"Gender equality must become a lived reality"

Agreed! This is Michelle Bachelet's motto, the Executive Director of UN Women.

UN Women is a new arm of the United Nations- it's less than a year old but we're hoping that this UN agency can achieve great things and deliver on the third Millennium Development Goal (MDG): to promote gender equality and empower women by 2015.

Here at Goal, we're actively contributing towards fulfilling MDG 3 and the establishment of UN Women is a step in the right direction to ensure that gender equality and women's and girls' rights go to the top of the agenda.

UN Women has also identified five key priorities:

• expanding women’s voice, leadership and participation
• ending violence against women
• ensuring women’s full participation in conflict resolution
• enhancing women’s economic empowerment
• setting gender equality priorities central to national, local and sectoral planning and budgeting.

Let's hope that we see some real change in the coming years in these areas.

In the meantime for some of our New Delhi residents, UN Women is supporting a seminar on Gender and Governance on 11th February at the India International Conference Centre- sign up if you can!

http://www.unwomen.org/news-events/events-calendar

Plus, the UN Commission on the Status of Women will begin on 22nd February and run until 4th March in New York City. Lot's of important issues will be discussed, so we'll keep you updated on the results of this conference.