Gender Equality and Poverty Report 2024
Gender Equality and Poverty Report 2024
6/2024/3
Economic and Social Council Distr.: General
12 January 2024
Original: English
ADVANCE UNEDITED VERSION
Summary
The present report provides an analysis of women’s poverty in the context of
intersecting crises and of the financing and institutional arrangements required to
advance towards the full, effective and accelerated implementation of the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action and the gender-responsive implementation of the
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (General Assembly resolution 70/1). It
concludes with recommendations for consideration by the Commission on the Status
of Women.
* E/CN.6/2024/1.
** The present report was submitted for processing after the deadline for technical reasons beyond
the control of the submitting office.
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I. Introduction
1. In accordance with its multi-year programme of work (2021–2024), the
Commission on the Status of Women will consider “Accelerating the achievement of
gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty
and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective” as its priority
theme at its sixty-eighth session in 2024.
2. Over the past several years, the world has faced intersecting crises and shocks.
The combined impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, geopolitical
tensions and war, unsustainable levels of sovereign debt and the cost-of-living crisis
has pushed people into poverty. Concurrently, the acceleration and intensification of
climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation are deepening
poverty and inequality.
3. Women experience higher poverty rates than men, and the gender-poverty gap
is projected to persist into the mid-century. The current food and energy crisis
disproportionately affects women, as the global gender gap in moderate to severe food
insecurity stood at 2.4 percentage points in 2022. 1 Climate change and biodiversity
loss have intense impacts on women and girls, especially those in poor households or
rural communities with greater dependence on natural resources for food, water and
fuel. 2 In the worst-case climate scenario, an additional 158.3 million women and girls
could be pushed into poverty by 2050. 3
4. As women and girls contend with the impacts of climate change and other crises,
they are often forced to move or migrate within and beyond their countries of origin.
It is estimated that women and girls comprise half of internally displaced or stateless
persons worldwide. 4 Women and girls living in humanitarian and fragile contexts face
acute poverty, increased risk of violence and limited prospects for education and
employment. Women and girls in fragile countries and areas are 7.7 times more likely
to live in extreme poverty or on less than $2.15 a day.5
5. The economic and social impacts of those crises are not inevitable. Long-
standing deficiencies within the international financial system have become more
visible in the current polycrisis. 6 Developing countries face higher borrowing costs
and high debt payments, which limit the fiscal space to respond effectively in a crisis.
In 2022 alone, most of the world’s poorest countries saw debt service payments
increase by 35 per cent, crowding out investment in public services. 7
6. Inequality between and within countries is both a driver and consequence of
crisis. It creates a vicious cycle that erodes the potential for a decent quality of life,
with negative impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable countries and people. 8
__________________
1
Audrey Pirzadeh and others, Gendered Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on Poverty,
Productivity and Food Insecurity (New York, United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the
Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), 2023).
2
Isis Alvarez and Simone Lovera, “New times for women and gender issues in biodiversity
conservation and climate justice”, Development, vol. 59 (2016).
3
Ginette Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender
Snapshot 2023 (New York, UN-Women and United Nations, Department of Social and Economic
Affairs, 2023).
4
See [Link]
5
Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
6
United Nations, “Our Common Agenda: policy brief 6 – reforms of the international financial
architecture”, May 2023.
7
United Nations, “UN Secretary-General calls for radical transformation of global financial
system to tackle pressing global challenges”, 17 February 2023.
8
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Crises of Inequality: Shifting Power
for New Eco-Social Contract (Geneva, 2022).
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Economic inequality has increased fragility and uncertainty within countries, spurring
civil unrest, mistrust and political upheaval.
7. It is possible to make policy choices aimed at accelerating progress towards
ending poverty and achieving inclusive, sustainable development for all.
Accomplishing those goals requires investment in a comprehensive set of economic
and social policies aimed at driving women’s full economic participation, supported
by gender-responsive, accountable institutions. An additional $360 billion per year is
needed to achieve gender equality across key Sustainable Development Goals,
including ending poverty and hunger. 9
8. The Secretary-General has called for a Sustainable Development Goal stimulus
to rapidly scale up financing to accelerate progress towards the Goals. The stimulus
requires action in three areas: tackling the high cost of debt and risk of debt distress;
massively increasing affordable and long-term financing issued by multilateral
development banks; and expanding contingency financing. By mobilizing resources
equitably and targeting investments and policies towards ending women’s and girls’
poverty, it is possible to move towards a new development paradigm centred on care
for people and the planet.
