Gender Equality in the New Millennium: Goal or Gimmick?

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, all with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Millenium Development Goals are now part of an international development framework which many countries in the Caribbean have signed on to. This paper addresses the question of how the Millenium Development Goals can be made to work to promote gender equality and empowerment in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region. The analysis here will not be limited to "gender equality and women's empowerment (MDG Goal 3). It will also highlight the gender dimensions of some of the other MDGs that closely related to women's equality and empowerment - as a means and as an outcome. Finally, the analysis and suggestions in relation to strategies "to ensure that gender inequalities are identified and addressed in the MDG monitoring process and in national policy responses from governments" will focus on Caribbean realities. Suggestions are made by drawing on the findings and insights on the linkages between global trends, development strategies (including the macroeconomic policy framework of structural adjustment) and their impact on poor women, and the ways in which we might now approach activist interventions toward the goal of gender equality and women's empowerment.