Globally, some progress on women’s rights has been achieved. In Ethiopia, as of February 2021, 38.8% of seats in parliament were held by women. In 2018, 63.6% of women of reproductive age (15-49 years) had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods.
However, work still needs to be done in Ethiopia to achieve gender equality. 41.7% of legal frameworks that promote, enforce and monitor gender equality under the SDG indicator, with a focus on violence against women, are in place. 40.3% of women aged 20–24 years old who were married or in a union before age 18. The adolescent birth rate is 79.5 per 1,000 women aged 15-19 as of 2014, up from 71.2 per 1,000 in 2013. In 2018, 26.5% of women aged 15-49 years reported that they had been subject to physical and/or sexual violence by a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months. Also, women and girls aged 10+ spend 19.3% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared to 6.6% spent by men.
As of december 2020, only 37.7% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: key labour market indicators, such as the gender pay gap, information and communications technology skills and women in local governments. In addition, many areas – such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women’s access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment – lack comparable methodologies for reguar monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Ethiopia.
