Analyzing Barriers to Discrimination Mitigation for Women's Empowerment to Achieve SDG 5–Gender Equality

Achieving gender equality is crucial both as a fundamental human right and as a cornerstone of sustainable development. This study presents a decision‐making framework to support stakeholders, particularly policymakers, in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5) by identifying and addressing the barriers that perpetuate discrimination against women. The framework enables informed policy and intervention strategies by rank‐ordering potential barriers and analysing causal relationships among them. Employing a multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) approach, the framework integrates Fermatean fuzzy sets to manage uncertainty, the logarithmic percentage change‐driven objective weighting (LOPCOW) method for weighting expert opinions, and the decision‐making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method for prioritization and causal analysis of the barriers, effectively capturing multi‐attitudinal perspectives on the issue. Key findings highlight that “prevalence of traditional viewpoints” and “lack of awareness regarding women's rights and policies” are primary barriers, with causal impact analysis indicating that factors “lack of awareness regarding women's rights and policies,” “economic inequality” and “lack of access to education and training” stem from the causes “prevalence of traditional viewpoints,” “lack of effective laws and policy interventions”, “explicit and implicit biases,” and “lack of male engagement in gender equality.” Sensitivity analysis confirms the decision framework's robustness and helps determine the barriers' final rank ordering. The framework proposed not only advances decision‐making in gender studies but also offers a readily applicable tool for policymakers focused on gender equality, making a valuable contribution to research on discrimination reduction strategies.