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The Save-the-World Clock - Part 4
 Elizabeth Dickinson - Foreign Policy
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September 23, 2010
| | (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images) | |
GOAL: PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN
Target: The aim here is to level the playing field for women, beginning from childhood, by enrolling equal percentages of boys and girls in school. Global leaders are charged with creating more opportunities for more women in politics and the workplace as well.
Reality: Progress clearly isn't moving fast enough to meet this goal. Less than a third of all 171 countries monitored have achieved equal enrollment of girls and boys in school.
There are two main explanations for why the world is falling short here. The first is that women's empowerment is more fungible and more culturally fraught than many of the other goals. "What's coming into play is the complexity of change," says Thoraya Obaid, head of the United Nations Population Fund, noting that women's issues aren't solved with technical fixes but rather require major behavioral and cultural shifts. There is no NGO or donor who can do that, she notes; "change can only come from within."
The second explanation is that women have not been a political priority. For the duration of this 10-year experiment, politicians have tended to focus on one goal at a time, says Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and advisor to the U.N. secretariat on the MDGs. "Every year there's been one" goal that's in fashion, he notes. And women haven't been the "it" thing until this year, when they will take center stage for the first time. (The newfound focus follows a wake-up call from data showing the world making the least progress on gender equality of any of the goals.)
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