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Ababa Action Agenda, the financing for development follow-up process has produced
agreed outcomes addressing the importance of scaling up investment in gender
equality, including through accelerated implementation of gender-responsive
budgeting (E/FFDF/2023/3).
13. In 2023, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change adopted decision 24/CP.27, in which the Parties and
relevant public and private entities were encouraged to “strengthen the gender-
responsiveness of climate finance with a view to further building the capacity of
women … and in order to facilitate simplified access to climate finance for grass-
roots women’s organizations as well as for Indigenous Peoples, especially women,
and local communities”.
14. An evolving normative framework on unpaid care and domestic work has
emerged over the past several years. The Commission on the Status of Women has
recognized the increased demand for unpaid care work arising from the intersecting
crises and has called for measures to reduce and redistribute unpaid care and domestic
work in the pandemic response. In 2023, the General Assembly passed resolution
77/317, in which it proclaimed 29 October as the International Day of Care and
Support, acknowledging the vital role of care in society and highlighting the need to
invest in the care economy.
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18. Women’s and girls’ poverty rates shift across the life course. At higher poverty
thresholds, adolescent girls often fare worse than adolescent boys. Contributing
factors include high fertility rates, single motherhood and early age at marriage.17
Women ages 25 to 34 are 1.2 times more likely to live in extreme poverty than men
owing to their predominant role in providing care. The gender gap continues into
older age: in 2023, 8 per cent of women ages 55 to 59 were living in extreme poverty,
compared to 6.9 per cent of men. 18 The higher likelihood of career interruptions, part-
time employment, lower earnings, concentration in the informal sector and more time
spent on unpaid care work accrue over time, resulting in older women having fewer
assets, savings and social protection benefits.19
19. Households with children are among the poorest, and single parents,
predominantly single mothers with children, face a higher risk of poverty. 20 In 80 per
cent of 59 low- and middle-income countries analysed in 2020, more women than
men lived in slums, where they faced limited access to housing, clean water and
sanitation. 21 By 2050, an estimated 70 per cent of the world’s female population will
live in urban areas, and, if current trends continue, one third will reside in slums or
informal settlements. 22
20. Care work sustains economies and societies but is commonly undervalued and
unrecognized. Women, on average, spend 2.8 hours per day more than men
performing unpaid care and domestic work. 23 The predominant role of women in
unpaid care is a key contributor to their greater propensity to poverty (A/68/293).
Unpaid care and domestic work are particularly challenging for women living in
poverty, who often have limited access to critical time-saving infrastructure such as
water, sanitation and electricity.24 In some countries, a gendered division of labour in
the household can significantly increase care work and further deplete women’s and
girls’ resources. According to research from four countries conducted from 2015 to
2017, women from low-income families who undertook paid and unpaid care work
experienced emotional and physical depletion, working long days and suffering
injuries with no time for rest.25
21. Women living in poverty are time- and income poor. Studies from several
countries indicate that the rate of time poverty is higher among employed women than
employed men in both income-poor and non-income-poor households. 26 In countries
with inadequate social and physical infrastructure, the rate of time poverty is likely
much higher.
__________________
17
UN-Women, “Four facts you need to know about gender and poverty today”, 5 March 2021.
18
Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
19
Ibid.
20
Ana Maria Munoz Boudet and others, “Gender differences in poverty and household composition
through the life-cycle: a global perspective”, Policy Research Working Paper, No. 8360
(Washington, D.C., World Bank, 2018).
21
United Nations Human Settlements Programme and UN-Women, “Harsh realities: marginalized
women in cities of the developing world”, 2020.
22
Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
23
Ibid.
24
Diane Elson, “Reducing women’s poverty through new development strategies”, background
paper prepared for an Expert Group Meeting during the sixty-eighth session of the Commission
on the Status of Women, October 2023.
25
Deepta Chopra and Elena Zambelli, No Time to Rest: Women’s Lived Experiences of Balancing
Paid Work and Unpaid Care Work (2017).
