Through the last decades, countries and communities have

made great investments and some progress towards reducing

poverty. However, inequality and discrimination against
marginalized populations and other challenges emerge which
increase the poverty as well. So, we need to look at the bigger
picture to get a hold of what affects poverty to what extent. To
examine poverty, we need to examine the population going
through it which happens to be 70 percent women in this case. In
fact, “From a global perspective, women earn 10 percent of all
income, and yet they produce half of the world’s food.”(Lefton,
2104). Therefore, focusing on the gender discrimination and
inequality should be prioritized in order to reduce the poverty
among people. Gender inequality has been brought to attention in
global conferences but a permanent or long term affective result
should only be gained through improvement in education,
employment and empowerement of women supported with
culturally based solutions with contextualized courses of action
individually prepared to the characteristics of the countries.

Gender inequality is almost a shame in our century where half

of the populations potential is not in use and the economy relies on
half of the labor force to reduce poverty. “Putting an end to
extreme poverty requires providing opportunities for all individuals,
especially women, to thrive through education, nutrition, and
health. In order to achieve this goal, a greater emphasis must be
placed on gender equality and the removal of barriers that
disproportionately affect women.”(Lefton, 2014) This inefficiency of
labor force also limits the economic opportunites and productivity.
Poverty being an effective reason of the educational, work related
opporunities, United Nations has made conferences with global
leaders coming together to put goals and ideas giving people hope
of social, economic and environmentally sustainable development
aiming to reduce poverty globally. In 2016, they launched the new
global goals to reduce poverty under the name of Sustainable
Development Goals(SDGs). Unfortunately, gender was only one of
the many topics which did not get as much attention it was
supposed to or as it did in earlier years. “The Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) began in 2016 with great hopes that
they will promote social development, economic development, and
environmentally sustainable development with the motto, “Leave
No One Behind” (UN, 2016). In particular, SDGs’ goal 5, “Achieve
Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls” (UN,
2016).”(Kim,2017)

Before Sustainable Development Goals between 2010 and

2015, United Nations Development Programme launced Millenium
Development Goals(MDGs) “While the Millennium Development
Goals stimulated investments, improved measurements of
inequality, and created ways to accelerate progress, not all of the
goals are on track to be fulfilled.Especially two gender-
related Millennium Development Goals are far from being
achieved: Goal 3—which aims to promote gender equality and
empower women; and Goal 5—which pledges efforts to improve
maternal health.”(Lefton, 2014). The poor of the communities still
don’t enroll their daughters to secondary or tertiary education;
women still make up a small percentage of the parlimentaries
worldwide. At this rate, equality in just political areas would be
reached after 40 long years from now on. Gender inequality could
also have unwanted health consequences on women and children
highly related to the opportunities arounfd the world. “For
instance, wealthy urban women are three times more likely than
poor rural women to have skilled assistance during delivery.
Only one in three rural women in developing regions receive
adequate prenatal care.”(Lefton, 2014). This huge gap between the
rural and urban life have huge affects on poverty as well as health
oppurtunities.

An equally if not more important problem about gender

inequality is the gender gap. All countries have gender gap whether
it is developed or developing. The main reason for gender gap is
culturally embedded behavioral patterns. “Studies have shown that
progress in women’s education did not lead to women’s
empowerment due to the persistent traditional patriarchal values
embedded in the culture and in its institutions (Chung, 1994; Park,
1993).” In consideration of these studies, it is clear that gender
inequality cannot be achieved without legal and institutional
changes disregarding cultural barriers against women.

Overall, to obtain gender equality, a well coordinated analysis

should be done followed by persistent and permanent legal and
constitutional steps to empower women and provide gender
equality in long term. It is also economically rewarding to have a
labor force participating at full potential. It can be done through a
cultural and well adapted conception of ideas on educating,
employing, empowering systematically and persistently in order to
create the permanent change and improvement in gender equality
all around the world.