Australia supports action to prevent violence toward women and girls

I have co-hosted the launch of UN Women's flagship program on gender statistics 'Making Every Woman and Girl Count' in New York, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the UN Foundation, and UN Women.

This Program will help governments to better respond to gender inequality and violence against women and girls by improving data collection, enhancing the technical capacity of national statistics agencies and promoting greater access to data collected.

Better data on women's access to income and social protection, the quantity and quality of women's work and the prevalence of gender based violence will enable Governments to advance gender equality, which is essential to achieving sustained economic growth and development.

The Australian Government will contribute $6.5 million over four years to the 'Making Every Woman and Girl Count' program, an integral part of our long-term commitment to closing gender data gaps in the Indo-Pacific region and globally.

Gender equality is critical to realising the ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which focuses on equitable economic growth and seeks to end extreme poverty within a generation. The 2030 Agenda was agreed to by all countries at the United Nations last year.