Sustainable Development Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, often abbreviated as SDG 5: Gender Equality. The aim of this goal is to end all forms of discrimination and violence against all women and girls everywhere, especially through the elimination of early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation; to ensure women have full access to leadership and decision making opportunities in political, economic and public life; and to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. SDG 5 is particularly relevant to people with diverse SOGIESC because true gender equality does not simply mean equality between men and women, but equality across all genders.
SDG 5 is a diverse SOGIESC issue because people with diverse SOGIESC face experience inequality because of the ways in which the present and engage with gender norms. People with diverse SOGIESC face gender-based discrimination: they are discriminated against as a result of their gender identity or expression, and the gendered power imbalances that underpin gender inequality are the same power imbalances that underpin inequality for people with diverse SOGIESC. In development programming, people with diverse SOGIESC are often left out of gender equality programming because they may not fit into the project participant profile, or because the program does not address their needs. For instance, almost all gender equality programming, such as gender-based violence prevention programming, assumes all women are cisgender and heterosexual. But these programs do not consider or include trans women, lesbian, bi, queer and non-binary (LBQ+) women, or women with diverse sex characteristics.
The resources available under SDG 5 cover a wide range of issues including: the imperative for gender equality legislation to include people with diverse SOGIESC; the exclusion of people with diverse SOGIESC from gender equality programming; social norms that negatively impact people with diverse SOGIESC; gender-based violence experienced by refugees with diverse SOGIESC; and emerging best practice for diverse SOGIESC inclusive programming.
These resources have been compiled to enable development practitioners to develop and implement diverse transformative gender equality programming that is more than just inclusive of people with diverse SOGIESC, and to empower practitioners with the knowledge they need to better meet the targets of SDG 5.
