The 360 billion dollar question
Farida Akhter || Saturday 09 March 2024 ||
THE goal of gender equality is lagging. According to Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2023, there is an alarming ‘$360 billion annual deficit’ in spending on gender equality measures. The reported deficit is quite striking to know in 2024, when we have only six years left before the 2030 deadline for the achievement of sustainable goals.
Is the deficit because of any financial crisis the UN or the sponsoring countries are facing, or is the money being used for other purposes? To understand this, let us look at another striking fact. According to preliminary Israeli estimates for November 2023, the war on Gaza would cost the state budget 200 billion shekels ($51 billion). US military aid to Israel exceeded $3.8 billion in 2023. The value of military spending globally has grown steadily in the past years and reached 2.24 trillion US dollars in 2022 due to the Russia-Ukraine war. These expenditures result in deaths, injuries, suffering for people, starvation, hunger, malnutrition, unemployment, and most importantly, gross violations of human rights. These also result in creating more gender inequalities and violence against women. Shouldn’t we contrast the two situations? There is no deficit of funding for killing people, but funds are in deficit to improve the situation of gender inequality. It is a shame.
The United Nations theme for International Women’s Day 2024 is ‘Invest in women: Accelerate progress’. Why this theme? As we know, the Sustainable Development Goals must be achieved by 2030. A joint annual update by UN Women and the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs shows the achievement of SDG5 on gender equality. Empowering all women and girls will face challenges because of the deficit in funding for gender equality measures. The UN women identified the context with five key areas for joint action. These are:
- Investing in women is a human rights imperative and a cornerstone for building inclusive societies.
- More than 342 million women and girls may be pushed to live below poverty by 2030.
- Seventy-five percent of countries will curb public funding by 2025, which will impact women negatively.
- The current economic system, exacerbating poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation, needs to be shifted to a green economy and a care-society.
- Feminist change-makers receive a meagre 0.13 per cent of official development support.
Will filling the financial gap of $360 million help solve the problem? Is it merely a financial issue? The key areas indicate that the problems are more than just making funds available for investing in women. The neoliberal policies that are imposed on developing countries have destroyed the policies and institutions of the state, which were to remain responsible for vulnerable sections of people, particularly women. They were in charge of providing health, education, and social security measures. In the name of ’mainstreaming women’ traditional social, economic, and cultural relations and linkages have been drastically broken to make sure women appear in the global and domestic markets as cheap labour for export-oriented industries. Agriculture was transformed into industrial production to release women into the industrial sector. Human rights were violated, along with economic exploitation in all spheres. The violence against women increased and changed its forms from domestic to structural violence as more women appeared in public spheres and demanded their rights. Poverty and inequality are continuously rising despite more income-earning opportunities being created. Access to health, education, and social services further shrank. Climate change and environmental degradation are caused by the fossil-fuel-based industrial lifestyle and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few corporations. Every year, the Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC fails to reach a consensus on carbon emission reduction, mainly due to the non-cooperation of the rich countries. Developed countries refuse to limit the consumption of fossil fuels. They developed a culture of waste. Women in poorer countries are bearing the brunt disproportionately due to climate change, which is happening rapidly.
Given the unequal economic and power relations, the rhetoric of shifting to a green economy and to a care-society at best performs the role of sugar-coated promises. But business goes on as usual. Agroecological practices are destroyed and replaced by industrial food production, and a few transnational corporations control the global food chain. The small-scale farmers are marginalised, and so are the women around the world. To create a green economy, massive support is needed for farming, fishing, pastoral, and indigenous communities worldwide. Women constitute at least half of these communities and are the primary source of labour power. They are the providers of food. They preserve biodiversity and maintain the seeds. These communities deserve support to have an impact on gender equality.
Globally, feminist change-makers and thousands of women’s organisations are working at local, national, regional, and international levels. Despite the importance of SDG5 among the 17 SDGs, it is shameful that feminist changemakers are marginalised at the official level of development support. The reduction of gender inequality is not just a mechanical intervention; it is a long process that has to be carried out among the communities of women. It needs to change the patriarchal mindset of policymakers at all levels. It is clear that global policymakers suffer from patriarchal values and have failed to recognise the crucial role that feminist changemakers are playing in achieving gender equality.
Nevertheless, women continue to expect the role of a catalyst from UN systems. But the UN theme ‘Invest in women: Accelerate Progress’ is too simplistic and ambitious for achieving gender equality, or SDG5, by 2030. Who will invest in women? The big corporations are ready to control the UN system, as women’s labour is still needed. The World Economic Forum is concerned about the lack of access for millions of women to healthcare, treatment, and support they need.
On International Women’s Day 2024, the UN emphasises the need for financial resources to achieve gender equality. However, it remains a billion-dollar question whether official development support will at all meet such deficits or whether these will be handed over to the private sector through the World Economic Forum, which only wants women to be ‘healthy’ enough to be productive and boost the global economy.
Will the global forces that fund Israel to bomb Gaza women, children, and men divert their money to the cause of achieving gender equality? There will not be any deficit in financing gender equality if they stop killing women and children in Gaza and other countries in the name of war.
In what follows, on International Women’s Day, March 8, we express our solidarity with the Free Palestine struggle, the women in Gaza, and Palestine as a whole.
Published: New Age: 8 March, 2024. 'The 360 billion dollar question'
Farida Akhter is the executive director of UBINIG and organiser of Nayakrishi Andolon.