Sustainable development means making the world a better place without depleting opportunities for future generations. World leaders came together and developed the 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development to help put an end to extreme poverty, inequalities, and climate change. The World’s Largest Lesson provides free creative materials in multiple languages to help teach students the importance of Sustainable Development.

Goal 5 indicates the need to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. The inherent need to achieve goal five can be seen in the targets and indicators tab, as well as the following statistics:

• 1 in 3 women (736 million) have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime since the age of 15.
• Women are represented only 25.6% in national parliaments, 36.3% in local governments and 28.2% in managerial positions
• Women spend 2.5 times as many hours as men on unpaid domestic and care work.
• 100 million girls were projected to become child brides before the pandemic. In addition, 10 million more girls are at risk of child marriage as a result of COVID-19.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused many socioeconomic impacts that have greatly worked against achieving Goal 5. The United Nations reports that violence against women and girls have intensified, child marriage is projected to increase, and care work at home has disproportionately affected women. Women still remain unrepresented in leadership roles. With the pandemic causing shifts, an opportunity has opened for the possibility of reshaping and rebuilding systems, laws, policies, and institutions to help aide the advancement of gender equality.

The Brookings Institution explains the importance of girl’s education in bridging the gender equality gap in this article. It discusses the importance, the hindrance COVID-19 has caused, and promising solutions.