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SDG Five, Target Four
  • August 10, 2018/
  • Posted By : Susan Markham/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Economic Empowerment , Gender Equality , Sustainable Development Goals , Uncategorized , Women

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this blog post, we will focus on SDG5 Target 4, which focuses on the value of unpaid care and domestic work and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family.

The prevalence and invisibility of unpaid care work in the U.S. and abroad makes acknowledging and tracking data critical to developing policy solutions.  UN Women’s “Progress of the World’s Women Report” acknowledges that “Domestic work makes all other work possible”—and this is true regardless of whether that work comes from domestic workers or unpaid family caregivers. The labor of domestic workers is critical to the function and growth of national and global economies.” (Source)

Unpaid care and domestic work are barriers to reaching gender equality as they reinforce discriminatory gender stereotypes that force women to stay in the home and limits participation in the public sphere, (Source) and contributes to the persistent gender gaps in labor force participation, activity rates, and wages. In terms of numbers, women comprise the majority of domestic workers, accounting for 80 percent of all workers in the sector globally; which means that approximately 55 million women participate in domestic work. (Source) There are at least two million domestic workers in the United States, and most of them are African American or immigrant women.

Around the world, women spend two to ten times more time on unpaid care work than men. (Source) According to a 2014 OECD study, women and men in the United States also spend their time differently. While men spent an average of 19 minutes per day caring for a family member, women spent 41 minutes. While men spent an average of 82 minutes per day doing “routine housework”, women spent 126 minutes. (Source)

One way to recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work is by creating more public services that can take care of the family care and household duties that are now disproportionately done by women. The United States remains the only country in the developed world that does not mandate employers offer paid leave for new mothers, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Twenty-five years ago President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which included a provision giving eligible workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child. (Source) Because of the lack of support at the federal level, states and the private sector are now starting to address the issue. As of May 2018, twenty-one states had pending legislation for paid leave laws, in addition to the five states and District of Columbia that have paid family leave laws already. (Source)

Further, the U.S. Government also does not provide for child care, and quality child care is often very expensive. In a 2016 report, the cost of infant child care in 49 states plus the District of Columbia exceeded seven percent of the state median income for a two-parent family. (Source) Daycare is also often hard to find. A report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), found that 51 percent of the population in 22 states resides in “childcare deserts.” In those neighborhoods, the number of children under age five outnumber available daycare slots more than three to one. (Source)

Another way to reach this target of Goal 5 is through the provision of infrastructure and social protection and the prevention of abuse of those who work in the care sector.  Of the 67 million domestic workers worldwide, 60 million are excluded from social security coverage. In the U.S., while the infrastructure for domestic work, such as access to clean water and availability of household appliances, generally exists, laws protecting domestic workers are often not enforced, or domestic workers are excluded from certain legal protections. (Source) As a result, beginning with New York in 2010, eight U.S. states (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon and California and New York) have passed Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which protect workers from racial discrimination and sexual harassment, provides for one day off a week, and overtime and paid leave. Other states have yet to catch up. (Source)

Finally, in order to reach this SDG target, governments can actively promote shared responsibility for care and domestic work. From what I can find, the U.S. government has never had a campaign to increase the burden sharing for unpaid care and domestic responsibilities. There was a three- year “Make it Work” campaign centered around the 2016 U.S. elections that asked candidates to focus on child care, pre-Kindergarten and elder care; pay transparency and the fight for a higher, national minimum wage; as well as paid family and medical leave, earned sick days, fair scheduling, and workplace fairness for pregnant women. Family Values@Work is a network of coalitions in 21 states working to pass policies that value families at work such as paid sick days and affordable family leave.  These policies are not only good for individual women and families, but provide support on a policy level for a more equitable division of labor and family responsibility.


SDG Five, Target Three
  • April 23, 2018/
  • Posted By : Susan Markham/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Development , Gender Equality , Sustainable Development Goals

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this, we will focus on SDG5 Target 3: Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation.

Unfortunately, data on these critical issues is not regularly collected in the United States. While we believe that less than 5 percent of girls in the United States are married before the age of 16 and that female genital mutilation is rare or limited to ethnic minority enclaves, we do not know for sure.

