Giving Compass' Take:

• This Brookings brief titled "Transformative Agenda for Women for 2020 and Beyond" details the progress of gender equality in the global community and highlights areas that need significant improvement. 

• How can donors play a role in advancing gender equality at the global scale? 

• Check out the Giving Compass Gender Equality Guide for donors. 

In this brief, we call for the global community to propose a new “Transformative Agenda for Women for 2020 and Beyond” to realize the gains in gender equality to date and to push for advances in areas of lack of progress. We believe U.S. development assistance will be critical to realizing this vision.

Over the past 25 years, we have seen progress in all 12 critical areas as well as some backlash against women. In recent years the #MeToo movement, launched in the U.S., revealed pervasive and widespread sexual violence and harassment in every industry and sector, with ripple effects across the globe. Last year, we also witnessed the unprecedented election of more than 100 women to the U.S. Congress.

Areas of slower progress include political equality, reduction in violence against women, pay equity, legal ownership, economic participation, and access to reproductive health services. Only 23 percent of the world’s parliamentarians are women, and there are only 15 female world leaders. Thirty-five percent of the world’s women have experienced either physical or sexual violence. Globally, a woman earns only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns—at this rate of progress women will not realize pay equity until the year 2069.

Many are claiming that 2020 will be a historic year for women. The time is right for all of us to call for a new, transformative agenda for women in 2020 and beyond. Recent history has shown that transformative change—change that is important and lasting—takes place only when there is both major new investment and attention that rises above partisan concerns.

We call upon the global community to identify key leverage points and actions in each of the following six areas:

  • Political leadership
  • The existential threat of climate change and food insecurity
  • Economic status
  • Reproductive health
  • Gender-based violence
  • Education

Read the full article about transformative agenda for women in 2020 by Madeleine Albright, Mary Robinson, and Peggy Clark at Brookings.