26
Ipek Ilkkaracan and Emel Memis, “Poverty”, in The Routledge Handbook of Feminist
Economics, Gunkel Berik and Ebru Kongar, eds. (Abingdon, United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland, Routledge, 2021).
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22. Lack of access to decent work and economic resources is an important driver of
women’s poverty. Labour markets often reproduce gender inequalities. 27 Globally,
61.4 per cent of women ages 25 to 54 were engaged in the labour force in 2022,
compared with 90.6 per cent of men in the same age range, 28 and the gender gap in
employment has persisted for two decades. 29 In 2019, for each dollar men earned in
labour income, women earned only 51 cents; in low- and lower-middle-income
countries, however, women earned 33 cents and 29 cents on the dollar, respectively.30
Employment gaps, occupational segregation and the higher likelihood of part-time
employment increase income inequality across the life course.
23. Increasing female labour force participation is often seen as a prerequisite for
gender equitable, inclusive growth. Economies are not automatically inclusive,
however, and active employment does not always guarantee women a decent standard
of living. In fact, economic inclusion can be harmful to women living in poverty if it
is forced, precarious, segregated or impoverished (i.e. when earnings are too low for
women to rise above poverty levels). 31
24. In several regions, women are overrepresented in the informal economy, often
working in the most insecure, precarious jobs with little to no protection. The share
of women in informal employment exceeds that of men in 55.5 per cent of countries,
and this is particularly common in low- and lower-middle-income countries. 32 The
informal economy is characterized by low remuneration, poor working conditions and
limited access to social protection and rights at work. Women in informal employment
face a double penalty, receiving on average lower wages than workers in the formal
economy and lower wages than men in general. 33
25. Financial exclusion and lack of access to financial services also intensifies
women’s poverty. Data on financial inclusion in developing economies show that 74
per cent of men have a bank account, compared to 68 per cent of women, as the gap
that had stood at 9 percentage points for several years has narrowed. 34 In low- and
middle-income countries, women are 28 per cent less likely than men to own a mobile
money account. 35 Furthermore, women-owned and women-led enterprises are
confronted with major barriers to accessing financing, including exclusion from
financial institutions or insufficient access to financial services. At the height of the
COVID-19 pandemic, women-owned micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises
had 70 per cent of their trade finance applications totally or partially rejected. 36
Globally, women-owned businesses were 5.9 percentage points more likely to have
experienced temporary business closures during COVID-19 lockdowns than
businesses owned by men, according to a survey covering more than 50 countries.37
__________________
27
Nilüfer Çagatay, “Trade, gender and poverty”, October 2001.
28
Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
29
International Labour Organization (ILO), Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical
Update (Geneva, 2023).
30
ILO, “New data shine light on gender gaps in the labour market”, Spotlight on Work Statistics,
No. 12 (Geneva, 2020).
31
Diane Elson and Marzia Fontana, “Conceptualizing gender-equitable inclusive growth”, in
Gender Equality and Inclusive Growth: Economic Policies to Achieve Sustainable Development,
Diane Elson and Anuradha Seth, eds. (New York, UN-Women, 2019).
32
ILO, Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, 3rd ed. (Geneva, 2018).
33
ILO, Global Wage Report 2018/9: What Lies behind Gender Pay Gaps (Geneva, 2018).
34
Leora Klapper, Dorothe Singer and Saniya Ansar, “Women and financial inclusion”, 2022.
35
Asli Demirgüç-Kunt and others, The Global Findex Database 2021: Financial Inclusion, Digital
Payments and Resilience in the Age of COVID-19 (Washington, D.C., World Bank, 2022).
36
Asian Development Bank (ADB), “2021 trade finance gaps, growth and jobs survey”, ADB
Briefs, No. 192 (October 2021).
37
Markus Goldstein and others, “The global state of small business during COVID-19: gender
inequalities”, World Bank blogs, 8 September 2020.
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sexual harassment at work, violence at home or violence on the streets are unable to
participate on an equal basis in the labour market, which translates into limited or no
access to contributory social security benefits and a higher likelihood of experiencing
poverty, violence and homelessness in old age (A/HRC/53/39).
