Gender Equality and Goal 5 of Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

With 14 indicators distributed over nine targets, SDG-5 aims at achieving gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls by 2030 for all countries agreed to work towards achieving them. NITI Aayog of Govt. of India selected six indicators towards improvement in SDG-5.Focusing attention to SDG-5 only, the paper proposes simple method of aggregating indicators of SDG-5 and discusses properties of the proposed methods. Each of the indicators was expressed in terms of proportions which were combined to reflect overall proportion for a State/UT at current period. The proposed method of combining indicators expressed as proportions is simple, appealing and helps to assess current status (achievement) of a State by computing combined proportion. Current status of the States can similarly be combined to get current status of a country and its distance from the 2030 targets. Similar procedure may be extended to find current status of the world by combining the country-wise current status. Measures of percentage improvement or deterioration at country/State levels at a period from the previous period were discussed. Important inferences on comparison of countries may be drawn on the basis of path of improvement registered by a State or country. Future studies suggested.