Not ready, still waiting

Governments have a long way to go in preparing to address gender inequality and the SDGs

Executive summary

Governments urgently need to improve their policy readiness if they want to have any chance of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on inequalities. Governments in developing countries do not yet have the laws and policies in place to allow them to achieve SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 10 on reduced inequality within and among countries. In ActionAid’s study, only three of ten developing countries had over 65% of key inequality-reducing policies in place. To make things worse, rich countries are not adequately supporting developing countries to achieve the SDGs, contrary to SDG 17’s aim to “revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development”. Indeed, some rich countries’ domestic and development policies deepen inequalities globally. Ultimately, governments’ failure to address women’s inequalities may jeopardise achievement of all SDGs