Women in Development

A/RES/77/181View PDF

Who created this mandate?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 22cWomen in development, published in 2022.

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?

4 topics

Gender Equality Women in Development Women Workers Women's Employment

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

1 report of the Secretary-General submitted under this mandate, 2024.

2024A/79/210Women 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?

67 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;

Reaffirms that the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls will make a crucial contribution to progress across all the Sustainable Development Goals and targets, that the achievement of full human potential and of sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full human rights and opportunities, that women and girls must enjoy equal access to quality education, economic resources and political participation, as well as equal opportunities with men and boys for employment, leadership positions and decision-making at all levels, that it will work for a significant increase in investments to close the gender gap and strengthen support for institutions in relation to gender equality and the empowerment of women at the global, regional and national levels, that all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls will be eliminated, including through the engagement of men and boys, and that the systematic mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is crucial;

Also reaffirms the commitment to promoting social inclusion in domestic policies and to promoting and enforcing non-discriminatory laws, social infrastructure and policies for sustainable development, as well as to enabling women’s full, equal and effective participation in the economy and decision-making processes and leadership at all levels and in all sectors, and supporting and investing in providing skills development, training, certification, financing and investment opportunities for women;

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, and also emphasizes the need to work towards the full and timely implementation of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, the Doha Declaration on Financing for Development and the Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development;

Reaffirms that achieving gender equality, empowering all women and girls and the full realization of their human rights, including the right to development, are essential to achieving sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and sustainable development, reiterates the need for gender mainstreaming, including targeted actions and investments in the formulation and implementation of all financial, economic, environmental and social policies, and further reaffirms the commitment to adopting and strengthening sound policies and enforceable legislation and transformative actions for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at all levels to ensure women’s equal rights, access and opportunities for participation and leadership in the economy and to eliminate gender-based violence and discrimination in all its forms;

Stresses the importance of the creation by Governments, 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, supporting and investing in women’s employment and enterprises in sectors adversely affected, especially by the COVID-19 pandemic, and disseminating a gender analysis of legislation, policies and programmes related to macroeconomic stability, recovery measures, structural reform, taxation, investments, including foreign direct investment, and all relevant sectors of the economy;

Recognizes the importance of the full engagement of men and boys as strategic partners, allies, agents and beneficiaries of change for the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all 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, the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, the declarations adopted by the Commission on the Status of Women on the occasions of the tenth, fifteenth, twentieth and twenty-fifth anniversaries of the Fourth World Conference on Women and the 2030 Agenda;

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 fulfil their respective commitments to intensify their contributions to the implementation and follow-up of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the outcomes of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly and the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development, as well as the outcomes of their reviews;

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, participatory, comprehensive, gender-sensitive poverty eradication strategies that address social, structural and macroeconomic issues in order to ensure an adequate standard of living for women and girls throughout the life cycle, including through social protection systems;

Reaffirms that universal access to social protection plays a central role in reducing inequality, eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions and promoting opportunities for women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as in the elimination of violence, and reiterates that all women and girls have the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of themselves and their families, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and that motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance;

Urges States to scale up efforts to accelerate the transition of women from informal employment to formal employment, including access to decent work, improved wages, social protection and quality and affordable childcare;

Calls for closing the gender gap in access to productive resources in agriculture, noting with concern that the gender gap persists with respect to many assets, inputs and services, and stresses the need to invest in and strengthen efforts to support the empowerment of all women and girls, in particular rural women, to address their own food and nutritional needs and those of their families, to promote adequate standards of living for them, as well as decent work, and to guarantee their personal health, well-being and security, full access to land and natural resources and access to affordable, low-cost, long-term loans and to local, regional and global markets, taking into account that the prevalence of food insecurity puts the health and lives of women and children at risk;

Recognizes the critical role and contribution of rural women in agricultural development, 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, and in this regard stresses the importance of reviewing agricultural policies and strategies to ensure that the critical role of women 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 famine 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, reaffirms the Rome Declaration on Nutrition and the Framework for Action, and also reaffirms the commitment to devote resources to developing rural and coastal areas and sustainable agriculture and fisheries and supporting smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, herders and fishers in developing countries, particularly the least developed countries;

