Closing Gender Gaps Holds the Key to Ending Poverty

General Studies Paper-2

Context

• The UN Gender Snapshot 2025, released by UN Women and UN DESA, highlights that without urgent action more than 351 million women and girls could remain in extreme poverty by 2030.

Key Findings

• Persistent Poverty: Female poverty has remained stuck at 10% since 2020. Climate change and conflict are worsening vulnerabilities.
• Work and Representation: Women spend 2.5 times more hours on unpaid domestic and care work than men. They hold less than one-third of parliamentary seats worldwide.
  • 102 countries have never had a woman head of state or government.
• Digital Divide: In 2024, 70% of men used the internet compared to 65% of women.
  • Closing this gap could lift 30 million women from poverty, benefit 343 million women and girls, and add $1.5 trillion to global GDP by 2030.
• Food Insecurity and Violence: 64 million more women than men were food insecure in 2024.
  • 1 in 8 women between 15–49 years faced intimate partner violence in the past year.
  • 6% of young women were married before 18 (down from 22% in 2014).
  • In 2024, 676 million women and girls lived within 50 km of deadly conflict, the highest since the 1990s.
• Climate Change: Worst-case climate change scenarios could push 158 million more women into poverty by 2050.

Global Efforts for Gender Equality

• United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5: Aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
  • Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is a landmark UN resolution adopted in 1995 at the Fourth World Conference on Women, which provides a comprehensive global blueprint for achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls.
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW): Encourages policy reforms and legal protection against gender discrimination.

India’s Initiative Towards Gender Equality

• Poshan Abhiyaan: This mission aims to improve nutrition outcomes for children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers.
• Digital Literacy Programme for Women: It is part of Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) and empowers women to access e-governance services and financial platforms, helping them participate in the digital economy.
  • One Stop Centre Scheme (Sakhi Centres), aims to facilitate women affected by violence with a range of integrated services under one roof such as Police facilitation, medical aid, legal aid and legal counseling, psycho-social counseling, temporary shelter, etc.
  • The Women in Science and Engineering-KIRAN (WISE KIRAN) program has supported nearly 1,962 women scientists from 2018 to 2023.
• Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017: Provides for 26 weeks of paid maternity leave for women working in the private sector and government.
  • Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 2023, seeks to reserve one-third of the total number of seats for women in Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and Delhi Assembly.