Sign Up Now for the 2018 JCI Global Partnership Summit in New York City!

“All the [Sustainable Development] Goals are intrinsically interrelated and interdependent. We believe that gender needs to be addressed and mainstreamed across all goals. Eradicating poverty irreversibly cannot be achieved without gender equality or climate action and vice versa.”

— Amina Mohammed, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General

The Global Goals for Sustainable Development aim to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and combat climate change. As UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed points out, gender equality has a role in achieving each of the 17 goals. The keynotes and working sessions of this year's partnership summit will focus not only on Global Goal #5 Gender Equality but also on the role that equality plays in achieving the rest of the goals.

Join a group of forward-thinking active citizens in New York City on July 24-27 to explore how young people-working with partners in government, business and civil society-can actively advance gender equality in their home communities in order to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls by 2030. Find more information and Sign up here: https://jci.cc/summit

The Role of Equality in Sustainable Development

The JCI Active Citizen Framework calls us to identify the greatest challenges we face and take concrete action to address them. A major challenge we face as a society and an organization is gender equality.

Gender equality is a highly relevant and timely global issue that touches each of the 17 Global Goals. Gender issues are already in the global spotlight, and JCI has an opportunity to join the conversation and provide hands-on local solutions.

Current events demonstrate the appetite for this conversation, including large-scale movements like the Women's March and the #MeToo movement. At the 2018 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in January, gender issues took center stage with a first-ever seven-woman panel of co-chairs. Well-known voices such as journalist Richard Lui and the Mayor of Hiroshima are speaking out about the need for gender equality.

The challenge of gender equality is often an unaddressed yet toxic issue affecting our businesses, governments, organizations and communities. We talk around this issue but do not directly address it, and certainly do not take active steps to counteract the harmful effects. It's baked into our political structures—in ways both visible and invisible. This is a topic historically lacking in attention.

We have an opportunity to elevate this important issue to the international level and use it as a case study for how JCI members can take concrete action toward the Global Goals. Many members have begun speaking out about the challenge of gender equality, and this is an opportunity to show in a major way that JCI is listening and taking action.

Throughout the Global Partnership Summit's program, we will dive deep into the issue of gender equality, showcasing how this topic touches every one of the 17 Global Goals, and examining the role of business, civil society and government in advancing Global Goal #5: Gender Equality.