How far are OECD countries from achieving SDG targets for women and girls?: Applying a gender lens to measuring distance to SDG targets

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call to achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030, leaving no one behind. This paper summarises available evidence to measure the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach SDG targets related to women and girls. It finds that 102 of the 247 indicators in the UN Global Indicator Framework are gender-related. However, in practice, data for OECD countries are available for only 35 indicators, distributed across 9 of the 17 goals. Based on available data, OECD countries are on average closest to meeting targets for women on Health (Goal 3), mortality from homicides and occupational injuries (Goals 16 and 8). Conversely, they are further away from targets in three areas: personal safety (Goal 16), equal representation (Goals 9 and 5) and healthy life-styles (Goals 2 and 3). Where data is available for both men and women, the evidence shows that women are closer to SDG targets than men on all indicators related to Health (Goal 3), but are further away from targets in many employment-related targets (Goals 8 and 9) as well as on feeling safe (Goal 16) and ICT skills (Goal 4). No data are available for the planet goals (Goals 6, 12, 13, 14 and 15), for which few indicators are identified as gender-related.