SDG 5 Gender Equality

Begin your journey by exploring this page . The buttons below take you to resources that relate to SDG 5 . Student participant's work can also be found here (or will, work in progress). The materials here are only the beginning of your journey, explore them and then follow your focus of interest.

SDG 5 Gender Equity:

You may find the resources below a useful place to start.

Ask yourselves some key questions like the ones below and then go to Flipgrid and record your responses. Your teacher has the Flipgrid code.

Welcome to Flipgrid! Tap the green plus below to open the Flipgrid Camera. Then, record a short video and...

Introduce yourself briefly. Say your name, age, nationality.

Identify why you selected this SDG.

Explain the goal and what it is about

Why is it important to reach a situation of gender equity in the world? You must highlight why the problem is relevant and requires intervention. You can present figures to support your view.

Is the goal relevant in your country? You can present figures

What should be done in your country to satisfy this goal?

How can you act to help make it achievable?

What are the facilitators and inhibitors of eradicating gender inequity in the world?

Have a look at what our students have to say.

Let us begin with Linn, a student from Finland who makes some interesting observations.


A Child, Not a Bride

By Linn2003 (Finland)() Write the World


Little girls dream about their wedding day and about motherhood. They want it to be like a fairy-tale. Unfortunately life is seldom about such a fairy-tale. Reality is far from the such imagined glitter, glamour, wining or dining, in fact, simple things like enjoying a pizza could be unreachable for these girls. Child marriages do happen, and it is nothing like the Disney weddings we see as children, where they marry under the moon in beautiful dresses.


Every year, 12 million girls marry before the age of 18. Even though they never get to make their own decisions or be an independent woman they feel a sense of solitude their whole life. The girls are not wanted from a young age and they are destined to be mothers and their dowry is sometimes necessary if the family is poor. The young girls are thought to be laconic and to obey the men. Their future is from an early age sabotaged by not offering education or a fair chance in life. It is a duty that cannot be abdicated and they feel compelled to play their part.


Young girls face more risk of experiencing dangerous complications during pregnancy and childbirth, and many children do not survive the birth of twins or triplets. Women who do not have any education and who have always lived in poverty stand a very small chance of creating any kind of life for themselves. Child marriage is also a cultural matter as it is tradition in some areas, they only status that makes a woman valuable is as a wife and mother. Sometimes the family wants to keep their daughters safe and believe that in marrying them off they will be safe from rape and physical abuse by other men. This is not a sustainable solution, women who get married at a young age often suffer domestic violence under a rude and thundery rule in their new homes.


Systems that undervalue the contribution and participation of girls and women limit their own possibilities for growth and transformation. We can make a difference. We can offer education for young girls, we can offer them another way. The countries could stipulate laws that prohibit child marriages and thus they could counteract poverty. One problem is also the lack of birth control that leads to the birth of many children, and the burden they unfortunately call girls.


Author's Notes: This piece was written in response to a writing prompt with words provided as stimulus.

Moon. solitude. abdicate. laconic. compel. sabotage. Twin. Sustainable. Pizza. Thundered

Why Isn't the World Moving Forward?

Alexandra, Madalena e Rita, Agrupamento de Escolas, Portugal Padlet


Nowadays, many people talk about gender equality but oftentimes there is one specific area where this problem exists but is forgotten: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Artificial Intelligence refers to using technological systems to perform tasks that people usually would do. This would be a progress to the world if in some cases women weren't downgraded. One example where this happen is in South of Africa where Samsung offers Bixby with various voices depending on the language that you choose. For American English, there is Julie, Stephanie, Lisa and John. While John is clever and straightforward, the women’s voices are coquettish and eager.

Besides most of artificial intelligence that is created to serve a man has a face of a women. One example is Sophia. She is probably the most famous robot and she was covered by the most important newspaper and the most popular shows on TV. Erica is another robot with many versions. Her creator said that he was trying to create “the most beautiful women” in Erica. She went to some dates. Both are “conversation companions” and both have the face of a woman.

However, Hermes is the rescue robot of MIT and he seems to have the physical of a men, specially when you compare him to Sophia or Erica.

This creates a stereotype that women must obey men and that, in society, women do a better role as “entertainments”.

Although women also contribute to the evolution of computing, they are inferior at work because AI workplaces are still clearly extremely male dominated. Men are likely to apply to a job where they have 50% of the requirements, while women usually only apply if they have, at least, 90% of the requirements. Only 22% of AI professionals are women and early 11% of jobs held by women may be eliminated because of AI.

This must to change! To create a gender equal world of AI, we need conscientious work from the AI research community to recruit and promote more female talent, we need to find technical solutions for fair and accountable AI, investors need to support more female founders and we need to create more images of AI and robots free of gender stereotypes in the media.


Sources:

New Year’s Resolutions: Committing to a gender-equal 2020, 13 January, 2020. Accessed on 9/03/2020 from

https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/1/compilation-new-years-resolutions


Rachel Adams, 22 September, 2019, Artificial Intelligence has a gender bias problem - just ask Siri. Accessed 9/03/2020 from

https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-has-a-gender-bias-problem-just-ask-siri-123937


Josh Feast​, 20 November, 2019, 4 Ways to Address Gender Bias in AI. Accessed on 9/03/2020 from https://hbr.org/2019/11/4-ways-to-address-gender-bias-in-ai​


Christine Maroti, 17 September, 2019, Gender bias in AI: building fairer algorithms. Accessed on 9/03/2020 from

https://unbabel.com/blog/pt/vies-de-genero-na-ia-construindo-algoritmos-mais-justos


Mahita Gajanan, 17 December, 2018, AI and the Automation of Jobs Disproportionately Affect Women, World Economic Forum Warns. Accessed on 9/03/2020 from https://time.com/5481899/world-economic-forum-gender-gap


Pascale Fung, 30 June, 2019, This is why AI has a gender problem. Accessed on 9/03/2020

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/this-is-why-ai-has-a-gender-problem/


Carolina, Agrupamento de escolas de Sátão Portugal

Padlet Submission

Hello , today I will talk about what worries me about human rights .The Human Rights and SDG are very important and we must respect them.

The Human Right that worries me the most is “Everyone is entitled to equal protection against any discrimination that violates this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination” that is related to SDG 5 “ Gender equality”.

What affects me the most is not all of us have the same rights, and gender inequality in society.

In Portugal ,for example , Inequality between men and women is more visible in certain areas, such as politics, technology, science and sport and sometimes at home, the differences remain. According to the conclusions of the National Survey on the Uses of Time for Men and Women (INUT), the inequality between men and women in terms of time devoted to domestic tasks and care for third parties continues to pass from generation to generation. Girls, aged between fifteen and twenty four , work 1 hour and 21 minutes more a day than boys and housework and care work for children, young people or adults, in a situation of dependency, consume an average of 4 hours and 23 minutes per day. Men spend almost half the time with this type of work, corresponding to an average of 2 hours 38 minutes daily.

This may have several consequences, in the education of their future children and in some behaviours of society, they have not changed because they are used to having someone to do those tasks for them, in this case their mothers, sisters or girlfriends or their wives.

The difference starts at home, that's why we have to start changing.


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