By Forest Whitaker
March 8, 2016
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day—an occasion that has been celebrated in certain parts of the world for over 100 years—is “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality.” 2030 is a reference to the international community’s target for achieving the recently adopted Agenda for Sustainable Development—17 goals that will make our world and our institutions more fair and inclusive. These goals range from ending poverty to guaranteeing a quality education for every boy and girl to combatting climate change to building peaceful societies that ensure justice for all to achieving universal gender equality.
One of the crucial features that connects all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is that they will require collective action from all nations and all citizens everywhere in the world. We will not be able to realize any of these lofty objectives unless we work together. In that sense, SDG 5—achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls—is both an end and a means for our global agenda. Ending discrimination and violence against women, eliminating harmful practices such as forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring that women have equal opportunities and are full participants in the political process are all essential human rights that we as an international community must strive toward.
But empowering women and girls everywhere is not only an end in and of itself. Achieving gender equality will also be an important tool that will allow us to realize the other SDGs and to make progress in many areas related to peacebuilding and development. In order to fulfill the ambitious global agenda we have set out for ourselves, we will need the support, brainpower, and passion of as many people as possible. Ensuring that women are equal partners across the board, including in the pursuit of the Sustainable Agenda, will better enable communities around the world to combat poverty, to end hunger, to promote health, to create clean and sustainable energy alternatives, and to achieve many other important objectives.
Indeed, research shows that, across a wide range of outcomes, our societies are stronger when women participate fully in the economic, policymaking, and peacekeeping processes. According to UN Women—an agency devoted to promoting gender equality—a comparative analysis of 134 nations reveals that countries with greater gender equality have economies that grow faster. In the United States, Fortune 500 companies with the highest share of women in their upper management had returns that were up to 34 percent higher than many of their counterparts. Studies from India and Norway suggest that cities with more women on municipal councils often enact more-effective social policies, from launching more clean-water initiatives to achieving a higher rate of childcare coverage. And, in communities with a female presence in their police force, individuals were more likely to actually report sexual assaults.
Granted, for many of these results, it is difficult to say which way the causation runs. But what is absolutely clear is that, in places where women are empowered, everyone does better. This means that achieving gender equality is not simply a women’s issue. All of us will benefit when women across the planet become equal 50-50 partners in our economies and our governments. And all of us have a role to play in making this a reality.
That’s why promoting gender equality is such a crucial part of the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative’s work. In our programs around the world, we make every attempt to recruit a gender-balanced group of participants, both so that our peacemakers are truly representative of the populations they work in and to provide strong role models for girls and young women in our communities of action who demonstrate that women can and must take part in the peacebuilding process. Our Community Learning Centers, which provide literacy and computer classes free to the public, hold certain sessions targeted specifically toward women in order to help close the education gap between men and women in these countries. And in South Sudan, WPDI has partnered with UN Women to educate our program participants on how they can advocate for gender equality and break down harmful social norms that hold women back.
This International Women’s Day, I am proud to recognize our youth peacemakers—men and women alike—for all they have done to help girls and young women in their communities realize their full potential. Their example makes me hopeful that the next generation of citizens and leaders around the globe will realize the objectives that we have set for ourselves with the Agenda for Sustainable Development and make our societies more equitable and inclusive—for women, and for us all.