Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right but also necessary to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To help the international community and national governments to gather information and mobilize resources to meet the SDG goals, each SDG includes targets to specify the goals and indicators to represent the metrics by which the world aims to track whether the targets are achieved. Goal 5 on gender equality has 9 targets and 14 indicators. Efforts have been directed toward increasing the availability of gender data and statistics to support monitoring and reporting on such progress.
Of the 9 indicators of Goal 5, only two have sufficient data, namely, 5.5 "Ensure full participation in leadership and decision-making" and 5.1 "End all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere". Based on the measured indicators, the biggest challenge in the region is to close gender gaps in wage and labour force participation. Available data for related indicators underscores that the attention must be directed towards critical areas such as violence against women and girls (target 5.2), harmful practices (target 5.3), and unpaid care and domestic work (target 5.4). The region is unlikely to achieve SDG 5 by 2030 unless Governments make significant investments to accelerate the progress to meet the agreed-upon global targets.
The data per indicators are available in the SDG Global Database and serve to understand the progress made over time per country and region towards SDG 5 as well as to shed light on existing data gaps.
Data Availability by Indicator