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Engendering pro-poor change: Putting gender at the heart of the MDGs

23 September 2008 08:00-10:30 (GMT+00) - Public event, New York

  • The objective of this event is to highlight the importance of employing a gender lens to better understand the development challenges underpinning the MDGs. This event, involving speakers from Africa and South Asia who are at the heart of gender and policy action, will focus on raising the visibility of gender, equality and women’s empowerment as a linchpin for MDG achievement from Goal 1 to 8.

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    Speaker:
    Ms Rasheda K Chowdhury - Minister for Primary and Mass Education, Women and Children and Cultural Affairs, Bangladesh
    Yassine Fall - UNIFEM Senior Economic Adviser to the UN Millennium Project as Senior Policy Adviser on Gender Equality
    Pernille Falck- Head of Section for the Department for Africa, Foreign Affairs of Denmark
    Dr Nicola Jones - Research Fellow, ODI
    Discussant:
    Prof David Hulme - Associate Director, CPRC
    Chair:
    Ms Rachel Mayanja - Special Advisor to Secretary-General on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

     

  • An ODI and Chronic Poverty Research Centre public event.
The Millennium Development goals (MDGs) are eight development goals established in 2000 by the international community aimed to be achieved by the year 2015. With many of the goals off-track to meeting the target, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon is convening a High-level Event on the MDGs on 25 September in New York. The event will bring together world leaders and the development community to accelerate the progress in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
Gender is a crucial cross-cutting theme that needs to be considered as part of the achievement of all the eight Millennium Development Goals.  Thus, to ensure that there are more partnership events for the MDG Summit in September that specifically addresses gender equality issues, ODI is hosting a gender side event with support from the Foreign Ministry of Denmark.
ODI has recently launched a new programme on Social Development in which gender is a key area of research, and researchers across the institute have and are undertaking research on a range of gender-related themes, from health and immunisation policy to trade, and from poverty reduction and social protection to agriculture.
The objective of this event is to highlight the importance of employing a gender lens to better understand the development challenges underpinning the MDGs. Policy dialogue on the MDGs needs to recognise that notwithstanding the importance of MDG 3 (parity in education and women’s political representation) and MDG5 (reducing maternal mortality and promoting reproductive health), gender dynamics of power, poverty and vulnerability cut across all the goals.  This event, involving speakers from Africa and South Asia who are at the heart of gender and policy action, will focus on raising the visibility of gender, equality and women’s empowerment as a linchpin for MDG achievement from Goal 1 to 8. Particular emphasis will be placed on discussing possible policy solutions at the international, national and local levels.