__________________
47
United Nations, “Our Common Agenda: policy brief 6”.
48
UNDP, “Building blocks out of crisis: the UN’s SDG stimulus plan”, February 2023.
49
United Nations, “A world of debt: a global burden to growing prosperity”, July 2023.
50
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Aggregate Trends of
Climate Finance Provided and Mobilized by Developed Countries in 2013–2020: Climate
Finance and the USD 100 Billion Goal (Paris, OECD Publishing, 2022).
51
Laura Turquet and others, Feminist Climate Justice: A Framework for Action (New York,
UN-Women, 2023).
52
Jayati Ghosh, “The international financial system and women’s poverty”, background paper
prepared for an Expert Group Meeting during the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the
Status of Women, October 2023.
53
Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins, End Austerity: A Global Report on Budget Cuts and
Harmful Social Reforms in 2022–25 (Initiative for Policy Dialogue and others, 2022).
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measures often affect programmes and services that are particularly important for
women living in poverty. As households absorb the shock from cuts to social spending
and public services, women’s unpaid labour becomes an invisible subsidy to the
economy. 54
36. Global tax regimes have affected the fiscal space available to low and middle-
income countries for crisis response and poverty eradication. High levels of illicit
financial flows, including corporate tax evasion, avoidance and abuse, drain vital tax
revenues and deepen poverty and inequality. Recent research indicates that an
estimated 36 per cent of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens globally. If
shifted profits were to be reallocated to their source countries, domestic profits in
developing countries would increase by 5 per cent.55
37. Domestic public resources continue to be the primary source of financing for
public goods and services and for reducing inequality through redistribution. 56 Debt
management and servicing, tax policy and the availability of other sources of
financing affect the fiscal space available for investments in policies and programmes
aimed at addressing women’s and girls’ poverty. 57
38. Tax composition has shifted over the past several decades as exemptions, credits
and tax breaks have been expanded, corporate income and capital income taxes have
been cut, and, in many developing countries, trade tax revenues have fallen and
consumption tax rates have risen significantly. These shifts have gender-differentiated
impacts, given that tax burdens are higher for lower-income groups, where women
are overrepresented. 58
39. For lower-income countries with severely constrained fiscal space, official
development assistance (ODA) continues to be a significant source of financing for
addressing poverty and gender inequality. In 2022, ODA amounted to a total of $204
billion, with one of the highest annual increases ever recorded. 59 The increase,
however, was primarily driven by increased spending on hosting refugees within
donor countries. 60 Even with this growth, the share of ODA in gross national income
reached only 0.36 per cent in 2022, well below the 0.70 per cent committed by
developed economies. As such, ODA remains insufficient to support recipient
countries in their efforts to recover from long-term challenges and compounding
crises. 61 Though the volume of bilateral aid for gender equality consistently increased
over the last decade, such investments plateaued in 2020–2021, and the share of total
aid with gender equality as an objective dropped slightly from 44.5 per cent to 44 per
cent.62
40. While a growing number of green, social and sustainability bonds have been
issued, only about $17 billion in assets are gender-labelled financial products, out of
a global sustainable investment universe of over $40 trillion.63 New and traditional
__________________
54
Jayati Ghosh, Gender Concerns in Debt Relief (London, International Institute for Environment
and Development, 2021).
55
Thomas Tørsløv, Ludvig Wier and Gabriel Zucman, “The missing profits of nations, The Review
of Economic Studies, vol. 90, No. 3 (May 2023).
56
Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2023: Financing Sustainable Transformations
(United Nations publication, 2023).
57
UN-Women, Progress of the World’s Women 2015–2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing
Rights (New York, 2015).
58
Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2023 (United Nations publication).
59
OECD, “ODA levels in 2022: preliminary data – details summary note”, 12 April 2023.
60
OECD, “Foreign aid surges due to spending on refugees and aid for Ukraine”, 12 April 2023.
61
UNCTAD, “Official international assistance insufficient to reach 2030 Agenda.”
62
OECD, “Official development assistance for gender equality and women’s empowerment: a
snapshot”, 24 July 2023.
63
Development Asia, “How to accelerate the growth of the gender bond markets”, 24 July 2023.
