In decision MC-6/16, COP-6 invited Parties to continue their implementation of decision MC-5/15 on the gender action plan, including to address health concerns of women and children, and agreed on a list of priority activities for Parties, the Secretariat and other stakeholders to further advance the equality and empowerment of women in the implementation of the Convention during the biennium 2026–2027. Learn more about decision MC-6/16.
The empowerment of women and girls concerns their gaining power and control over their own lives. It involves awareness-raising, building self-confidence, expansion of choices, increased access to and control over resources, and actions to transform the structures and institutions that reinforce and perpetuate gender discrimination and inequality. This implies that to be empowered they must not only have equal capabilities (such as education and health) and equal access to resources and opportunities (such as land and employment), but they must also have the agency to use these rights, capabilities, resources, and opportunities to make strategic choices and decisions (such as is provided through leadership opportunities and participation in political institutions).
In addition, UNESCO explains, “No one can empower another: only the individual can empower herself or himself to make choices or to speak out. However, institutions including international cooperation agencies can support processes that can nurture self-empowerment of individuals or groups”.
Inputs to promote the empowerment of women should facilitate women’s articulation of their needs and priorities and a more active role in promoting these interests and needs. Empowerment of women cannot be achieved in a vacuum; men must be brought along in the process of change. Empowerment should not be seen as a zero-sum game where gains for women automatically imply losses for men. In empowerment strategies, increasing women’s power does not refer to “power over” or controlling forms of power, but instead to alternative forms of power—“power to,” “power with,” and “power from within”—that emphasize the use of individual and collective strengths to achieve common goals without coercion or domination.
Source: UNICEF, UNFPA, UNDP, UN Women (2016): Gender Equality, UN Coherence and You; Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women (now part of UN Women) (2001): Important Concepts Underlying Gender Mainstreaming; UNESCO GENIA (2019): Toolkit for Promoting Gender Equality in Education.
A Gender Action Plan (GAP) is the plan for gender activities that an institution has adopted for itself. Its purpose is to make the institutions’ activities more effective, efficient, and successful by addressing existing gender inequalities and redefining women’s and men’s gender roles and relations through guidance on gender mainstreaming. Several UN Conventions, Frameworks, and Organizations have their own Gender Action Plans, e.g. the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions; Minamata Convention; the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; and the Convention on Biological Diversity.
This refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities, and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs, and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of different groups of women and men. Gender equality is not a women’s issue but should concern and fully engage men as well as women. Equality between women and men is seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of, sustainable people-centered development.
The preferred terminology within the United Nations is gender equality rather than gender equity. Gender equity denotes an element of interpretation of social justice, usually based on tradition, custom, religion, or culture, which is most often to the detriment of women. Such use of equity in relation to the advancement of women has been determined to be unacceptable.