Gender and Waste Nexus: Experiences from Bhutan, Mongolia and Nepal

Mongolia is a signatory to all major international instruments pertaining to women’s rights and gender equality, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Political Rights of Women. The Government has also endorsed the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, thereby implicitly embracing the SDG mandate to “leave no one behind”. Furthermore, the Mongolia Sustainable Development Vision 2030, released in 2016, reiterates the Government’s objective to ensure gender equality as part of its sustainable social development. Many metrics measuring gender equality indicate that it is more advanced in Mongolia than in Bhutan and Nepal. Women in Mongolia are generally educated to a higher level and are proportionally more active in the workforce. Men have lower rates of participation in education, reflecting the perspective that men are workers and do not need an education to enter the manual labour sector. Despite their higher levels of education, women are paradoxically at a disadvantage, as they are unable to convert their education into higher income, as

demonstrated by the persistently high unemployment rate of women with higher education and the earnings of those in work, which is often lower than men’s earnings (Begzsuren and Aldar 2014). Although Mongolia ranked 58 out of 149 countries in the 2018 Global Gender Gap Index, it ranked 109 out of 149 for women’s political empowerment (World Economic Forum [WEF] 2018). Gender-based violence also remains high in Mongolia. According to the national study on gender-based violence conducted in 2017, 57.9 per cent of ever- partnered women have experienced one or more of forms of violent behaviour, including physical, sexual and emotional, economic or controlling, while 31.2 per cent have experienced physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime (National Statistics Office of Mongolia [NSO] and United Nations Population Fund in Mongolia 2018). The Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) measures the extent to which a country’s social institutions and structures discriminate against women in broad terms, such as

Mongolia

GENDER INDICATORS, MONGOLIA – 2018

45%

FEMALE LABOUR FORCE (% OF TOTAL LABOUR FORCE)

CAN A WOMAN LEGALLY GET A JOB IN THE SAME WAY AS A MAN? CAN A WOMAN LEGALLY REGISTER A BUSINESS IN THE SAME WAY AS A MAN? DO SONS AND DAUGHTERS HAVE EQUAL INHERITANCE RIGHTS? IS THERE PAID MATERNITY LEAVE OF AT LEAST 14 WEEKS? DOES THE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT OR PROVIDE CHILDCARE SERVICES? DOES THE LAW MANDATE EQUAL REMUNERATION FOR WORK OF EQUAL VALUE? DOES THE LAW MANDATE NON-DISCRIMINATION BASED ON GENDER IN EMPLOYMENT? IS DISMISSAL OF PREGNANT WORKERS PROHIBITED? IS DISCRIMINATION BASED ON GENDER PROHIBITED IN ACCESS TO CREDIT? IS THERE LEGISLATION ON SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN EMPLOYMENT? ARE THERE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN EMPLOYMENT?

Source: World Bank, Women, Business and the Law 2018 .

RANK

SCORE 0.780 0.993 0.980 0.102 0.714

E

C

S

20 /149 70 /149 Group 1 109 /149 58 /149

O

C

ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION AND OPPORTUNITY

I

N

T

O

I

L

M

O

Y

P

EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT HEALTH AND SURVIVAL POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT GLOBAL GENDER GAP SCORE

N

H

O

E

T I

A

L

A

T

C

H

U

D

E

Mongolia score Average score

Source: World Economic Forum, The Global Gender Gap Report 2018 .

Figure 7

29 Gender and waste nexus