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__________________
64
Jessie Yin, “Only 11 per cent of finance ministers and central bank governors are women”,
Atlantic Council, 2 June 2023.
65
UN-Women (2023). “Strengthening public finance management systems for gender equality and
women’s empowerment”, 2023.
66
Naomi Hossain, Celestine Nyamu Musembi and Jessica Hughes, “Corruption,
accountability and gender: understanding the connections”, Primer in Gender and
Democratic Governance, No. 5 (New York, UNDP and UN-Women, 2010).
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ODA. Women’s rights grants accounted for only 0.42 per cent of grants from
progressive private foundations in the United States of America.67
47. A dearth of sex-disaggregated poverty data is a major constraint for
policymakers and gender equality advocates. Only 42 per cent of countries with recent
official statistics on income poverty have data disaggregated by sex. Even where data
are disaggregated, large gender gaps are evident. Among countries producing
multidimensional poverty indicators, only 20 per cent disaggregated those indicators
by sex or by the sex of the head of household. 68
__________________
67
Association for Women’s Human Rights in Development, “Where is the money for feminist
organizing? Data snapshots and a call to action”, 2021.
68
Azcona and others, Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.
69
Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2021 (United Nations publication, 2021).
70
United Nations, “Our Common Agenda: policy brief 6”.
71
Ibid.
72
United Nations, “Our Common Agenda: policy brief 4 – valuing what counts: framework to
progress beyond gross domestic product”, May 2023.
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avenues for decent employment and ensuring the provision of high-quality, accessible
and affordable public services.
51. To mobilize domestic public resources equitably, Governments need to shift the
tax composition towards progressivity by increasing corporate taxation through the
introduction of wealth taxes, taxes on dividends and capital gains taxes while
simultaneously reducing regressive taxes, including consumption taxes. 73
52. It is important to consider the ways in which current and proposed taxation
measures affect informal workers. A first step is to conduct gender analysis to assess
existing sources of taxation and the sex-disaggregation of earnings within the
informal economy. It is equally important to ensure that any taxes and fees paid by
informal workers are not excessive and that they generate goods and services in
return.
53. Resource mobilization must command public trust and be based on the
principles of openness, transparency and equitable treatment, which may include
fostering more equitable representation of women within tax administrations and
active engagement of people, including women living in poverty, in tax-related
decisions. Research indicates that compliance and tax morale are higher when
workers’ organizations are involved with the collection of taxes. 74
54. Revenue raised through progressive taxes must be spent on support for gender-
responsive policies and programmes. Strengthening gender analysis in national and
local budgetary processes is essential to enable governments to estimate costs,
allocate and spend resources for gender equality. Through gender-responsive planning
and budgeting, governments can identify potential gender impacts of budget policies
and decisions and target budget allocations towards policies aimed at supporting
gender equality and addressing women’s poverty. Such analysis should encompass all
spending on public services, infrastructure and social protection; taxation and other
revenue raising measures; and a review of spending outcomes. Strengthening timely
and accessible public data on gender budget allocations and expenditures is central to
these efforts, so that governments and other stakeholders can follow public resource
flows and evaluate the extent to which public investments address the needs and
priorities of women living in poverty. 75
55. For growth to be gender-equitable, it must ensure decent work for both women
and men, giving priority to women living in poverty. Training and opportunities for
women to enter middle- and high-skilled occupations are also required, but the value
of the contributions of women in occupations such as care work also needs to be
reassessed with a view to increasing wages and improving conditions. These measures
are particularly important for women living in poverty.
56. Strong, accountable institutions are essential to ensure that financing is
mobilized equitably and spent in ways that support ending women’s poverty. State
capacity to address women’s poverty depends on technical expertise, availability of
resources, organizational structures and the level of commitment to promoting gender
equality. The presence of champions within public institutions is a crucial driver of
decisions by important and influential actors, such as ministries of finance, to allocate
resources for the implementation of gender equality laws and policies. There is a
__________________
73
Kathleen Lahey, Gender, Taxation and Equality in Developing Countries: Issues and Policy
Recommendations (New York, UN-Women, 2018).
74
Michael Rogan, “Gender, taxation and the informal sector”, expert paper prepared for an Expert
Group Meeting during the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women,
October 2023.
