Immediate and long-term equal access, for all, to the fundamentals of life is a basic precondition for sustainable development. And yet, in all countries of the world, access to resources and participation in decision-making is not equal for men and women. A world in which half the world's population does not have equal access to resources leads to an increasing gap between the haves and the have nots. The full participation and inclusion of women in sustainable development planning and strategies cannot be realized without gender equality. Gender equality means that women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and potential, for contributing to national political, economic, social and cultural development, and for benefitting equally from the results.
Equality is essential for human development and peace.
Gender equality will not be effected into sustainable development without incorporating gender analysis into sustainable development decision-making, planning, policies, practices and programs. Gender analysis is based on the belief that policy cannot be separated from the social context, and that social issues are an integral part of economic issues, as well as ecological ones. A gendered analysis promotes evaluation of existing institutions. It follows from these definitions that any research on sustainable development and gender is inherently interdisciplinary. Feminist theories cannot be derived deductively from existing disciplinary knowledge, there must be an integral inductive element.