Side-event at the The 2018 ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development follow-up (FfD Forum) will be held in New York from 23 to 26 April 2018, hosted by the Government of Ecuador:

«Paragraph 6 of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda emphasizes that achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment and the realization of women’s human rights are essential for achieving sustained economic growth, inclusive and equitable economic growth, and sustainable development, as well as the need to ensure women´s equal rights, access and opportunities for participation and leadership in the economy.

The official side event will address the economic and fiscal factors that affect gender inequality, as well as the commitments of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the policies that can be put in place to reach sustained and inclusive economic growth, with gender equality and women’s empowerment as crosscutting themes.

Panelists will bring attention to the challenges faced by women, including these key points:

• Gender inequality persists in access to finance, technology, public services, decent work, participation in policy-making processes and many other areas. These inequalities threaten the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and other global commitments.
• In fiscal policy, which is a very important tool to steer economic growth processes, the mobilization of national public resources through fiscal collection is becoming increasingly difficult in a context characterized by tax evasion, illicit financial flows and a lack of gender-responsive budgeting. This has a negative effect on Governments efforts to increase levels of social protection to realize women’s human rights, fight violence and achieve gender equality.
• Weak regulation of overseas investment and development projects exposes women to risks of poverty and exploitation even when new paid work options are created.
• The average time devoted to unpaid provision of care and domestic work is more than triple for women than for men. The time spent on household chores is the cause of a high proportion of the gender gap in unpaid work.
• As the result of existing employment, wage, and tax policy inequities, women shoulder more unpaid work responsibilities and experience more poverty than men.
• Taxes are a primary source of financing for public services to reduce unpaid care and domestic work, and to assist victims of violence, which are particularly important for women.
• Gender-responsive budgeting can strengthen coherence between government budgets and gender equality objectives, by identifying key gender equality objectives and allocating appropriate funds and designing tax systems with gender equality in mind».

We will only be able to achieve inclusive and sustained economic growth when women have opportunities to participate fully in the economy and gender equality is mainstreamed into fiscal policies, businesses, in access to financing, and cooperation for development.

PROGRAM

• Introduction by:

Navid Hanif

Director of the Financing for Development Office

Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Alicia Bárcena

Executive Secretary

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

• Speakers:

Jens Frølich Holte

Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway

Maria Fernanda Espinosa

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ecuador

Lidy Nacpil will also represent as the Global Alliance for Tax Justice speaker.

After the introductions, the floor will be opened for a Q & A session and an interactive discussion.