Gender and the Sustainable Development Goals : Infrastructure, Empowerment and Education

This book sheds light on the important and mostly neglected role that gender plays in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, doing so by investigating three key problem areas: empowerment, education, and infrastructure.

Starting with a theoretical and methodological framework, this edited collection contains 12 chapters from scholars and researchers from around the world. The book includes numerous case studies discussing the current status of gender equality relating to the SDGs. It reinforces the significance of gender for sustainable and just development, highlighting how women play a major role in work organization, disaster management, income, household maintenance, and mediation of knowledge. "Women" as a classification encompasses much diversity with many intersecting axes of difference; this book focuses on the excluded and disadvantaged majority social group, without imposing homogeneity on that categorization. Many chapters focus on critical situations occurring in the Global South, where these issues are highly prominent, and importantly, these contributions are written by local scholars. Finally, the volume provides pathways for basic and professional gender responsive education and innovation in the field.

The book will generate important discussions in interdisciplinary research and higher education settings focusing on sustainable development, gender, equality, human rights, and education.

Astrid Skjerven is Professor of Design Theory at the Department of Product Design, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway.

Maureen Fordham is Professor of Gender and Disaster Resilience and is the Director of the Centre for Gender and Disaster at the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction at University College London, UK.