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Session Submission Summary

A new generation: 25 years of efforts for inclusive gender equality in education

Wed, April 28, 6:15 to 7:45am PDT (6:15 to 7:45am PDT), Zoom Room, 110 - A

Group Submission Type: Refereed Roundtable Session

Proposal

The United Nations Agenda 2030 contains the vision to leave no one behind. Within that framework, in the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (4), the international community committed to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ and with the fifth goal (SDG 5) to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’.
Inclusion is highlighted in the form of equity in Agenda 2030 and of non-discrimination— in line with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Likewise, Article 10 of the Beijing Platform for Action calls for: ‘The full and equal participation of women in political, civil, economic, social and cultural life at the national, regional and international levels, and the eradication of all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex are priority objectives of the international community’ (UN Women, 2014).
The presentation discusses key findings of the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report’s Gender Report 2020 with a focus on how relationships among visions, actors, actions and context can contribute Drawing on the 2020 GEM Report which main theme is on inclusion, the 2020 Gender Report investigates how inclusion in education can advance gender equality in and through education and make it more inclusive. It does so by examining the extent to which gender intersects with other factors of discrimination and disadvantage, with the aim of highlighting who among girls and boys, women and men is left behind and is deprived of the right to in, and through education.
The year 2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a visionary agenda for the empowerment of women, adopted in 1995 by 189 governments. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BDPA) is a milestone for inclusion of girls and women in education and until today is the most comprehensive global policy framework on gender equality in 12 key areas, including education.
The Gender Report 2020 takes stock of progress towards gender equality in education since 1995 and how selected strategies recommended in the Platform related to education have been implemented in different parts of the world. Based on especially commissioned 12 studies, including 11 country case studies, the Report assesses how countries have implemented key BDPA education objectives over the past 25 years on early pregnancy, school counselling, teaching and learning material, women in the education workforce and school-related gender-based violence. In particular, the Report highlights promising best practices based on these case studies.
The 2020 Gender Report aims to answer the following questions: how far have the world, regions and countries moved from the situation of education experienced by girls and boys, and women and men twenty-five years ago? Has the progress benefited all, and if not, who among the girls, boys, women and men remain left behind and why? What have countries been doing to implement the Beijing Declaration to improve the education and training of women? What has been achieved and what remains to be done to hold the Beijing initial promise and to keep advancing gender equality while leaving no one behind in yet an increasingly unequal world in the context of COVID-19?
Following an intersectionality approach, the Gender Report 2020 addresses the need for a more inclusive and equitable gender equality in education based on the GEM gender equality framework across its six domains: educational opportunities; gender norms, attitudes and practices; legislations and policies against gender discrimination outside education; education laws and policies guaranteeing the right to education for all; education system characteristics in terms of human and financial resources, teaching and learning practices and learning environment; and outcomes of education. The Report shows that important progress has been made towards gender equality over the last twenty-five years. However, gains have been uneven across and within countries and remain fragile in the context of COVID-19 global pandemic that risks deepening existing inequalities unless the right to education of all, including of the most marginalized is duly protected.
The Gender Report 2020 shows that laws and policies promoting gender equality in education remained inadequately implemented. This calls for the need to monitor changes in existing legal and policy frameworks while benchmarking the extent to which national governments translate on ground their international commitments to gender equality. The GEM Report Team currently develops country profiles on existing national laws and policies on gender equality in education aiming to do this.
Two of the 12 studies that were especially commissioned for the Gender Report will be presented during the panel discussion. The first one framed the content of the 2020 Gender Report, helping it conceptualize the issue of intersectionality and its links with forms of inequality in education, and how the processes of exclusion can best be addressed to guide policies and practices to achieve a more inclusive gender equality in and through education. The second case study to be presented, illustrates a country example (Argentina) of implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action’s call upon countries to remove all barriers to access formal education for pregnant adolescents and young mothers, including promoting affordable and accessible childcare facilities and parental education to encourage those who are responsible for the care of children and siblings to return, continue and complete their education.

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