Today, none of us lives in a country that has achieved the full promise of equality envisioned in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), nor are most countries on track to achieve those goals by 2030. As the 2022 Goalkeepers report points out, we’re halfway to this deadline, and progress on gender equality remains slow, even stalling. The EM2030 Index data shows that the world won’t reach gender equality until at least 2108— nearly a century later than we’d hoped.
The pandemic has shone a light on the gender fault lines that were hampering progress towards the SDGs long before COVID-19. We also know from our networks of partners that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated gender inequality and hit women and girls hard, affecting their education, bodily autonomy, safety, and their access to decent work. Our partners have also voiced concerns about wider trends made worse since the pandemic: lack of representation of women in leadership positions (including COVID-specific decisionmaking bodies) and rising anti-rights and conservative movements.
There is an ever greater need to speak up for the rights of women and girls and yet our partners also express how pandemic restrictions made it even harder to do their critical advocacy and campaigning work: loss of in-person events, workshops and influencing meetings, the need to overcome digital access gaps, further shrinking of space for civil society, and the challenge of advocating virtually.
These are the challenges we face. So, what is Equal Measures 2030 and our partner organizations doing about it? In our first-ever Impact Report, you will see how our work with feminist organizations and networks has been transforming lives through data-driven advocacy.
And, how our partners have engaged with policymakers at the national, regional and global levels to change laws, budgets and practices.
This is ‘factivism’: using credible and timely data to expose gender inequality and injustice, motivate change, and drive accountability.
To everyone involved in this unique collaboration, I say a heartfelt thank you. To everyone else, please join us. Together we can ensure that data gets used to drive positive change for women and girls around the world.