Women are the key to sustainable development

Abstract

On Sept 25–27, UN member states will meet at the UN General Assembly in New York to adopt a new roadmap—17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—for progress to 2030. Goal 3 is dedicated to health and consists of nine main targets, including reductions in maternal and child mortality, substance misuse, and road traffic accidents. However, many other goals—eg, water and sanitation, poverty reduction, and climate change—are also health related. How can this ambitious agenda be achieved? A Lancet Commission published in today's issue has an answer: ensure women are healthy and have equity in all aspects of life. The Lancet Commission on Women and Health outlines the complex role of women in society, as agents of change affecting the world around them, as producers and reproducers, and as consumers and providers of health care. Good health across the life course and gender equality can be achieved when women are valued, enabled, and empowered societally, environmentally, and economically, argue the authors. Worldwide, however, women are prevented from achieving their full potential. A new report by the World Bank shows the numerous legal barriers that women face that hinder their productivity. Women face job restrictions in 100 of 173 countries monitored. For example, in 29 nations they are prohibited from working at night. Only half of the countries had paternity leave, limiting men's ability to share child care responsibilities. Such laws are detrimental to women, their children, and the societies (and economies) in which they live. In addition to their productivity, women's ability to have choice and control over their reproductivity is crucial for healthy development. High fertility contributes to population growth and pressures on the environment and it can limit women's opportunities to realise their economic potential. Although the SDGs include sexual and reproductive health, as Ann Starrs explains in today's issue, they take a narrow view. A new Lancet–Guttmacher Institute Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the post-2015 world will go beyond the SDGs and aims to provide a progressive, evidence-based vision of how to move forward in this critical dimension of sustainable development. A Lancet Commission on sexual and reproductive health and rights: going beyond the Sustainable Development GoalsThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will define a global development agenda for the next 15 years, will be formally adopted by the UN on Sept 25–27 at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit 2015 in New York, USA. It is hard to imagine that anything of importance could have been left out of the 17 goals and 169 targets included in Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which lays out an integrated, multifaceted “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity”. Full-Text PDF UN set to change the world with new development goalsNext week, the UN General Assembly will call on member states to bid farewell to the Millennium Development Goals and adopt 17 new Sustainable Development Goals. John Maurice reports. Full-Text PDF Women and Health: the key for sustainable developmentGirls' and women's health is in transition and, although some aspects of it have improved substantially in the past few decades, there are still important unmet needs. Population ageing and transformations in the social determinants of health have increased the coexistence of disease burdens related to reproductive health, nutrition, and infections, and the emerging epidemic of chronic and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Simultaneously, worldwide priorities in women's health have themselves been changing from a narrow focus on maternal and child health to the broader framework of sexual and reproductive health and to the encompassing concept of women's health, which is founded on a life-course approach. Full-Text PDF