The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, also known as UN Women, is working to develop and uphold standards, and create an environment in which every woman and girl can exercise their human rights and live up to their full potential. The organisation was founded in 2010 to provide adequate advocacy that was historically lacking in response to gender equality issues.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are 17 ambitious, globally accepted, and broad-reaching goals that cover a range of sustainability issues. All 17 SDGs are inter-related, an improvement in one will impact on the others. Of these SDGs, there is one goal dedicated to women’s empowerment and gender equality, SDG 5, which aims to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. Working to meet SDG5, UN Women aims to make historical progess in eradicating the gap between genders, and breaking down discrimination against women. The SDGs are powerful because they help shape international development efforts by highlighting the accountability of Member States and ensuring that crucial progress is made.

The organisation is governed by a multi-tiered inter-governmental governance structure. The General Assembly and Economic and Social Council are responsible for providing policy guidance. Alongside this, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) set the normative policy guiding principles, while the executive board provides operational policy guidance.

The overall function of the entity is to support inter-governmental bodies in the formulation of the policies, global standards and norms, and assist with UN Member States’ implementation of these policies. Additionally, it is responsible for leading and coordinating the bridging between the UN and gender equality, as well as promoting accountability through thorough monitoring of system-wide progress.

Objectives:

• To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.
• To help Member States implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
• To lead and coordinate the UN system’s work on gender equality, as well as promote accountability, including through regular monitoring of system-wide progress.

UN Women relies almost entirely on voluntary financial contributions to sustain its work to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. It has been predominantly funded by government partners committed to making gender equality and women’s empowerment a global priority. More information about funding can be found here.