Developing countries currently face a staggering $420 billion annual gap in the funding needed to achieve gender equality, UN Women estimates. This gap means that programmes and services for women and girls are chronically underfunded.
"The money simply is not reaching the women and girls who need it most," UN Women said in a news release issued on Monday.
This estimate comes in the midst of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development underway in Sevilla, Spain.
There, world leaders are working to revitalize the international financing structure to better support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), one of which is gender equality.
"We cannot close gender gaps with budgets that are lacking a gender lens … Gender equality must move from the margins of the budget lines to the heart of public policy," said Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, Deputy Executive Director of UN Women.
Move from promise to action
In order to remedy this shortfall, UN Women said that the world needs a decade of targeted and consistent investment to end gender gaps and ensure that no one is left behind.
This includes expanding gender-responsive budgeting which carefully tracks where funding is most needed and supporting programs which target those areas.
Currently, three-fourths of countries do not have systems to track the allocation of public funds in relation to gender equality.
Specifically, investment in public care systems - such as child and elder care programmes - is essential to ensuring that women can enter the workforce.
Overwhelmed by debt
Additionally, UN Women called for urgent debt relief, citing that many countries are so burdened by debt financing that they cannot dedicate money to advancing gender equality.
In this vein, UN Women welcomed the Compromiso de Sevilla, the outcome of the Conference adopted by Member States, which lays out new commitments to development financing, including on promoting gender equality.
Ms. Gumbonzvanda emphasised the need for governments to back the commitments they made in this document with real action.
"[Gender equality] takes money. It takes reform. And it takes leadership that sees women not as a cost, but as a future."
