Toward Sustainable Development and Gender Inclusion

The global development agenda exists as a response to the increasing problems experienced by the majority of the world’s population. There is an understanding that in order to solve common problems, there needs to be a collective movement that involves all levels of society, from state and non-state, including international organizations, non-governmental organizations, multinational companies and other civil society groups. This is crucial because the dominating issues are no longer about high political issues such as military, security, conflict and war, but rather low political issues which are generally domestic issues that affect the survival of the global world such as economic, social and cultural factors. Furthermore, the issues include issues of human rights, humanity, structural peace, environment, cyber security.

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are one of the manifestations of the collective movement of world actors as a concrete effort to address global problems, with the aim of achieving universal development. The agreement signed by nearly 189 member states of the United Nations (UN) was formed in September 2000 (Isharto and Santoso 2016), and is planned to run for a period of 15 years until 2015. This agenda consists of eight pillars of objectives as standards and guidelines for combating hunger, poverty, discrimination against women, disease, environmental degradation and illiteracy (World Health Organization 2018). Even though the UN acknowledges the success of the MDGs, in reality development is still uneven with significant problems based on conflict, and unresolved issues of gender inequality, environmental damage, poverty and hunger, so on 25-27 September 2015, the 193 UN member states countries agreed to update global development programs into Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Isharto and Santoso 2016). Learning from the experiences of the MDGs, the SDGs break down several pillars of the previous MDGs into 17 pillars, without removing theconnection between SDGs goals (UNDP 2015). This shows interdependence between goals which increasingly puts forward collective movements from various sides.

Gender equality is one of the global issues that constantly receives attention from the United Nations, where this issue is the third pillar in the MDGs (UNDP 2008) and the fifth pillar in the SDGs (United Nations Development Program 2021). The importance of gender equality for the welfare of the global population and international development is emphasized by the UN through its statement “at the core of the 2020- 2030 decade is the need for action to tackle growing poverty, empower women and girls, and address the climate emergency”. In simple terms, by maximizing the potential of the other half of the world’s population (women), development is faster and more achievable. The relationship between gender equality and the economy is described by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as a causal relationship in which gender equality is a catalyst for resilient and sustainable economic growth so that it can improve the performance of the private and public sectors, and reduce income inequality. Despite the crucial role of gender equality in development, in reality the achievement of gender equality targets is still far from what it should be. The presence of the Covid-19 pandemic not only hindered the achievement of equality, but also set back progress that had previously been achieved (Nasir 2020). The lack of available data on the ground complicates the struggles of the actors involved to create the right strategies and programs. Currently, only 48% of the data available in the field is less than half of the total data needed to monitor the progress of achieving the SDGs targets.

Therefore, Pusat Studi Gender, Anak, dan Keluarga (PPGAK) ‘The Center of Gender, Children, and Family Studies’ Universitas Andalas aims to promote integration of gender issues within the sector of development, through discussions and practical knowledge sharing from students; academics, policymakers, as well as national and international development institutions in the 2nd International Conference on Gender, Culture and Society (ICGCS) 2023.