Memo Received March 8, 2019:
Dear colleagues,
Coinciding with International Women's day, I am sharing with you the second quarterly update on the Gender Action Plan 2018-2023.
You will recall that when we launched the current Gender Action Plan we committed to reporting not only progress, but also challenges. Unfortunately, while we can report good progress under five of the 30 commitments, there is a major area where we are moving backwards: gender parity.
While we had previously achieved gender parity, over the last nine months since the launch of this Gender Action Plan, we can no longer report parity at any grade. This is a real concern and goes to show that gender parity is not a box we can simply tick, but rather something we need to continuously work towards. Progress is fragile and the gains we have made, both in the HIV response and gender, can quickly be reversed.
We are counting on all staff and particularly managers, HRM and the SMT, to reverse this concerning trend. Each recruitment makes a difference and as such, this will be closely monitored moving forward, through piloting a Gender Scorecard which will show the impact of recruitments in real time to the MRC.
In terms of individual staff performance, during this ongoing PALM evaluation and objective setting phase, I am reminding all of you that UNAIDS staff have to set gender-sensitive work objectives and at least one learning objective to increase your gender competence. I hope you will seize the opportunity of this important conversation in the performance management cycle to meaningfully reflect and identify what each of us can do to be champions for gender equality in our daily work and the UNAIDS Secretariat.
Should you want to discuss further, please do reach out to my office.
Best regards,
Gunilla
Gunilla Carlsson
Deputy Executive Director
Management and Governance
UNAIDS | 20 Avenue Appia | CH-1211 Geneva 27 | Switzerland
T: +41 22 791 4212 | carlssong@unaids.org
UNAIDS - Uniting the world against AIDS
