Two years after the adoption of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030), UN Women’s report analyzes the progress achieved in gender equality and the challenges still ongoing if countries are to succeed in implementing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The purpose of the report is to enable Member States and all other interested parties to track the progress made in gender equality and to support women’s rights advocates to demand accountability for gender equality commitments as implementation unfolds.

In the words of Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Women Executive Director, the report is an “urgent call to action”, because the current backdrop of socio-economic and political instability worldwide means that there are clear gender inequalities in each and every one of the sustainable development dimensions and there are disheartening obstacles in the way of improving the lives of women and girls.

The report provides a wide range of recommendations for implementing the changes needed to promote gender equality and to be able to maximize the transformative potential of the Agenda 2030:

• Support the inclusion of specific gender indicators in the 17 SDGs by 2020
• Work towards the regular collection of data for gender-specific indicators, ensuring quality and comparability
• Develop global, regional and national strategies for identifying groups that are being left behind
• Promote and adhere to quality benchmarks, human rights standards and other fundamental principles of official statistics
• Accelerate the development of global standards for gender-specific indicators
• Strengthen commitment at the highest political level to an open, inclusive, transparent and gender-sensitive SDG monitoring process
• Strengthen accountability through gender-responsive implementation on a worldwide, regional and national basis