Stresses the need to take action to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence and discrimination against women and girls, including in the world of work, through the strengthening of institutional mechanisms and legal frameworks, given that violence and discrimination, including multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, against women and girls in private and public spaces both online and offline are a major impediment to the achievement of the empowerment of women and girls and their social and economic development that no country has managed to eliminate, and encourages the adoption of specific preventive measures to protect women and girls, youth and children from violence, abuse and neglect, sexual abuse, exploitation, harassment, trafficking in persons and harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and calls for their full access to justice, effective legal remedies, and health-care and psychosocial services, including protection, rehabilitation and reintegration, taking into account the need to address negative social norms, structural barriers and gender stereotypes that affect women in the world of work and to develop measures to promote the re-entry of victims and survivors of violence into the labour market;

Recognizes that investment in health contributes to reducing inequality and increasing sustainable and inclusive economic growth and to social development, environmental protection, the eradication of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and the realization of the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health for women and girls;

Also recognizes that achieving the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, through, inter alia, equitable and universal access to affordable and quality health-care services and preventive health-care information, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health, is critical to women’s economic advancement and empowerment, that a lack of economic empowerment and independence increases women’s vulnerability to a range of negative consequences, including violence and the risk of contracting HIV and AIDS, and that the neglect of women’s full enjoyment of human rights severely limits their opportunities in public and private life, including the opportunities for receiving an education and for achieving economic and political empowerment;

Expresses deep concern that, globally, women and girls are still the most affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, that they bear a disproportionate share of the caregiving burden and that they are more vulnerable to violence, stigmatization, discrimination, poverty and marginalization from their families and communities as a result of HIV/AIDS, notes that progress towards gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls has been unacceptably slow and that the ability of women and girls to protect themselves from HIV continues to be compromised by physiological factors, gender inequalities, including unequal power relations in society between women and men and boys and girls, and unequal legal, economic and social status, insufficient access to health-care services, including sexual and reproductive health, multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence in the public and private spheres, including trafficking in persons, sexual violence, exploitation and harmful practices, and 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 to ending the HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030;

Also expresses deep concern that the burden of non-communicable diseases continues to rise disproportionately in developing countries, and encourages Governments and all sectors of society to mainstream a gender perspective into the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, which is crucial to understanding and addressing the health risks and needs of women and men of all ages, giving particular attention to the impact of non-communicable diseases on women in all settings, based on data appropriately disaggregated by sex and age;

Recognizes the disproportionate impacts of neglected tropical diseases on women and girls, recalls States’ commitment to end the epidemic of neglected tropical diseases as one of the targets of the 2030 Agenda, and emphasizes the need to strengthen efforts to address it, as part of universal health coverage;

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 prevent and reduce newborn, child and maternal mortality and morbidity, and in this 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;

Encourages Governments, with the support of their development partners, to invest in appropriate infrastructure and other projects, including the provision of water and sanitation for all, to rural areas, coastal areas and urban slums, in order to increase health and well-being, relieve the workload 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 and related challenges, such as water scarcity and unsafe water, disproportionately affect women and girls, including their labour force and school participation rates, with women walking long distances or waiting hours in queues to obtain water, which restricts their time for other activities, such as education and leisure, or for earning a livelihood, and increase their vulnerability to violence, and in this regard calls for the strengthening of efforts to achieve sanitation for all and to end open defecation, through efforts to ensure access to sanitation and hygiene facilities, including menstrual health and hygiene management;

Urges all Governments to eliminate discrimination against women and girls in the field of education, to promote and respect their right to education, ensure their safe and equal access to and encourage their participation in education, throughout their life cycle and at all levels, especially for those who have been left furthest behind, and address gender disparities, including by investing in public education systems and infrastructure, eliminating discriminatory laws and practices, providing universal access to inclusive, equitable and quality education, including free and compulsory primary and secondary education, promoting lifelong learning and training opportunities for all, eliminating female illiteracy and promoting financial and digital literacy, and to address negative social norms and gender stereotypes in education systems, including in curricula and teaching methodologies, that devalue women’s and girls’ education and prevent them from having access to, completing and continuing their education;

Urges Governments to ensure that women and girls have equal access to career development, training, scholarships and fellowships, adopting positive actions to build women’s and girls’ leadership skills and influence and supporting women and girls in diversifying their educational and occupational choices in emerging fields, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics and information and communications technology, and acquiring digital skills, to strive to ensure the completion of early childhood, primary and secondary education and expand vocational and technical education for all women and girls, and acquire the knowledge and skills that can strengthen their resilience and adaptive capacities throughout their life cycle in order to attain high-quality jobs in the sustainable economy, especially in the digital era, and to foster, as appropriate, intercultural and multilingual education for all;