Early, Forced and Child Marriage:  At the federal level, there is no law against child, early and forced marriage because laws on the age of marriage in the United States are set at the state level. Twenty-seven states have no minimum age for marriage; four states allow girls as young as 13 or 14 years old to marry; and in many states, 16 and 17 year olds can marry with parental consent alone. According to data compiled by Unchained At Last, at least 207,468 minors married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2015. This likely does not reflect the breadth of the issue because ten states provided no or incomplete statistics.  A few other nuances:

  • Eight-seven percent of the minors who married across the country between 2000 and 2015 were girls, with the majority aged either 16 or 17.
  • More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences. (Source)

There have been some advocacy campaigns to set or increase the age of marriage at the state level to match the age of consent for sex. However, in 2017, the Governor of New Jersey rejected legislation that would have banned marriage before age 18, without exceptions. “An exclusion without exceptions would violate the cultures and traditions of some communities in New Jersey based on religious traditions,” the Republican governor wrote. (Source)   

Globally, one third of girls in the developing world are married before the age of 18 and one in nine are married before the age of 15. In 2012, 70 million women aged 20-24 had been married before the age of 18. If present trends continue, in the next ten years, 150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday. While countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage are concentrated in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa, due to population size, the largest number of child brides reside in South Asia. (Source)

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): A federal law making it illegal to perform FGM was passed in 1996, and was amended in 2013 to make it illegal to knowingly transport a girl out of the U.S. to inflict FGM abroad. Since 1990, the estimated number of girls and women in the U.S. who have undergone or are at risk of the practice has more than tripled. This increase is due to rapid growth in the number of immigrants from countries where FGM is a common practice.  These girls and women are concentrated in California, New York and Minnesota. Though at-risk girls and women are thought to live in every state but Hawaii, only 25 states have enacted laws against FGM. Prosecution under these laws depends on the age of the victim; who performed the procedure; whether the victim was taken out of the country for FGM; and, whether the accused uses cultural reasons as a defense. Punishments include as much as 30 years in prison and fines that reach $250,000. The first prosecution  in the U.S. did not occur until 2017 when two Michigan doctors and the wife of one of the doctors were charged with performing the banned procedure on two 7-year-old girls. (Source) There has been some discussion about more formal data collection about the incidence of FGM in the U.S. with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally, an estimated 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone FGM in the countries where the practice is concentrated. Furthermore, there are an estimated 3 million girls at risk of undergoing female genital mutilation every year. The practice has been documented in 30 countries, mainly in Africa, as well as in the Middle East and Asia. Some forms of FGM  have also been reported in other countries, including among certain ethnic groups in South America. (Source)


SDG Five, Target One
  • January 11, 2018/
  • Posted By : Susan Markham/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Development , Gender Equality , Sustainable Development Goals

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is a stand alone goal focused on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.  There are nine targets for Goal 5.

Here, we will focus on SDG5, Target 1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.

It is important to examine the U.S. legal framework that the U.S. to achieve gender parity, as well as the gaps that exist in that framework.  While the U.S. does have both federal and state laws and policies to address discrimination based on sex or gender, there is not a comprehensive or constitutional framework for gender equality.

The first gap is that the U.S. is not a party to CEDAW, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women which is often described as an international bill of rights for women, and was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly.  CEDAW has been ratified by 189 states.  There are only six other UN member states that have not ratified CEDAW:  Iran, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and the Vatican.

President Jimmy Carter signed CEDAW in 1980, but despite numerous advocacy campaigns, the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified CEDAW. When ratifying the Convention, countries commit to undertake a series of measures to end discrimination against women in all forms. CEDAW is the only human rights treaty which affirms the reproductive rights of women, and targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. Countries that have ratified or acceded to the Convention are committed to submit national reports, at least every four years, on measures they have taken to comply with their treaty obligations.

Further, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution has not been ratified.  The ERA would ensure that rights guaranteed by the Constitution apply equally to everyone, regardless of their sex. After the 19th Amendment affirming women’s right to vote was ratified in 1920, suffragist leader Alice Paul introduced the ERA in 1923. In 1972, the ERA was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. The original seven-year time limit was extended by Congress to June 30, 1982, but at that deadline, the ERA had been ratified by only 35 states, three states short of the 38 required to amend the Constitution. The ERA has been re-introduced in every Congress since the deadline.

