May 2016: Module 7

Human Rights and Gender Equality

Watch the three videos below with your chapter and discuss as a group. Please ensure your chapter comments on the Member Resource Site post by the end of the month! You may comment individually as members, or collectively as a chapter. The questions below are intended as guides: you do not need to answer all (or any) of the questions, so long as your comment is somehow related to the topic and materials. We encourage you to engage in discussion with one another in the comments section!

Orienting Discussion Questions:

  1. What are some of the justifications that women receive lower pay for the same work as men in many parts of the world?
  2. How does gender inhibit women and girls from getting a quality education?
  3. In what ways is the empowerment of women and girls essential to economic development?

 

Video 1: UN Empower Women

Video 2: Jeffrey Sachs Lecture 7, Chapter 1

Video 3: Why Poverty?: Miseducation

Key Points:

  • Sustainable Development Goal #5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
  • Delays in marriage are associated with greater educational achievement and lower fertility. And lower fertility can increase women’s life expectancy and has benefits for children’s health and education.
  • Poverty increases gender gaps: Girls living in poor households are almost twice as likely as their richer peers to marry young. Intimate partner violence is also more frequent and severe in poorer households across such diverse settings as India and Nicaragua.