United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

This report explores how the global response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis affected women worldwide. Generally, the report is critical of the austerity-based economic responses to the recession, popular in the developed and developing world. The report argues that national responses ignored the "invisible economy" of care and social reproduction (looking after elderly parents, child raising, etc.), which is predominantly managed by women. The report contains three main policy recommendations. First, it argues that economic recovery policies should

On 21 February 2013, Michelle Bachelet, the then-Executive Director of UN Women, delivered the Kapuscinski Lecture on opportunities for peace, development, and gender equality in the 21st century. This document presents her speech. The central theme is that the coming century has the potential to enhance women's inclusion in leadership roles and political participation. Bachelet suggests that meeting these goals means that governments must share the common objectives of increasing the participation of women in the public sphere and reducing gender

This report is a summary of UN Women's progress in promoting and including indigenous issues in its policy, programming, and coordination, and in demonstrating a commitment to promote the rights of Indigenous women and girls. Currently, UN Women works to develop the skills and access of Indigenous women to the labour market, financial institutions, decision-making spheres, political participation, and entrepreneurship. The report focuses specifically on UN Womens contributions in the areas of human rights, ending violence against women, civil society advisory groups, and the

This piece by UN Women contains four articles (by four different authors) that examine how to monitor and evaluate local partnerships. The first author, Narayanan, contends that evaluations and monitoring must be malleable. Citing evidence of HIV reduction, he argues that flexible monitoring and evaluation processes are necessary for local programs to succeed. The second author, Kosheleva, parses the two dominant approaches to monitoring and evaluating local partnerships and argues that there is a "menu" of instruments within each approach that can be tailored

This article provides a brief summary of discussions on ending violence against women and children at an event organized by UN Women and the governments of Finland and Liberia at the 68th session of the General Assembly held in September 2013. The article highlights the need for a new UN development framework that includes freedom from violence as one of its main goals. The discussions identify gender equality as the root cause of violence against women and girls and member States reiterated that it should be addressed as a stand-alone Millennium Development Goal.

This report by UN Women presents challenges related to sustainable development in the pan-European region in anticipation of the 2012 Rio+20 Conference and proposes useful policy changes for managing the green transition. The report demonstrates the UN's commitment to working with countries on policies and strategies to establish sustainable development in Europe and Central Asia, while emphasizing the human dimension of the issue. Recognizing the interrelation between the destruction of natural resources and the difficulty in maintaining economic development and

This document contains the opening remarks given by Lakshmi Puri (the then-Acting Head of UN Women) at the "Women Deliver" Conference, co-sponsored by UN Women, in May 2013. Puri discusses UN Women's successes in enhancing women's rights in various areas including political participation and health systems. She also discusses structural policy changes that are still necessary, with a particular emphasis on reproductive and sexual rights. Puri additionally suggests that UN Women's post-2015 agenda focus on: (1) preventing violence towards and the

In this report, UN Women advocates a gender-sensitive and human rights based approach to national HIV/AIDS strategies. In particular, the report identifies gender equality and women's rights as a priority when implementing the "Three Ones principles" (namely, one national AIDS action framework, AIDS coordinating authority, and monitoring and evaluation system). The report argues that a gender- sensitive approach would help empower women and girls in the fight against HIV/AIDS and guarantee their rights to prevention, treatment, care, and support.

This article explores the relationship between economic crises and women's employment. The author begins by demonstrating how economic crises affect men and women's employment differently. The author explains that, generally, women in informal work and in home-based productive activities are particularly affected in periods of crisis because these industries usually shrink significantly. Next, the author analyzes the impact of the Eurozone and Asian Financial crises on women's employment and notes that the 2008 financial crisis made income inequality significantly worse,

This "briefing kit", developed by UN Women in partnership with the International Trade Union Confederation, focuses on workers who provide domestic services, such as cooking, cleaning, and raising children. While these workers are a large and growing part of numerous economies, many countries have no labour regulations to protect them. This kit advocates for regulations to protect these workers. The kit begins with interviews from workers, governments, and employers in Bolivia, America, the Philippines, and South Africa. These interviews highlight the