Encourages Governments to adopt and pursue national financial inclusion strategies and gender-responsive strategies to end the structural barriers to women’s equal access to economic and financial resources and to expand peer learning, experience-sharing and capacity-building among countries and regions in this respect;

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 level playing field for women, for example by enacting and enforcing minimum wage legislation and social protection systems and measures, eliminating discriminatory wage practices, achieving equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value, and promoting measures such as public works programmes, in order to enable women to cope with new and recurrent crises and long-term unemployment and provide for recruitment, retention and promotion policies targeting women;

Reaffirms its commitment to diversity in cities and human settlements, to strengthening social cohesion, intercultural dialogue and understanding, tolerance, mutual respect, gender equality, innovation, entrepreneurship, inclusion, identity and safety, and the dignity of all people, as well as to fostering liveability and a vibrant urban economy and to taking steps to ensure that local institutions promote pluralism and peaceful coexistence within increasingly heterogeneous and multicultural societies;

Recognizes that unremunerated work, including unpaid care and domestic work, plays an essential role in improving well-being in the household and in the functioning of the economy as a whole, and urges Member States to promote shared responsibility within the household and to adopt and implement legislation and policies, as appropriate, that are designed to promote the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities and that recognize, value, assess, reduce and redistribute women’s disproportionate share of unpaid and domestic work and the work burden of women engaged in unpaid work, including domestic and care work, including through sustained investments in the care economy, 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, affordable and quality social services, childcare and care facilities for children and other dependants, and to ensure that both women and men have access to inclusive, gender-responsive social protection systems and maternity or paternity, parental and other forms of leave and allowances and are not discriminated against when availing themselves of such benefits;

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 implement labour market policies to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, to implement measures to achieve equal pay for equal work or for work of equal value as well as to encourage women’s full participation in the formal economy, in particular in economic decision-making and resource allocation, and to take measures to increase women’s access to productive resources and assets, including digital technology, land, property and financial services, including microfinance, as appropriate;

Encourages the United Nations system and donor countries to support States in increasing their investments in gender-responsive policies and programmes, such as providing financial services and products to women’s groups, including women’s enterprise funds, in order to promote entrepreneurship, full employment and decent work for women, and in delivering social protection and social services;

Urges Governments to develop, adequately resource and implement active labour market policies to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including the full participation of women and men in rural, coastal 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, to enact or strengthen and enforce laws and regulatory frameworks that ensure equality and prohibit discrimination against women, in particular in the world of work, including their participation in and access to labour markets, inter alia, laws and frameworks that prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy, motherhood, marital status or age, as well as other multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, to take appropriate measures to ensure that women, throughout the life cycle, have equal opportunities for decent work in the public and private sectors, while recognizing that temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women should not be considered discrimination, to address the root causes of gender inequality, gender stereotypes and unequal power relations between men and women and to provide, as appropriate, effective means of redress and access to justice in cases of non-compliance and accountability for violations and abuses of human rights;

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 unpaid care and domestic work, to promote gender-responsive social protection initiatives and measures for women and girls and to support and encourage the scaling-up of existing good practice programmes and initiatives, including to assess and address the impact of information and communications technology, digitalization and digital markets on the labour market;

Reaffirms the commitment to women’s equal rights and opportunities in political and economic decision-making and resource allocation, to the removal of all barriers that prevent women from being full participants in the economy, and to 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, sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace, including by supporting the women’s empowerment principles established by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) and the United Nations Global Compact, and encourages increased investment in female-owned companies or businesses;

Encourages Member States to pursue, by effective means, policies of preventing and eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace, including in digital contexts, with an emphasis on effective legal, preventive and protective measures, including raising awareness regarding the rights of women who are victims of sexual harassment in the workplace or those who are at risk of sexual harassment;

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;

Stresses the importance of mobilizing and allocating resources to develop and implement policies and programmes, to support women’s entrepreneurship and to support opportunities for new women entrepreneurs, which will 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 technologies, 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 the international community, including Governments, and all relevant stakeholders, including the entities of the United Nations system, international financial institutions, other intergovernmental bodies, regional and national development banks, domestic financial institutions, credit unions, multi-stakeholder partnerships and relevant non-governmental organizations, as appropriate, to further develop financial literacy and financial education programmes for women and girls that include an emphasis on the impact of finance on sustainable development, as appropriate, in order to ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to access financial services and financial products, in particular women farmers and those working in micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises;