75
Diane Elson, “Reducing women’s poverty”.
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__________________
76
Ibid.
77
Sustainable Development Goal 16: Focus on Public Institutions – World Public Sector Report
2019 (United Nations publications, 2019).
78
Yasmin Bin-Humam, Julia Constanze Braunmiller and Mahmoud Elsaman, “Emerging trends in
national financial inclusion strategies that support women’s entrepreneurship”, Global Indicators
Briefs, No. 16 (World Bank, 2023).
79
Financing for Sustainable Development Report 2022: Bridging the Finance Divide (United
Nations publications, 2022).
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support beyond international organizations and those based in capital cities to reach
local community-level initiatives.
63. Robust and disaggregated data are needed in order to effectively address
women’s poverty and the multidimensional deprivations women face. Governments
should promote transparency and access to timely and accessible data and
information, so that people, including women living in poverty, can take actions
grounded in a knowledge of their rights. Open data and public reporting can help to
make information available in ways that are accessible. Government officials, who
often lack the expertise, time and resources to collect real-time data, are now
recognizing citizen-generated data as a valuable source of information. Multi-
stakeholder approaches have been particularly effective in advancing progress at
ministries and opening space for greater civil society dialogue and influence.
Parliamentary oversight and audit bodies play a key role.
__________________
80
Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz and Diane Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy for Social
Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights (Abingdon, United Kingdom, Routledge, 2016).
81
Özlem Onaran, Cem Oyvat and Eurydice Fotopoulou, “A macroeconomic analysis of the effects
of gender inequality, wages and public social infrastructure: the case of the UK”, Feminist
Economics, vol. 28, No. 2 (2022); and Cem Oyvat and Özlem Onaran, “The effects of social
infrastructure and gender equality on output and employment: the case of South Korea”, World
Development, vol. 158 (October 2022).
82
Ipek Ilkkaracan, “The purple economy framework”, expert paper prepared for an Expert Group
Meeting during the sixty-eighth session of the Commission on the Status of Women, October
2023.
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__________________
83
James Heintz, “Public investments and human investments: rethinking macroeconomic
relationships from a gender perspective”, in Gender Equality and Inclusive Growth, Elson and
Seth, eds. (New York, UN-Women, 2019).
84
Camila Perera and others, “Impact of social protection on gender equality in low- and middle-
income countries: a systematic review of reviews”, Campbell Systematic Reviews, vol. 18, No. 2
(June 2022).
85
United Nations, “United Nations Secretary-General’s SDG stimulus to deliver Agenda 2030,
February 2023.”
86
See [Link]/.
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(d) Support women’s collectives and associations that advocate for decent
work and the sustainable use of natural resources and that mediate in efforts by
women living in poverty to gain access to entitlements and services, to enhance
accountability.
79. In terms of enhancing multidimensional poverty data and statistics,
Governments and other stakeholders should:
(a) Strengthen the capacity of national statistical offices and government
institutions to collect, analyse, disseminate and use data on multidimensional
poverty, disaggregated by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status,
disability, geographical location and other characteristics;
(b) Increase the collection and use of data on social norms and power
related to decision-making, which affect resource and consumption patterns, in
policy and programme design;
(c) Strengthen citizen-generated data to shed light on the challenges faced
by women living in poverty and strengthen opportunities to use data to demand
accountability.
80. In terms of fostering new development strategies towards sustainable economies
and sustainable societies, Governments and other stakeholders should:
(a) Ensure that all development strategies comply with the obligations to
respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of women living in poverty;
(b) Introduce new metrics beyond gross domestic product to capture the
value and contribution of unpaid care work to economic and social progress;
(c) Implement comprehensive, participatory, gender-responsive poverty
eradication policies that address systemic barriers to ensure an adequate
standard of living for women and girls, including through social protection,
public services and sustainable infrastructure;
(d) Significantly scale up investment in the care economy as a source of
decent employment that has the potential to narrow gender gaps, and institute
measures to ensure that women benefit from the transformation of work towards
sustainable economies.
81. The Commission may wish to call upon the United Nations system and other
international organizations, including international financial institutions, to work
collaboratively to support Member States in implementing, measuring and monitoring
the aforementioned recommendations at all levels.
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