• Gender equality must be anchored at the front and centre of the post-2015 development framework.
This requires both a specific gender goal and the mainstreaming of gender throughout the entire
framework to enable transformative change and empower women to shape their own lives.
• The framework needs to address the social norms that hold women back, with clear transformative
indicators to track progress throughout women’s life cycle. Social norms manifest in preference
for boys, unequal access to education and health, child marriage, violence against women and
inheritance practices that deepen their poverty.
• This paper cites major improvements in gender-related data collection and disaggregation in
recent years and argues that tracking trends in tackling discriminatory social norms is now both
feasible and essential