Gender equality

Gender equality, also known as sexual equality, gender egalitarianism, or equality of the sexes, is the state of equal ease of access to resources and opportunities regardless of gender, including economic participation and decision-making, and the state of valuing different behaviors, aspirations, and needs equally, also regardless of gender. UNICEF (an agency of the United Nations) defines gender equality as "women and men, and girls and boys, enjoy the same rights, resources, opportunities and protections. It does not require that girls and boys, or women and men, be the same, or that they be treated exactly alike." As of 2017, gender equality is the fifth of seventeen sustainable development goals (SDG 5) of the United Nations; gender equality has not incorporated the proposition of genders besides women and men, or gender identities outside of the gender binary. Gender inequality is measured annually by the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Reports. Gender equality can refer to equal opportunities or formal equality based on gender or refer to equal representation or equality of outcomes for gender, also called substantive equality. Gender equality is the goal, while gender neutrality and gender equity are practices and ways of thinking that help achieve the goal. Gender parity, which is used to measure gender balance in a given situation, can aid in achieving substantive gender equality but is not the goal in and of itself. Gender equality is strongly tied to women's rights, and often requires policy changes. On a global scale, achieving gender equality also requires eliminating harmful practices against women and girls, including sex trafficking, femicide, wartime sexual violence, gender wage gap, and other oppression tactics. UNFPA stated that "despite many international agreements affirming their human rights, women are still much more likely than men to be poor and illiterate. They have less...