Millennium Development Goal 3

Promoting Gender Equality and Empowering Women
Ethan Nauman, Nick Berg, Megan Starry, Jeff Hessburg

As history has shown women's rights have almost never been up to the same level as a man’s. This is especially true in developing countries and regions including Latin America and the Caribbean. Regarding MDG 3 there are a couple of goals to be hit by 2015, and they are:

Target 3.A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Indicator 3.1 Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education

Indicator 3.2 Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector

Indicator 3.3 Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament

The results for these indicators in Latin America and the Caribbean can be seen below.
MDG 3 Progress in Latin America & Caribbean

this picture represents the MGD goals of Latin America and the Carribean.

http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Data/snapshots.html 

When countries are in the process of becoming more developed women are necessary to push forth progress and help the country grow in many ways especially in terms of health and economics. In a lot of developing regions women do not feel as if they are at their full potential and this is directly connected to one’s mental health. Education also plays a role in gender equality. If girls and women aren’t being given the same level of education, a lot of time important skills such as reading and math are skipped over and without these two skills it makes it that much harder for them to achieve later on. Another aspect of health and education is educating females on body change and puberty, acceptable forms of contraception and the importance of focusing on one’s own health before others because if they aren’t healthy it makes it that much harder to help other people.

There is a whole goal focused on women because it is of that much importance. Many have said that if MDG 3 was not a success, many of the other goals would fall flat. As mentioned earlier, if a country truly wants to develop and take itself to the next level, gender equality has to be a major focus. For too many years women’s rights have been tossed aside and not made a priority and this is not just an issue in developing regions such as Latin American and the Caribbean. The United States has really only made Women’s rights a focus in the last 100 years and it is still a hot topic even today.  

Telesurtv.net News

According to a report from U.N. women, published on telesurtv.net, in early 2015, Latin America had shown the most progress globally in empowering women through progressive labor laws through experiencing the biggest growth in women's participation in the workforce. Climbing from 40 to 54 percent between 1990 and 2013, but still below the participation of men at 80 percent. This women empowerment increase has a lot to do with the progressive policies and laws implemented by Latin America. For example, the document highlights that since 2014, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay have laws in place for equal remuneration for work of equal value, that is to say equal pay for men and women for the same job, as well as laws banning gender-based discrimination in hiring and sexual harassment in the workplace. Unfortunately, regardless of the major improvisions and improvement, Latin America still finds that 17% of the “working women…  employed in the domestic sector, traditionally are not covered by the labor laws” (telesurtv.net).

"I deserve respect"

https://nextcity.org/images/made/Sussman_RioWomensRights_10_1200_800_80.jpg

Interventions

World Food Programme and many other organizations

Empowering women and promoting equality also means educating men. For the longest time women were meant to stay home, have children, cook and take care of the living space while the men worked. The issue with that is that it does not allow women time to work on their educating, does not give them fulfilling work outside of the home and does not allow women to earn a livable wage. If men are educated on how to be an equal share of the parenting process and take responsibility for some aspects of raising children this creates time and opportunity for women to obtain educating further than that of which they have and potentially get jobs that creates additional income for the household. It is not necessarily the man’s fault for not having the parenting skills needed as for the longest time that is how things were and there wasn’t the focus on creating opportunities for women. Overall the work being done by WFP has been successful and many men have been willing to take a larger role in the parenting process and have been supportive of their wives seeking higher education and meaningful work. (WFP)

Foundation for the Education and Study of women (FEIM) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization founded in 1989 by a group of professional women specializing in gender. The organization´s mission is to, “work to improve the social, political, labor, education, economic and health status of women and girls in Argentina, defending their rights and promoting better living conditions and equality” between women and men.Argentina.” What they do is train women to develop an understanding for their natural rights. They conduct research to observe the status of the women in Argentina. They advocate for the protection of women and children's rights, especially sexual rights. They coordinate activities with different women’s rights organizations nationally and internationally. They give advice to government and non government organizations about how to improve policies for women. They advocate for better enforcement of and also better laws for women. Lastly they Prepare, collections of print, audiovisual and other media on women, adolescents and children.

(FEIM.org)

Sources:

(WFP)

http://www.wfp.org/

(telesurtv.net) "http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Latin-America-Closes-the-Gap-on-Economic-Gender-Inequality-20150510-0023.html".

(FEIM.org)

http://www.feim.org.ar/english/index.html