Gender Equality - Efforts To Fight Inequality

Efforts To Fight Inequality

World bodies have defined gender equality in terms of human rights, especially women's rights, and economic development. UNICEF describes that gender equality "means that women and men, and girls and boys, enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections. It does not require that girls and boys, or women and men, be the same, or that they be treated exactly alike."

The United Nations Population Fund has declared that women have a right to equality. "Gender equity" is one of the goals of the United Nations Millennium Project, to end world poverty by 2015; the project claims, "Every single Goal is directly related to women's rights, and societies where women are not afforded equal rights as men can never achieve development in a sustainable manner."

Thus, promoting gender equality is seen as an encouragement to greater economic prosperity. For example, nations of the Arab world that deny equality of opportunity to women were warned in a 2008 United Nations-sponsored report that this disempowerment is a critical factor crippling these nations' return to the first rank of global leaders in commerce, learning and culture.

In 2010, the European Union opened the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in Vilnius, Lithuania to promote gender equality and to fight sex discrimination.

It is also worthy to note that gender equality is part of the national curriculum in Great Britain and many other European countries for English, Religious Studies and P.S.H.E have topics about gender equality and is considered a very serious subject with lengthily discussion