John Hendra: In post-MDG debate, gender equality must go mainstream

U.N. Women wants gender equality not only to be mainstreamed into the post-Millennium Development Goals agenda but to be a global development goal in itself, the agency’s deputy executive director, John Hendra, told Devex.

Hendra spoke with Devex Editor Rolf Rosenkranz on the sidelines of the 2012 European Development Days. He said that after the MDGs expire in 2015, a new set of global goals should tackle what’s blocking women’s progress in society and threatening women’s rights.

“We have to have gender equality goals that really … affect the whole world,” he told Rosenkranz, adding that the post-2015 agenda should be “transformative” rather than “technocratic.”

Watch the conversation between Rosenkranz and Hendra on the challenges faced and progress made by U.N. Women since its launch nearly two years ago, part of a series of conversations we video-taped with global development leaders in the center of the action at EDD12 in Brussels.

Check out our complete coverage of European Development Days 2012.

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