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SDG 5 ‘Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls’ »

Rangita de Silva de Alwis
From: The UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Commentary
Ilias Bantekas, Francesco Seatzu
Ending all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls is not only a basic human right but also crucial to accelerating sustainable development. The very first target of Goal 5, target 1.1 calls to end all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere and the indicator for the goal is ‘[w]hether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex’. In many countries around the world the legal frameworks themselves allow for both direct (de jure) and indirect (de facto) discrimination against women. This essay identifies some areas of de jure discrimination in laws and examines some recent law reform in this area. Power acts by laying down the rules. As Foucault has argued, ‘power’s hold on sex is maintained through language, or … from the very fact that it is articulated, a rule of law’.