Gender justice and the Millennium Development Goals: Canada and South Africa considered

Abstract

The expiration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015 means that the global development industry has been working towards crafting an MDG 2.0, for the post-2015 context: the Sustainable Development Goals. There is both an explicit and an implicit gender focus in both the MDGs and SDGs. Three of the eight MDGs were directly targeted at women and girls, while there was a stated understanding that all eight goals apply equally to men and women. Despite robust PR, the 2010 and 2012 United Nations (UN) Reports on the MDGs cited persistent violence against women, and continued discrimination in access to education, work, and participation in governance. In other words, the MDGs and their metrics appear to have reaffirmed existing gender norms and relations rather than challenging the status quo. We survey critical explanations of this failure, in the Canadian and South African contexts, and apply a critical feminist lens to suggest an alternative framing of gender justice. We suggest that one cannot understand the limitations of the MDG model of empowerment for women without considering the broader socio-political and ideological contexts that shape developmental interventions: an understanding that is critical to the design of the SDGs if they are to transcend the shortcomings of the MDGs.

Acknowledgements

We also thank Peggy Antrobus, Amanda Gouws, and Shireen Hassim for comments on an earlier draft, as well as the anonymous reviewers of this article for their valuable feedback; any errors remain our own.

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada [Grant number 55-51431].