bear a disproportionate burden and that non-communicable diseases can affect women and men differently, because, inter alia, women bear a disproportionate share of the burden of caregiving;

Expresses deep concern that maternal health remains one area constrained by some of the largest health inequities in the world, and over the uneven progress in improving child and maternal health, and in this context calls upon States to implement their commitments to preventing and reducing child and maternal mortality and morbidity, and welcomes in that regard the Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health as well as national, regional and international initiatives contributing to the reduction in the number of maternal deaths and deaths of the newborn and children under age 5;

Recognizes that there is a need for all donors to maintain and deliver on their existing bilateral and multilateral official development assistance commitments and targets, and that the full implementation of those commitments will substantially boost resources available to push forward the international development agenda;

Also recognizes the need to strengthen the capacity of Governments to incorporate a gender perspective into policies and decision-making, and encourages all Governments, international organizations, including the United Nations system, and other relevant stakeholders to assist and support the efforts of developing countries in integrating a gender perspective into all aspects of policymaking, including through the provision of technical assistance and financial resources;

Encourages the international community, the United Nations system, the private sector and civil society to continue to provide the financial resources necessary to assist Governments in their efforts to meet the development targets and benchmarks agreed upon at the World Summit for Social Development, the Fourth World Conference on Women, the International Conference on Population and Development, the Millennium Summit, the International Conference on Financing for Development, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Second World Assembly on Ageing, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth special sessions of the General Assembly and other relevant United Nations conferences and summits;

Urges multilateral donors, and invites international financial institutions, within their respective mandates, and regional development banks to review and implement policies that support national efforts to ensure that a higher proportion of resources reaches women, in particular in rural and remote areas;

Stresses the importance of improving and systematizing the collection, analysis and dissemination of data disaggregated by sex and age, and of developing gender-sensitive indicators that are specific and relevant with respect to supporting policymaking and national systems for monitoring and reporting on progress and impact, and in that regard encourages developed countries and relevant entities of the United Nations system to provide support and assistance to developing countries, upon their request, with respect to establishing, developing and strengthening their databases and information systems;

Calls upon all organizations of the United Nations system, within their organizational mandates, to mainstream a gender perspective and to pursue gender equality in their country programmes, planning instruments and sector-wide programmes and to articulate specific country-level goals and targets in this domain in accordance with national development strategies, and welcomes the work of UN-Women with United Nations country teams in assisting Member States, at their request, in integrating a gender perspective into national development policies and strategies, in accordance with their national priorities, and stresses its important role in leading, coordinating and promoting the accountability of the United Nations system so as to ensure that the commitment to gender equality and gender mainstreaming translates into effective action throughout the world;

Calls upon the organizations of the United Nations development system, within their organizational mandates, to further improve their institutional accountability mechanisms and to include intergovernmentally agreed gender-equality results and gender-sensitive indicators in their strategic frameworks;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its sixty-eighth session a report on the progress made in the implementation of the present resolution, including on integrating a gender perspective into national development strategies;

Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its sixty-eighth session, under the item entitled “Eradication of poverty and other development issues”, the sub-item entitled “Women in development”.

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Women in Development

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