The trend towards sustainable development as a factor in reducing gender inequality

Abstract

COVID-19 was called a "pandemic of inequality", which led to aggravation of all types of inequality, including gender. The pandemic actualized the issue of finding new ways and opportunities to improve the situation with gender equality in Russia. The article presents result of the analysis of Russian reports for the period 2016-2020 on the implementation of The 2030Agenda for Sustainable Development in terms of the country's progress towards achieving gender equality. The article analyzed not the whole national reports, but only the 5th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aimed at ensuring gender equality. The novelty of the author's approach to the analysis of the reports was that the indicators used in them to achieve the 5th SDG by 2030 wwere considered as factors of progress towards gender equality in the country. The article consists of two sections, an introduction and a conclusion. The first section provides a historical background that shows the stages in formation of the concept of sustainable development, starting from the ideas of Gro Harlem Brundtland, who headed the International Commission on Environment and Development (ICEDD) in 1987, to the system of indicators developed by Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, who headed the Commission on Basic Indicators of Economic Activity and Social Progress in 2008-2009. When developing the Sustainable Development Goals, the experience accumulated over thirty years was used as the basis for them. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the SDGs, was signed by 193 countries in 2015, including Russia. In 2020 Russia submitted to the UN two reports on the achievement of the SDGs — one prepared by the government and the other by civil society organizations. These reports reflected the progress in implementation of the SDGs for 2016-2020. The results of a brief comparative analysis of both reports are presented in the second section of the article. The analysis showed striking differences between these two reports: the outright bureaucratic formalism of the first and the creative constructive nature of the second. This indicates that it is the civil society, not the government, that is aware of the severity and urgency of the problems of gender inequality in Russia and is ready to solve them. The content of the report and the recommendations addressed by the civil society to the state show that implementation of the gender equality targets set in the SDGs can serve as an important factor in the country's progress towards gender equality. From the analysis of the form and content of the government report, it becomes obvious that the gender agenda is not among the priority areas of the Russian social policy.