"The truth is that we have never been on track to achieve ... gender equality globally by 2030."
This is the lapidary sentence with which Melinda French Gates opens the latest Goalkeepers report, published on September 13 by her philanthropic foundation.
2030, the deadline set by the United Nations for achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined in 2015, which 193 countries have committed to meeting.
And among which is, therefore, objective number 5: to achieve gender equality on the planet.
This will not happen before 2108, at the earliest, three generations later than hoped, according to the same report.
Its authors have reviewed a sum of precise data relating to various indicators of the place of women in societies, their participation in political and economic life, including their access to education or health.
“Today, all this
data
screams one thing: gender equality seems increasingly out of reach,” writes Melinda French Gates.
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The pandemic, an ideal false culprit
The global health crisis has had an undeniable impact on the lives of women around the world, even more than on that of men - mental burden, exhaustion, loss of work, difficulty in accessing public financial aid... But the many The gaps that separate men from women, and the slowness with which they are being bridged, take root long before the pandemic.
Even before it broke out, women earned, over their lifetime, $172.3 billion less than men.
“To blame the Covid alone would be to find a good excuse, underlines Melinda Gates.
The world has not yet focused enough on gender equality and when it does, it addresses the symptoms, not the cause.”
From
empowerment
to real power
How to get out?
By activating three major levers of emancipation, according to Melinda Gates: education, access to contraception and money.
"When women really own their economic means, not just in cash but in a bank account that they control, it unlocks all kinds of things in their lives," she insists.
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This is particularly the case in many developing countries, where women mainly resort to informal work and, too rarely, access to a bank account in their own name.
With the risk of seeing their money, savings or salary, captured by their relatives.
Hence the importance, according to the authors of the report, of relying on proven and accessible tools: an online account accessible via a smartphone, microcredit to finance one's projects, training to help everyone appropriate their money. .. "Money is power, and it's an immense tool for women", underlines Melinda Gates again in the columns of
Fortune
magazine .
Conquer the spheres of power
So many first steps necessary, but insufficient.
"True equality depends not just on a woman's access to livelihoods, but on her ability to fully control them."
Understand: to penetrate the decision-making spheres, the assemblies where the public and economic policies that concern them are defined.
To take their part, in short, in the enactment of rules that apply to everyone, but are still too often written without them.