The 2030 Agenda is clear: there can be no sustainable development without gender equality.  Turning promises into action: Gender equality in the 2030 agenda, a global monitoring report by UN Women, asks: How far have we come in turning this new development consensus into results for women and girls, and what is needed to bridge the remaining gaps between rhetoric and reality?

UN Women’s report uncovers significant gaps for women’s empowerment and puts forth a robust agenda to shift gears. It spotlights inequalities and challenges that are faced by women, and identifies gaps and opportunities for gender equality in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

UN Women has produced fact sheets for regions and subregions. The Australian and New Zealand factsheet offers comparisons with the global data.

Women's Agenda has drawn together an excellent snapshot of women at work and how employers can help shift the dial by 2020, proposing 8 well-described strategies for achieving this goal.  Called Press for (Immediate) Progress, this resource includes useful data and links to supporting material and sources which will be useful for BPW clubs planning to draft resolutions for the 2018 BPW Australia National Conference focused on pay equity, the motherhood penalty, gender-balanced leadership, sharing the unpaid workload, supporting women entrepreneurs or women's economic and housing security through the lifespan.  What is important to your BPW club members?  How should BPW Australia address these challenges and where should we direct our advocacy?

Tasmania elected the first female-majority Australian state parliament on 3 March 2018, with 13 women and 12 men elected to the House of Assembly. The Australian Capital Territory had the first majority female parliament in Australia after its 2016 election.

Tasmania’s Parliament has 52% women: 2 Green MPs and 7 of 10 Labor MPs, but only 4 of 13 Liberal MPs. 

The South Australian election returned 29% women in the House of Assembly with 3 women in the 14 member Cabinet. The Liberals have 4 women out of 25 MPs (16%) and Labor has 7 women out of 19 MPs (36%).

Labor has a policy of assertively encouraging gender balance which is clearly achieving results. 

The OECD launched an initiative on International Women’s Day to help governments, parliaments, judiciaries and public institutions to design gender-sensitive public policies and services and accelerate their efforts to enable equal access for women in public decision making.

The OECD Toolkit for Mainstreaming and Implementing Gender Equality is aimed at speeding up progress on gender equality goals and creating systemic change by incorporating gender goals into hiring, career development and budget cycles.  It identifies proven measures to increase women’s participation across the board and outlines pitfalls to avoid, with examples of effective policies and good practices.

The Toolkit aims to help and inspire government policy makers to apply a gender lens, implementing new ways to promote gender equality and women's leadership. It illustrates how formal and informal practices and procedures in state institutions can reinforce inequalities and gender-based stereotypes.

The BBC reports that women workers in Spain are marking International Women's Day with an unprecedented strike targeting gender inequality and sexual discrimination. Unions said 5.3 million women had joined the 24-hour strike, backed by 10 unions and some of Spain's top women politicians.  Hundreds of thousands of women have joined street protests across Spain, shouting "if we stop, the world stops".

Events marking the day are being held in dozens of other nations.

The WGEA Gender Equity Insights report series analyses gender pay gaps in Australia, including the relationships between gender balance around the board table and workforce pay equity.  This third report offers some encouragement that Australian businesses are taking the issue of gender pay equity seriously, with far more seeking to measure pay differences and review remuneration policies and processes in their organisations. It shows that gender pay gaps have narrowed over the last year, particularly for managers and for discretionary pay. Some industries are leading the way in driving down gender pay gaps in their organisations, but others continue to lag behind.

So what can companies do to shift the dial towards greater gender equity in the workplace? This third report provides some actions companies can take to narrow the gender pay gaps that persist in their organisations.

The analysis draws clear links between employer action on pay equity and lower pay gaps, demonstrating the need for organisational leadership accountability on closing pay gaps. Organisational gender pay gaps do not close themselves. They must be quantified, understood, acted upon, monitored and taken responsibility for at the most senior levels of our workplaces.

Australia’s retirement income system is not working for the poorest Australians, who are disproportionately women. Australia’s persistent gender gap in retirement savings and incomes means women, particularly single women, are at greater risk of poverty, housing stress and homelessness in retirement.

More generous superannuation tax breaks are predominately used by older, high-income men to reduce their tax bills and would likely worsen gender inequality in retirement savings. This new Grattan Institute report proposes two strategies to reduce the gender gap in retirement savings: better targeting of superannuation tax breaks which currently deliver the largest boost to the retirement incomes of high-income earners, most of whom are men; and a targeted boost to the Age Pension for retirees who do not own their own home delivered as higher Commonwealth Rent Assistance which would help to reduce the risk of women experiencing poverty in retirement.

Delivering through Diversity builds upon McKinsey and Co’s 2015 report Why Diversity Matters, which raised awareness of the business case for inclusion and diversity. The report influenced policy-setting and transformation efforts by corporations, the public sector and NGOs worldwide. Many successful companies regard inclusion and diversity as a source of competitive advantage and a key enabler of growth. Yet progress has been slow, with minimal Increases in gender representation on executive teams.

Delivering through Diversity tackles the business case and provides a perspective on how to take action to impact growth and business performance. It reaffirms the global relevance of the correlation between diversity in leadership and financial outperformance, based on over 1,000 companies across 12 countries. 

If women discover they are earning less than their male counterparts for the same jobs, their legal avenues for pursuing equal pay are limited, explains Alice Orchiston, Associate Lecturer in Law at University of Sydney. It’s difficult to prove and costly to litigate. Sex discrimination cases are very difficult to prove: the claimant needs to prove that she was paid less than a man in the same circumstances, but the employer can point to reasons unconnected with gender to explain a pay discrepancy. 

Professor Michelle Ryan from the University of Exeter questions whether we should focus on empowering women to lean in since this implies that inequality in workplaces is due to women’s personal preferences.  She suggests that, to address persistent gender inequality, we need to move away from trying to fix women and instead create workplaces where women feel they belong, which promote and reward women and are open to change.