No Empowerment without Rights, No Rights without Politics: Gender-equality, MDGs and the post-2015 Development Agenda

Abstract

The main argument of this paper is that progress towards gender equality and women's empowerment in the development agenda requires a human rights-based approach, and requires support for the women's movement to activate and energize the agenda. Both are missing from Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 3. Empowerment requires agency along multiple dimensions—sexual, reproductive, economic, political, and legal. However, MDG 3 frames women's empowerment as reducing educational disparities. By omitting other rights and not recognizing the multiple interdependent and indivisible human rights of women, the goal of empowerment is distorted and “development silos” are created. Women's organizations are key actors in pushing past such distortions and silos at all levels, and hence crucial to pushing the gender equality agenda forward. However, the politics of agenda setting also influences funding priorities such that financial support for women's organizations and for substantive women's empowerment projects is limited. To re-focus the post-2015 Development Agenda around human rights, we conclude by outlining an approach of issue-based goals and people-focused targets, which makes substantive space for civil society including women's rights organizations.