HOWIF supports Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Providing women and girls with equal access to education, health care, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large. Implementing new legal frameworks regarding female equality in the workplace and the eradication of harmful practices targeted at women is crucial to ending the gender-based discrimination prevalent in many countries around the world.

Goal 5 Targets

5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
5.2 Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
5.3 Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation
5.4 Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate
5.5 Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decisionmaking in political, economic and public life
5.6 Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences
5.A Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
5.B Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women
5.C Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels

Nepal has narrowed the gender gap in important socio-economic domains, notably in education, health, and in participation in political decision-making process. Improvement has also been made in eliminating practices that promote gender inequality and violence.
Despite significant progress made in ensuring wage equality for similar work, women’s average wage stands at only 62 percent of that of men’s.
Furthermore, the Gender Inequality Index and Gender Empowerment Measurement stand at 0.49 and 0.57.
On gender parity in labor force participation and political empowerment of women, Nepal has marched ahead, ranking 110th globally on gender gap in 2015.
The ratio of women to men among professional and technical workers is 0.24. However, women’s participation in the cooperative sector is encouraging. In comparison to the government and political sphere, women’s participation in decision-making is better in community levels organizations.
More than a third of the representation is of women in users’ groups, NGOs, private sector and community-based organizations.
Although remarkable progress is made towards participation of women in decision-making at different levels, some sections of population have limited influence on the decisions that affect their lives.
In the elections of 2017, over 40 percent of elected officials were women in local governments, and there is a constitutional guarantee that at least 33 percent of the members of parliament must be women.
Discrimination and violence against women and girls’ remain, despite significant and continuous improvement. More than one fourth (26 percent) of women aged 15-49 year experience physical or sexual violence. Among different forms of violence, domestic violence is predominant, followed by girls trafficking, physical/sexual abuse, social abuses and malpractices such as allegation of witchcraft, Chhaupadi, dowry, early marriage (before the age of 18 years) that is often fatal.
Nepal has the third highest rate of child marriage in South Asia, after Bangladesh and India. Child marriage is still in high prevalence, with 37 percent of women getting married before 18, and 10 percent getting married before the age of 15.
Additionally, in a survey, 26 percent of women reported having experienced physical or sexual violence.
The proposed specific targets for SDG 5 include elimination of wage discrimination for similar work, elimination of physical/sexual violence, eliminating all harmful practices, increasing seats held by women in the national parliament to 40 percent, and increasing women’ share in public service decision making positions by nearly three-fold to 33 percent in 2030 from 11 percent of total public service employees.
The Gender Inequality Index is targeted to decline to 0.05 in 2030 from 0.49 in 2015 while Gender Empowerment Measure is expected to rise to 0.69 by 2030 from 0.57 in 2015.

Source : National Planning Commission, Government of Nepal.