Encourages all Governments to work towards full and equal access to formal financial services, financial resources and financial products 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, also 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, regions 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 Governments and all relevant stakeholders 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 entities in 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, encourages the strengthening of existing and emerging microcredit institutions and their capacities, including through the support of international financial institutions, and urges Governments to ensure that microfinance programmes focus on the development of savings products that are safe, convenient and accessible to women and that support women’s efforts to retain control over their savings;

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, providing gender-responsive programmes and instruments that enhance the financial inclusion of migrants and their families in order to end structural barriers to women’s equal access to economic resources, 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 that the positive contributions of migrant women and girls, in particular women migrant workers, have the potential to foster inclusive growth and sustainable development in countries of origin, transit and destination, further underlines the value and dignity of migrant women’s labour in all sectors, including the labour of domestic and care workers, and concerned that many migrant women, particularly those who are engaged in informal employment, are especially vulnerable to abuse and exploitation;

Further recognizes the special needs of all women and girls living in areas affected by complex humanitarian emergencies and humanitarian crises, and that the forced displacement of people threatens to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades and has particular negative impacts on women and girls that need to be comprehensively assessed and addressed;

Encourages Member States and the United Nations system to ensure systematic attention to, recognition of and support for the crucial role of women at all levels and at all stages 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, full, equal and meaningful participation and engagement in political and economic decision-making and by preventing, combating and eliminating sexual and gender-based violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations, and, in this regard, to promote and facilitate an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes;

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 that labour markets and work environments are open, inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities, and to take positive measures to increase the employment of women with disabilities and to eliminate discrimination on the basis of disability with regard to all matters concerning all forms of employment, including recruitment, retention and promotion, and the provision of safe, secure and healthy working conditions, in consultation with relevant national mechanisms and organizations of persons with disabilities, as noted in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, including by promoting access to inclusive education systems, skills development and vocational and entrepreneurial training, in order to enable women with disabilities to attain and maintain maximum independence and reach their full potential, and notes the need to strengthen efforts aimed at addressing the rights and needs of women and children with disabilities;

Urges 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, stresses the need to address the challenges for women and girls posed by climate change, and emphasizes the importance of gender mainstreaming in developing and implementing disaster risk reduction, preparedness, response and recovery strategies, taking into account the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030;

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-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 this 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, in cooperation with the United Nations system and other relevant international organizations, upon the request of Governments, to collect, analyse and disseminate high quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by sex, age and disability and statistics and to assess the impact of associated policy measures on women’s:

Employment, entrepreneurship and access to decent work and social protection;

Unpaid care and domestic work through regular time-use surveys and the establishment of satellite accounts to assess the contribution of such work to national income;

Informal employment, including agricultural work, disaggregated by sex, income, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability and geographic location;

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;

Urges Member States to fully integrate gender equality strategies into national sustainable development frameworks so as to promote accelerated action and greater policy coherence, recognizing that achieving gender equality will require both targeted gender-responsive action and the systemic mainstreaming of a gender perspective into all policies and programmes;

Encourages States to allocate 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, particularly UN-Women and United Nations country teams, to support national efforts in this regard;

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

Encourages States, the United Nations system and donor countries to strengthen and implement 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 into their practices, including joint coordination and accountability mechanisms;

Stresses that there is a need for all donors to maintain and deliver on their existing respective 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 the empowerment of all women and girls;

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 and the funding of targeted activities and enhanced dialogue between donors and partners, and also to strengthen the mechanisms needed to measure effectively the resources allocated to incorporating gender perspectives in all areas of development assistance;

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, in particular 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, particularly for women and girls, 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 Member States, the organizations of the United Nations system and non-governmental organizations to accelerate their efforts and to provide adequate resources to increase the voice and full, equal and effective 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;

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 and girls, in particular in rural and remote areas;

Recognizes the ongoing intergovernmental efforts to achieve gender equality and the 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 and in line with Article 101 of the Charter of the United Nations, with due regard to the representation of women from developing countries, 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, and in this regard notes the Secretary-General’s system-wide strategy on gender parity;

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 programme countries, at their request, in the integration of 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 all entities of the United Nations development system to continue to promote gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by enhancing and accelerating gender mainstreaming through the full implementation of the United Nations System-wide Action Plan on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, in accordance with resolution 75/233;

Reaffirms the commitment at the very heart of the 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind and commits to taking more tangible steps to support people in vulnerable situations and the most vulnerable countries and to reach the furthest behind first;

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

Paragraph content is machine-extracted from UN documents. For authoritative content, please refer to the official UN document.

No headings found in this document.

Who created this mandate?

What other versions does this mandate have?

What subjects does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What does this mandate say?

Table of contents