Women in Development

A/RES/70/219View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 24bWomen in development, published in 2015.

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).

What subjects does this mandate have?

12 topics

Data Collection Development Assistance Development Strategies Empowerment Gender Discrimination Gender Equality Gender Mainstreaming Gender-Based Violence Women in Development Women's Advancement Women's Employment Women's Health

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2017.

2017A/72/282Women 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?

59 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;

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 and follow-up of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action,4 the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly5 and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development;6

Recognizes that 2015 marked the twentieth anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and in this regard welcomes the review activities undertaken by Governments, notes the contributions of all other relevant stakeholders and the review outcomes, and welcomes the central role that the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) played in supporting Member States, coordinating the United Nations system and mobilizing civil society, the private sector and other relevant stakeholders, at all levels, in support of the review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action;

Also recognizes the importance of the full engagement of men and boys for the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, and commits to taking measures to fully engage men and boys in efforts to achieve the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action;

Further recognizes the mutually reinforcing links between gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls and poverty eradication, 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, social and environmental development to ensure that all people, in particular women and children 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 Development,10 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,12 and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development;

Urges Member States, the organizations of 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 by 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 sustainable development, poverty eradication and environmental policies, strategies and programmes;

Recognizes the ongoing intergovernmental efforts to achieve gender equality and empowerment of women, and urges the United Nations system to continue efforts to achieve gender balance in appointments to all categories of staff, including the Professional and higher categories, within the United Nations system at the Headquarters, regional and country levels, bearing in mind the principle of equitable geographical representation, with due regard to the representation of women from developing countries, and convinced of the need to guarantee equal opportunities for women and men in gaining access to senior decision-making positions, including to the post of Secretary-General, bearing in mind the need to select the best candidate;

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

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 societies, inter alia, by promoting women’s capacity, leadership, participation and engagement in political and economic decision-making, and in this regard to promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes;

Urges Member States to promote the integration of a gender perspective into environmental and climate change policies and to strengthen mechanisms and provide adequate resources to ensure the full and equal participation of women in all levels of decision-making on environmental issues, and stresses the need to address the challenges for women and girls posed by climate change;

Stresses the importance of the full and equal participation of women in decision-making and of gender mainstreaming in developing and implementing disaster risk reduction, preparedness, response and recovery strategies;

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 and girls 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 the 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 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, providing capacity development for technical staff and developing tools and guidelines, and calls upon the United Nations system to support national efforts in this regard;

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, as appropriate, that are designed to promote the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities, to recognize, value, reduce and redistribute the disproportionate work burden of women engaged in unpaid work, including domestic and care work, including through increased flexibility in working arrangements, such as part-time work, and the facilitation of breastfeeding for working mothers, to provide support through the development of infrastructure and technology and the provision of public services, including accessible and quality childcare and care facilities for children and other dependants, and to ensure that both women and men have access to social protection and maternity or paternity, parental and other forms of leave and allowances and are not discriminated against when availing themselves of such benefits;

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;

Stresses the need to eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in public and private spaces, and encourages Member States to adopt specific preventive measures to protect women, youth and children from any abuse, including sexual abuse, exploitation, trafficking and violence;

Encourages Governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, trade unions and other stakeholders to promote and protect the rights of women workers, to take action to remove structural and legal barriers to, as well as eliminate stereotypical attitudes towards, gender equality at work and to initiate positive steps towards promoting equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value and women’s full participation in the formal economy, in particular in economic decision-making and resource allocation;

Encourages the United Nations system and donor countries to support Member States in increasing their investments in policies and programmes with a gender perspective in order to promote women’s access to decent work and in delivering gender-responsive social protection and social services;

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, as well as policies that encourage the full and equal participation of women and men, including persons with disabilities, in the formal labour market;

Urges the United Nations system and other international organizations, upon the request of Member States, to support and promote innovative programme responses to ensure women’s access to decent work, to recognize, reduce and redistribute the unequal burden of care work, to promote social protection initiatives and measures for women and girls with a gender perspective, and to support and encourage the scaling-up of existing good-practice programmes and initiatives;

Recognizes that women and girls account for almost half of all international migrants at the global level, and the need to address the special situation and vulnerability of migrant women and girls by, inter alia, incorporating a gender perspective into policies and strengthening national laws, institutions and programmes to prevent and combat gender-based violence, trafficking in persons and discrimination against women and girls, and calls upon Governments to strengthen efforts to protect the rights of, and ensure decent work conditions for, domestic workers, including migrant women and girls, in relation to, inter alia, working hours, working conditions and wages, and to promote access to health-care services and other social and economic benefits;

Also recognizes the special needs of women and girls living in areas affected by complex humanitarian emergencies and in areas affected by terrorism, and that global health threats, climate change, more frequent and intense natural disasters, spiralling conflicts, violent extremism, terrorism and related humanitarian crises and forced displacement of people threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades and have particular negative impacts on women and girls that need to be comprehensively assessed and addressed;

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;

Stresses the importance of improving and systematizing the collection, analysis and dissemination of high-quality, accessible, timely and reliable data, disaggregated by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts, and of developing gender 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;

Encourages Governments to collect, analyse and disseminate sex-disaggregated data and statistics on women’s access to decent work, unremunerated work and social protection and to assess the impact of associated policy measures, in cooperation with the United Nations system and other international organizations, upon the request of Governments;

Also encourages Governments to strengthen the collection of time-use data, time-use research on the unpaid care burdens of women and girls and the construction of satellite accounts to determine the value of unpaid care work and its contribution to the national economy, as appropriate, in cooperation with the United Nations system and other international organizations, upon the request of Governments;

