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UN Women is one of a multitude of international organisations working towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. In 2000, 189 members of the international community committed themselves to eight goals focused on alleviating poverty and promoting further development by the year 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals:

1. Eradicating extreme hunger and poverty

2. Achieving universal primary education

3. Promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women

4. Reducing child mortality

5. Improving maternal health

6. Combating HIV/ AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7. Ensuring environmental sustainability

8. Developing a global partnership for development

UN Women’s approach

All eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relate to various aspects of women’s lives, making the empowerment of women a critical part of achieveing the targets set for 2015. UN Women contributes to seeing the realisation of the MDGs through a three-tiered approach incorporating: practical in-country programs, monitoring and analysis work to track MDG progress and through advocacy programs to raise awareness of the importance of women’s empowerment as a factor in the overall achievement of the MDGs.

Operational programmes: UN Women runs innovative programs across the globe, designed to contribute directly to the achievement of MDG 3 – promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. UN Women also offers further support and assistance to strengthen the capacity of all UN agencies and programs to recognise and incorporate principles of women’s empowerment into their work.

Monitoring and analysis: UN Women continues to track progress on the MDGs, with a focus on gender. Working with non-governmental organisations, governments and other UN agencies UN Women supports the use of sex-disaggregated data and indicators to account for gender gaps and to enable credible assessments of MDG progress.

Advocacy: UN Women works across UN agencies, with non-governmental organisations and with governments, to support and raise awareness of MDG activities.

Making change happen

The ability of women to gain an education, be healthy and have the ability to exercise their voice is critical to the attainment of the MDGs. Gender equality enables women to better participate in the achievement of each goal and contribute towards progress. There is significant evidence to suggest that gender equality in one area of the MDGs, has significant impacts on the progress in other areas. For instance, gender equality in education further enables women to contribute to economic production, thus alleviating poverty.

Necessary actions to achieve the MDG goals:

The eradication of extreme hunger and poverty:
- Recognise and support the role women play in food production
- Eliminate legal restrictions on women’s rights to own, inherit and acquire land
- Guarantee equal social protection and employment rights for all
- Enforce women’s rights and improve legal literacy around women’s land ownership rights
- Educate women

Achieve universal primary education:
- Continue  to focus on girls’ education and enrolment rates
- Improve school conditions for girls (safer transport, separate sanitation facilities, more female teachers)
- Address parental concerns about female participation in education
- Educate mothers (mothers with even a few years education are more likely to send their children to school)
- Overcome traditional gender-based division of labour to ensure girls have time to attend school

Promote gender equality and empower women:
- Educate girls and women
- Overcome barriers to schooling for girls
- Promote mechanisms that give women a voice in politics and governance institutions
- Enact equal economic rights for all
- Count women’s work

Reduce child mortality:
- Prioritise care  of mothers to ensure adequate nourishment while pregnant
- Invest in mothers’ education
- Fight discrimination against girls
- Ensure equitable access to health services for the most vulnerable girls and women

Improve maternal health:
- Support women’s greater bargaining power to negotiate family planning methods
- Increase women’s decision-making role in the health care sector
- Cease practices that bring danger to mother and child (child marriage, genital cutting, dietary restrictions)
- Increase young girls’ opportunities, support and knowledge
- Switch to clean energy alternatives for cooking

Combat HIV/AIDS Malaria and other diseases:
- Enact and enforce legal measures against discrimination that drives the feminisation of HIV/AIDS
- Stand up against gender-based violence that perpetuates the spread of AIDS
- Educate girls
- Advocate for equality in marriage and family relations
- Reorient donor priorities towards priority to at-risk demographics
- Offer HIV prevention and care in maternal health services
- Enlist men and boys to fight the feminisation of HIV/AIDS
- Invest in HIV prevention programmes for sex workers
- Share the burden for caring for people living with HIV/AIDS

Ensure Environmental Sustainability:
- Reform policies for equitable property and resource ownership
- Reverse the loss of environmental resources
- Improve access to safe drinking water
- Increase access to sanitation services
- Fight climate change

Develop a global partnership for development:
- Build capacity for gender analysis and programming among donors and partners
- Track resources spent on gender equality
- Increase gender equality in the international sphere
- Demand global institutions strengthen gender equality
- Strengthen systems to collect, analyse and use sex-disaggregated data

For more information on the Millennium Development Goals from UN Women Australia, please see the resources below:

MDG's and Gender Factsheet

UN Women Australia MDG Summit Position Paper

Discussion Paper: Making the Case for Gender Equality in the Post-MDG 2015 World

For additional information about the Millennium Development Goals, please see the resources below:

Gender Justice: Key to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

UNDG Development Goals Thematic Paper on MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women

Making the MDGs Work for All: Gender- Responsive Rights-Based Approaches to the MDGs

Making the MDGs Work Better for Women 

The MDGs: A Critical Look and some Proposals for the post-2015 Development Framework