SDG 5: Achieving Gender Equality as a Global Priority

In 2015, the United Nations placed gender equality on the same list as ending poverty and fighting climate change. That decision was not symbolic. It was a recognition that no country can build a fair, prosperous future while denying half its population equal opportunity. This is the idea behind Sustainable Development Goal 5, or SDG 5, one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that world leaders committed to achieving by 2030.

Why gender equality got its own goal 🔗

SDG 5 exists because gender inequality is not a side issue. It touches health, education, the economy, and governance all at once. When a girl is pulled out of school early, denied healthcare, or excluded from decision-making, the loss is not hers alone. Households lose income, economies lose productivity, and communities lose talent that could have gone into solving shared problems.

This is why gender equality is described as a foundation for the rest of the 2030 Agenda. UN Women notes that the achievement of every other Sustainable Development Goal depends, in part, on progress under Goal 5. A country cannot meaningfully reduce poverty, improve health outcomes, or build strong institutions if half its citizens are locked out of full participation.

The nine targets of SDG 5 🔗

SDG 5 is built around nine specific targets, each addressing a distinct barrier that women and girls face. Together, they form a roadmap rather than a vague aspiration.

Ending discrimination and violence 🔗

The first two targets call for an end to all forms of discrimination against women and girls, and an end to violence and exploitation, including trafficking and sexual abuse. The scale of the problem is significant: data from 87 countries shows that roughly one in five women and girls under 50 has experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner in just the past year, and dozens of countries still have no dedicated law against domestic violence. [Image: A simple world map highlighting countries that lack legal protections against domestic violence]

Eliminating harmful practices 🔗

Target 5.3 focuses on ending child marriage and female genital mutilation, practices that strip girls of their childhood and autonomy. An estimated 15 million girls under the age of 18 are married off every year, a number that stalls progress on education, health, and economic independence in the same breath.

Recognising unpaid care work 🔗

Target 5.4 asks countries to value and redistribute unpaid care and domestic work through public services, infrastructure, and shared household responsibility. This target matters because women globally perform 2.6 times more unpaid care and domestic work than men, time that could otherwise go toward paid work, education, or rest.

Leadership and decision-making 🔗

Target 5.5 calls for women’s full participation in leadership at every level, political, economic, and public. Progress here is painfully slow. Women held just 27.5 percent of managerial positions worldwide in 2022, a figure unchanged since 2016, and at the current pace, gender parity in management roles is estimated to take another 176 years. Political representation tells a similar story, with women occupying under 27 percent of seats in national parliaments as of early 2024.

Reproductive rights, economic resources, and technology 🔗

The remaining targets cover universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, equal rights to economic resources such as land, property, and inheritance, and the use of enabling technology to support women’s empowerment. These targets recognise that legal equality means little without the practical means to exercise it, whether that means owning land, inheriting property, or accessing a mobile phone to run a small business.

Sound policy and enforceable legislation 🔗

The final target, 5.c, asks governments to adopt and strengthen policies and enforceable laws for gender equality. This target is the glue that holds the others together, because targets without legal backing tend to remain aspirations rather than realities.

How progress gets measured 🔗

SDG 5 is tracked using 14 indicators spread across its nine targets. Some measure legal frameworks, such as whether a country has laws promoting non-discrimination on the basis of sex. Others track outcomes, such as the share of women in managerial roles or the proportion of women who have experienced violence. Recent UN data collected across 120 countries found that 55 percent still lacked comprehensive non-discrimination laws for women, which shows how much of the groundwork remains incomplete even before outcomes can shift.

Broader indicators of gender equality extend beyond these formal metrics too. Access to nutrition, healthcare, and education; representation in political office; legal rights to property and inheritance; and freedom from violence and exploitation all combine to paint a fuller picture. No single number captures gender equality, which is why the SDG 5 framework deliberately spans legal, economic, and social dimensions at once.

Where India stands on SDG 5 🔗

India tracks its own progress through the SDG India Index, published annually by NITI Aayog. The results on gender equality have been sobering. India’s national average score on SDG 5 has consistently been the lowest among all the Sustainable Development Goals tracked, standing at 49 out of 100 in the 2023-24 index, even as the country’s overall composite score across all goals improved to 71 out of 100. That gap is telling. India is moving forward on many fronts, but gender equality remains the area where the least ground has been covered.

There are bright spots within this picture. Some states have shown that faster progress is possible with the right policy focus, driven by improvements in sex ratio at birth, wage parity, and lower reported crime rates against women in those states. At the same time, several of India’s most populous states continue to score in the lowest performance category, dragging down the national average.

Employment data adds another layer. India’s female labour force participation rate rose from 23.3 percent in 2017-18 to 41.7 percent in 2023-24, a meaningful jump. However, much of this growth has come from rural women, and a large share of that work is unpaid or self-employed rather than salaried. Participation alone does not guarantee financial independence or decision-making power within the household.

Policy and legislation shaping the path forward 🔗

Target 5.c is where national governments do their heaviest lifting, and India has built a fairly extensive legal framework over the decades. The Equal Remuneration Act, now folded into the Code on Wages, mandates equal pay for equal work. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace Act, 2013, commonly known as the POSH Act, requires every organisation above a certain size to set up an internal complaints committee. The Maternity Benefit Act guarantees paid leave and workplace protections for new mothers.

Beyond legislation, the government runs targeted schemes to close specific gaps. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act mandates that at least one-third of jobs generated under the scheme go to women, while newer labour codes include provisions meant to create safer, more enabling work environments for female workers. Programmes supporting girls’ education, safe accommodation for working women, and entrepreneurship among women add further layers to this framework.

The gap, as with much of Indian policy, tends to lie in enforcement rather than intent. Laws exist on paper in areas where implementation on the ground, particularly in smaller towns and rural areas, still lags. This is precisely what target 5.c anticipates: legislation alone is not sufficient without the institutional capacity to enforce it consistently.

What closing the gap actually requires 🔗

Achieving SDG 5 by 2030 is not simply a matter of adding more laws. It requires three things moving together. First, policy reform that removes discriminatory provisions and strengthens enforcement mechanisms. Second, investment in infrastructure such as childcare centres, safe public transport, and accessible healthcare, so that legal rights translate into everyday opportunity. Third, a cultural shift in how unpaid labour, leadership potential, and household decision-making are viewed, since no law can fully substitute for a change in social norms.

The UN’s own assessment, at the midpoint to 2030, is candid: no country or region has yet achieved all nine targets of SDG 5. That is not a reason for pessimism so much as a reminder that this goal, more than most, depends on sustained attention rather than a single policy push. Progress on SDG 5 is slow precisely because it asks societies to rework assumptions that have shaped families, workplaces, and institutions for generations.

What do you think? Which of the nine SDG 5 targets do you think India is closest to achieving, and which one feels furthest away? Do you think changing laws or changing everyday attitudes matters more for closing the gender gap?

References

1. https://www.unwomen.org/en/node/36060
2. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/goal-of-the-month-goal-5-gender-equality-2/
3. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5
4. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/governance/poor-perfomance-of-indias-most-populated-states-to-end-hunger-empower-women-slows-down-national-global-sdg-progress
5. https://india.un.org/en/274382-india-making-progress-towards-sdgs-report-shows
6. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2074399
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/Pressreleaseshare.aspx?PRID=1779252&reg=48&lang=2