New Report: Advocating for a Stronger Evidence Base for Gender Equality
Source: Women Deliver
In this working paper, Women Deliver conducted a desk review, identifying more than 150 gender data and knowledge gaps across nine thematic areas. The gaps demonstrate where the collection of new data, or the expansion of an evidence base, is necessary to advance gender equality efforts. Together, efforts to fill gender data and knowledge gaps can be leveraged to make bigger and bolder commitments to improve the lived realities of all people, including girls and women. The working paper can be used by advocates, policymakers, and implementers to make the case for the collection of data and evidence, including through research, with a gender lens across various topic areas.
Find the report here.
Expert’s take: The COVID-19 Pandemic Highlighted the Vital Role of Women’s Organizations in our Societies
Source: UN Women
As we grapple with many unknowns of the ongoing health crisis, one long established truth is surfacing: Women’s civil society organizations are playing a vital role to empower, protect and inform women and girls. Their ongoing feminist efforts, even in abnormal times such as these, stimulate and encourage collaboration needed to transform society and continue to push towards systemic change. […] Against this backdrop, women’s organizations continue to work tirelessly to provide essential services and aid to women and girls who need it the most. As these organizations are already on the ground and at the front lines of COVID-19 response, they have a comparative advantage and a specific understanding of what vulnerable women need.
Read more here.
Access to Justice for Victims and Survivors of Sexual Violence Remains Elusive
Source: Daily Maverick / Sandisiwe Shoba
Uyinene Mrwetyana was brutally killed by former Clareinch post office employee Luyanda Botha on 24 August 2019. Her body was dumped and set alight in a field in Lingelethu West, Khayelitsha. Botha is now serving three life sentences in prison and is not eligible for parole for 25 years. After her horrific death shook the nation, Mrwetyana became the poster child for rising levels of gender-based violence (GBV), and a wave of protests ensued, culminating in a R1.6-billion Emergency Response Action Plan on Gender-based Violence and Femicide (ERAP), the report on which was made public on 30 April […]One of the ERAP’s key focus areas is access to justice for victims and survivors, which Makwakwa said is sorely lacking in South Africa.
“We know that there’s huge underreporting of GBV, largely because of this lacklustre performance by police and justice.”
Read the full story here.
