2015
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marks a formal commitment to gender equality, with SDG 5 calling for an end to violence against women, equal economic participation, and access to reproductive rights. Although the SDGs explicitly reference gender equality and intersectional development targets, they are embedded within neoliberal development frameworks that largely sidestep the structural roots of inequality—colonial legacies, extractivist economies, and debt dependency.
In regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, women’s movements emphasise that economic empowerment cannot be achieved without dismantling global systems that confine women to informal, underpaid, and precarious work. Grassroots organisations also expose the contradictions between SDG rhetoric and ongoing austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions, which continued to erode public services and social protections. Across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, feminists demand accountability not only from national governments but also from the global institutions shaping development priorities—insisting that gender justice must be decolonial, redistributive, and led by those most affected.
