Practice Guide to Auditing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality

 

 

We are excited to share our newest publication: the Practice Guide to Auditing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: Gender Equality.

It combines expertise from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Women Deliver, and the Canadian Audit and Accountability Foundation to provide the context to understand the subject of gender equality—including its relation to sustainable development and the United Nations 2030 Agenda—and guidance and suggested practices for planning an audit. The first of its kind, this guidance will be an excellent reference for auditors in Canada and around the world who wish to examine this central aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Gender inequalities affect us all, in all parts of the world. When girls and women do not have equal access to resources and equal opportunities to participate in decision making, their families, communities, and countries feel the effects.

The need for gender equality and its fundamental connection to social, economic, and environmental development is recognized in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agenda’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals include achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls as both a standalone goal and a crosscutting theme that will influence, and be influenced by, progress on the other goals.

Now that all UN member states have committed to the 2030 Agenda and this global push for sustainable development is underway, auditors have an important role to play. As the Honourable Maryam Monsef writes in the Message from the Minister of Status of Women that opens our new Practice Guide, she will be looking to their insights.