This book sheds light on the important and mostly neglected role that gender plays in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, doing so by investigating three key problem areas: empowerment, education, and infrastructure. Starting with a theoretical and methodological framework, this edited collection contains 12 chapters from scholars and researchers from around the world. The book includes numerous case studies discussing the current status of gender equality relating to the SDGs. It reinforces the significance of gender for sustainable and just development, highlighting how women play a major role in work organization, disaster management, income, household maintenance, and mediation of knowledge. "Women" as a classification encompasses much diversity with many intersecting axes of difference; this book focuses on the excluded and disadvantaged majority social group, without imposing homogeneity on that categorization. Many chapters focus on critical situations occurring in the Global South, where these issues are highly prominent, and importantly, these contributions are written by local scholars. Finally, the volume provides pathways for basic and professional gender responsive education and innovation in the field. The book will generate important discussions in interdisciplinary research and higher education settings focusing on sustainable development, gender, equality, human rights, and education.

Taking a comprehensive global approach, this book identifies the trends, drivers and impact of gender equality. Providing best practice recommendations and posing key challenges for achieving SDG5, this is the only book which comprehensively deals with all the key aspects of the goal based on the latest credible research.

Gender equality and environmental goals are mutually reinforcing, with slow progress on environmental actions affecting the achievement of gender equality, and vice versa. Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires targeted and coherent actions.

With a global commitment to achieve gender equality by 2030, the SDGs present a historic opportunity to place gender as central to human progress across the globe. Gender equality, which requires the empowerment of all women and girls, is an explicit goal, in addition to being a fundamental prerequisite to and facilitator of most other SDGs. This edited collection provides a range of geographical and geospatial insights, from a variety of disciplinary and country-specific perspectives, to better understand gender and sustainable development. In addition to several African countries, Mexico, Japan, Canada, USA, and Cambodia are featured. A range of topical case studies examine women’s domestic and care work, including water collection, breastfeeding, food purchasing, and caring for elderly family members. Access to health care services is examined in the case of breast screening and antenatal care. Women’s engagement in the labour force is also addressed, with a specific look at the renewable energy sector; structural barriers to employment are discussed across a number of chapters, with clear strategies to break through these barriers. Finally, theoretical insights are proposed in better understanding and engaging in gendered inequalities in health.

For pathways to be truly sustainable and advance gender equality and the rights and capabilities of women and girls, those whose lives and well-being are at stake must be involved in leading the way. Gender Equality and Sustainable Development calls for policies, investments and initiatives in sustainable development that recognize women’s knowledge, agency and decision-making as fundamental. Four key sets of issues - work and industrial production; population and reproduction; food and agriculture, and water, sanitation and energy provide focal lenses through which these challenges are considered. Perspectives from new feminist political ecology and economy are integrated, alongside issues of rights, relations and power. The book untangles the complex interactions between different dimensions of gender relations and of sustainability, and explores how policy and activism can build synergies between them. Finally, this book demonstrates how plural pathways are possible; underpinned by different narratives about gender and sustainability, and how the choices between these are ultimately political. This timely book will be of great interest to students, scholars, practitioners and policy makers working on gender, sustainable development, development studies and ecological economics.