Advancing gender justice in policy and planning: Current and future challenges 

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Gender Equality has been taken up as a development objective by international development agencies and national governments from the mid-1980s and 1990s, promising increased support for, and action on, women’s rights, and gender justice. While some progress has been made globally since then, the UN Secretary-General recently declared that “achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls is the unfinished business of our time, and the greatest human rights challenge in our world.”[1]  Policy evaporation and manipulation, lack of political will and cases of outright resistance, combined with a tendency by development agencies and government departments to reduce gender equality to an institutional performance standard, has resulted in a displacement of core equality concerns.  Intersecting with other critical challenges like climate change, political polarisation and conflict, along with widening socio-economic inequalities, makes national and international commitments to tackling gender justice more urgent than ever.  Reflecting on the past 40 years since the DPU’s Gender Policy and Planning (GPPP) was created, this panel discussion will consider the current and future challenges of advancing gender justice in policy and planning.

Chair

Caren Levy, Professor of Transformative Urban Development, Bartlett DPU, UCL

Speakers

Rhodora Bucoy, Emeritus Associate Prof of Political Science and Gender Studies, University of the Philippines, Cebu; former chief of the Philippine Commission on Women

Leslie Crosdale, Co Executive Director, City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE)

Caroline Moser, Independent Research and Advisor; Emeritus Professor, the University of Manchester; Honorary Professor, Bartlett DPU, UCL

Claudy Vouhé, Gender Expert; L’Etre Ègale

Julian Walker, Prof of Inclusive Social Policy, Bartlett DPU, UCL