Another framework for the U.S. to consider is an overarching national plan to advance gender equality. Such a plan would provide guidance to help the government, in conjunction with non-governmental organizations, strategically work towards greater equality. The U.S. government already has several gender oriented action plans, such as the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, which outlines how U.S. foreign assistance programs will help other countries increase women’s leadership, and the Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence. What’s needed is a concerted effort to knit these strategies together with other strategies and plans to advance the empowerment of women and girls, so that work is driven toward one set of goals.

This would complement the many, individual pieces of legislation focused on ending discrimination against women in the U.S.

  • The Equal Pay Act (1963) made it illegal for employers to pay men more than women performing the same job.
  • Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, sex, or ethnic origin.
  • The Fair Housing Act (FHA) (1968) prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on sex among other characteristics.
  • Title IX of the Education Amendments Act (1972) prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs.
  • The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) (1974) guarantees an equal opportunity to obtain credit and prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of sex among other characteristics.
  • The Pregnancy Discrimination Act (1978) prohibits employment discrimination against female workers who are (or intend to become) pregnant, including discrimination in hiring, failure to promote, and wrongful termination.
  • The Affordable Care Act (2010) stopped the discriminated by insurance companies against women in coverage and cost, however, that provision, among others, may be repealed.

Looking at the big picture, these laws in the U.S. are a patchwork and gaps, such as with political representation, remain.

Overall, the United States ranks 49th out of 144 countries with regard to the gender-based gaps that exist in access to economic resources and opportunities, according to the 2017 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap report.  There are ongoing advocacy efforts to have the U.S. ratify CEDAW and pass the ERA and send it back to the states for ratification.


SDG Targets
  • December 12, 2017/
  • Posted By : Susan Markham/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Gender Equality , Sustainable Development Goals , Uncategorized

In 2016, countries agreed to seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including ones focused on ending poverty, and addressing  hunger, education gaps, clean water, economic growth, and climate change. (Link to full list of goals)  In order to measure progress towards meeting the 17 goals, there are 169 overall targets. .  

Goal 5 is a stand alone goal focused on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls. Goal 5 has nine targets, spanning the need to end discrimination against women and girls and gender-based violence, to ensure equal access to education, and equal participation in public and economic life. Specifically, the targets ask us collectively to:

  1. End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere;
  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;
  3. Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation;
  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. Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life;
  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;
  7. 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;
  8. Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women; and,
  9. 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.

These targets are not indicators per se, and do not create a new reporting framework. On the contrary, the United Nations encourages governments and organizations to use the SDGs to guide their activities. Reporting on progress towards these overarching and important goals should be done using already existing frameworks and indicators that best suit each context, organization and issue.

In this space, we will continue to report on — and track — efforts to measure the progress of the United States towards Goal 5. We will also share other interesting information around the topic. Your thoughts and additional materials may be sent to info@smashstrategies.com. We look forward to collaborating with you.


Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
  • December 12, 2017/
  • Posted By : Susan Markham/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), otherwise known as the Global Goals, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The SDGs came into effect in January 2016, and were created following the largest consultation program in the history of the United Nations. Using the SDG framework, governments, the private sector, civil society and individual citizens are working together to reach the targets set out by 2030. The SDGs follow and expand upon the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were agreed to in 2001 and expired in 2015. There is broad agreement that, while the MDGs provided a framework for governments to develop policies and overseas aid programs, which were designed to end poverty and improve the lives of those living in poverty, they were too narrow.

There are seventeen SDG goals, including ones focused on ending poverty, and addressing hunger, education gaps, clean water, economic growth, climate change and of course, gender equality. (Link to full list of goals)

Goal 5 focuses solely on achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls, but many of the other goals also have targets to measure impact on women and girls. Goal 5 outlines the following:

  • Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.
  • 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.
  • While the world has achieved progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment under the Millennium Development Goals (including equal access to primary education between girls and boys), women and girls continue to suffer discrimination and violence in every part of the world.

In this space, we will report on — and track — efforts to measure the progress of the United States towards Goal 5. We will also share other interesting information around the topic. Your thoughts and additional materials may be sent to info@smashstrategies.com. We look forward to collaborating with you.


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