5. Gender Equality

Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality, aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Its targets encompass ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere; eliminating violence against women and girls; recognizing and valuing unpaid care and domestic work; ensuring women’s participation and equal opportunities for political, economic, and public leadership; and ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights.
While the scope of inequality that SDG5 seeks to address is wide-ranging, there is a glaring omission in the very description of SDG 5: while it aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, it fails to explicitly acknowledge the inequities that gender-diverse individuals and sexual minorities experience on the basis of their social identities. Further, it does not explicitly acknowledge intersectionality, and how sexism interacts and intersects with other forms of oppression like racism, homophobia, and classism, to produce different lived experiences of inequality.
In this episode of Healthy Cities in the SDG Era, Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero speaks with two researchers that are working to improve the health and well-being of women and gender-diverse individuals with equity and intersectionality at the forefront.

Dr. Lori Ross is an Associate Professor in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences Division of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. Lori is also the leader of the Re:searching for LGBTQ Health Team. Lori uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches in her research work, with a strong focus on integrating the principles of community-based research. Much of her research focuses on understanding the mental health and service needs of marginalized populations including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S+) people, in order to improve access to services for these communities.
Sireesha Bobbili is a PhD candidate in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, U of T. She formerly worked as a Project Manager at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, where she led projects focusing on improving mental health systems, both locally and abroad, to increase access for vulnerable and marginalized populations. Sireesha conducts global health research regarding mental health and substance use, violence against women, and public health policy.

CREDITS: This podcast is co-hosted by Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero, Director of the Centre for Global Health, and Ophelia Michaelides, Manager of the Centre for Global Health, at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, and produced by Elizabeth Loftus. Audio editing is by Anwaar Baobeid. Music is produced by Julien Fortier and Patrick May. It is made with the support of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.