Gender within sustainable decisions

Abstract

Within Goal 5 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it is stated that: “Gender equality is not only a fundamental human right, but a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.” This contribution addresses the question where within the three dimensions of Sustainable Development (SD), the environmental, social, and economic ones, gender could be located for sustainable decision-making and how gender should be theoretically as well as practically operationalized therein. The analysis addresses the problem domain of sustainable decision-making among withstanding environmental, social, and economic interests. In terms of methods, the assessment is done after an in-depth literature review and conceptionally based on 3-D Sustainability, a decision support method for preliminarily prioritizing different options of action all contributing to an SD. The assessment is not country-wise limited. 3-D Sustainability offers, therefore, a set of criteria and preconditions for developing non-fixed hierarchies of priorities. In this way, it provides sufficiency, eco-effectiveness, ecological equity (consisting of intra- and intergenerational equity), socio-effectiveness, eco-efficiency, and socio-efficiency as SD-criteria (of 3-D Sustainability) most relevant to reaching sustainable decisions with regard also to gender. Detailed definitions of these criteria that allow to quantitatively assessing them are presented and discussed in relation to gender. The application of this concept is shown by means of several practical examples in a deductive manner. Particular operationalizing tools for such sustainable decision-making are further described for addressing – also in bottom-up manner – organizations and institutions, such as a ban of unequal payments as an intra-generational and socio-effective instrument under 3-D Sustainability. The contribution additionally results in the presentation of gender policy and instruments mixes found during the literature review for each of the six criteria. The contribution concludes by highlighting the innovativeness of this approach and further explaining (1) its potential for a global application in terms of sustaining the social carrying capacity within 3-D Sustainability, as well as (2) its replicability.