UPU achieves recognition under UN gender equality framework

The UPU’s commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of women has been acknowledged under the UN System-wide Action Plan’s (UN-SWAP) second programme iteration, spearheaded by UN Women.

The UPU was recognized with an institutional “firsts” award for its integration of gender equality into the fabric of the organization’s institutional strategy and documentation during the 2018-2024 UN-SWAP 2.0 cycle.

While the UPU has contributed to gender equality and the empowerment of women through the postal network for decades, it received a major push in 2021 with the adoption of a resolution on gender equality and the empowerment of women during the 27^th Universal Postal Congress, which gave the UPU a mandate to promote work towards SDG 5 on gender equality until the Congress in 2025.

This resolution gave way to the UPU’s first-ever organization-wide policy on gender, which set principles for gender mainstreaming – ensuring a gender perspective is included in policies and programming – within the UPU’s secretariat and among its member countries. This included the roll-out of a gender mainstreaming course available globally on the UPU’s e-learning platform, TrainPost.

The 2021 Congress also decided to review its official documentation to ensure its language was completely gender inclusive.

Both actions have helped the organization accelerate its adherence to global targets set by UN-SWAP. In 2018, the UPU met only one of the 17 indicators, but by 2024, it had met seven and was approaching the requirements for a further five.

Dubai Cycle

UPU member countries attending the Dubai Congress decided to continue work on gender equality and the empowerment of women as part of its strategy for 2026-2029, including deliverables that will improve gender mainstreaming and equal access to postal services, especially for women-led MSMEs.

Work is already progressing, with an updated UPU gender policy expected to be approved by the organization’s Council of Administration in May. The new policy, which includes a detailed implementation plan, will be broken into three distinct areas of action:

• Ensuring both men and women have equal access to and benefits from postal services;
• Achieving gender-equitable participation and leadership within the UPU and global postal workforce; and
• Building institutional capacity for gender mainstreaming.

The updated policy, its implementation plan and the baselines used to measure its success are informed by the agreed Dubai strategy for 2025-2029, discussions from the Dubai Congress, as well the feedback of member countries consulted in a recent survey, which received 53 responses.

Member countries highlighted the need for a greater focus on operational activities, with more practical evaluation mechanisms via clear goals and measurable indicators. In terms of support from the UPU, respondents expressed interest in peer-to-peer learning to share best practices across different contexts.

While included in the UPU strategy, much of the UPU’s work on gender is extrabudgetary and relies on the support of interested countries. Australia supported much of the work done in the previous four-year cycle.