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 and implementing policies and programmes to support women’s entrepreneurship, in particular opportunities for new women entrepreneurs and those that lead to business expansion for existing women-owned microenterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, and encourages Governments to create a climate that is conducive to increasing the number of women entrepreneurs and the size of their businesses by 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, especially by financial institutions;

Encourages all Governments to work towards full and equal access to formal financial services for all women, to adopt or review their financial inclusion strategies, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, and to consider including financial inclusion as a policy objective in financial regulation, in accordance with national priorities and legislation, encourages commercial banking systems to serve all, including those who currently face barriers to accessing financial services and information, and to support microfinance institutions, development banks, agricultural banks, mobile network operators, agent networks, cooperatives, postal banks and savings banks, as appropriate, encourages the use of innovative tools, including mobile banking, payment platforms and digitalized payments, and the expansion of peer learning and experience-sharing among countries and regions, including through the Alliance for Financial Inclusion and regional organizations, commits itself to strengthening capacity development for developing countries, including through the United Nations development system, and encourages mutual cooperation and collaboration between financial inclusion initiatives;

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 and girls in the field of education and to ensure their equal access to, and encourage their participation in, all levels of education, including technical, vocational and tertiary education and training;

Encourages Member States to adopt and implement, as appropriate, legislation and policies protecting women’s labour and human rights in the workplace, including with respect to minimum wages, social protection and equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value, promoting collective bargaining and providing for recruitment, retention and promotion policies targeting women;

Reaffirms the commitment to women’s equal rights and opportunities in political and economic decision-making and resource allocation and to the removal of any barriers that prevent women from being full participants in the economy, and the resolve to undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women equal rights with men to economic resources, including access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, credit, inheritance, natural resources and appropriate new technology, encourages the private sector to contribute to advancing gender equality by striving to ensure women’s full and productive employment and decent work, equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value, and equal opportunities, as well as protecting them against discrimination and abuse in the workplace, including by supporting the women’s empowerment principles established by UN-Women and the United Nations Global Compact, and encourages increased investment in female-owned companies or businesses;

Urges Governments to take measures to facilitate women’s access to land and property rights by providing training designed to make the judicial, legislative and administrative system gender-responsive, 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 in order to draw attention to the need for women’s equal rights to land and property;

Recognizes the need to build dynamic, sustainable, innovative and people-centred economies, promoting youth employment and women’s economic empowerment in particular and decent work for all, and to ensure that labour-market regulations and social provisions create a more level playing field for women, including by enacting and enforcing minimum wage legislation, eliminating discriminatory wage practices and promoting measures such as public works programmes, in order to enable women to cope with recurrent crises and long-term unemployment;

Also recognizes the need to empower women, particularly poor women and girls, 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, in order 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;

Expresses deep concern that the lack of adequate sanitation facilities disproportionately affects women and girls, including their labour force and school participation rates, and increases their vulnerability to violence, and in this regard calls for the strengthening of efforts to achieve sanitation for all and to end open defecation, paying special attention to women and girls;

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 security and nutrition is recognized and addressed as an integral part of both short- and long-term responses to food insecurity, malnutrition, excessive price volatility and food crises in developing countries;

Reaffirms the need to end hunger and achieve food security as a matter of priority, and to end all forms of malnutrition, and in this regard reaffirms the inclusive nature of the Committee on World Food Security, welcomes the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action, and also reaffirms the commitment to devote resources to developing rural areas and sustainable agriculture and fisheries, supporting smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, herders and fishers in developing countries, particularly the least developed countries;

Recognizes the critical role and contribution of rural women, including smallholders and women farmers, and indigenous women and women in local communities, and their traditional knowledge in enhancing agricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicating rural poverty;

Also recognizes that health is a precondition for and an outcome of sustainable development, and urges Governments to provide equal access to adequate health-care services for women and girls, in order to achieve the realization of the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health;

Expresses concern at the overall expansion of the HIV and AIDS epidemic and the fact that in some regions 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 goal of universal access to prevention, treatment care and support 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, treatment, care and support, and ending the HIV and AIDS epidemic by 2030;

Urges Governments and all sectors of society to promote and 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, and notes that people 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;

Encourages Governments and all sectors of society to take sustainable measures to ensure equal access to full and productive employment and decent work on an equal basis and without discrimination against persons with disabilities, including by promoting access to inclusive education systems, skills development and vocational and entrepreneurial training, in order to enable persons with disabilities to attain and maintain maximum independence, as noted in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as well as in the outcome document of the high-level meeting of the General Assembly on the realization of the Millennium Development Goals and other internationally agreed development goals for persons with disabilities: the way forward, a disability-inclusive development agenda towards 2015 and beyond,21 and notes the need to strengthen efforts aimed at addressing the rights and needs of women and children with disabilities;

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 newborn, child and maternal health, in this context calls upon States to implement their commitments to preventing and reducing newborn, child and maternal mortality and morbidity, and in that regard takes note with appreciation of commitments in support of the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016–2030), 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 5 years of age;

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, and urges countries to track and report resource allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment;

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 organizations of 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, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, the United Nations summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda, at which the outcome document entitled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” was adopted, 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 reach women and girls, in particular in rural and remote areas;

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, investment frameworks and sector-wide programmes and to articulate specific country-level goals and targets in this domain in accordance with national development strategies, 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, including sustainable 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 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, as set out in its resolution 67/226;

Calls upon the relevant organizations of the United Nations system, within their respective mandates and resources, to ensure that no country is left behind in the implementation of the present resolution;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly at its seventy-second session a report on the implementation of the present resolution, and decides to include in the provisional agenda of its seventy-second session, under the item entitled “Eradication of poverty and other development issues”, the sub-item entitled “Women in development”, unless otherwise agreed in the discussions on the revitalization of the Second Committee.

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