The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has launched its newest publication, Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability?. The report provides an assessment of each Milennium Development Goal (MDG), using a gender lens. Moreover, it places emphasis on the role of duty bearers, particularly the state in ensuring women's exercise of their rights and access to resources.

“Women are not just asking duty bearers but how they would be answered. The report calls for enhanced accountability and enhanced gender equality, beyond rules and [conventional] thinking,” remarked Jean D'Cunha, Regional Programme Director, UNIFEM East and Southeast Asia Regional Office.

As the report read, “Every time legal systems turn a blind eye to injustices experienced by women, every time public service systems respond to women’s needs only in relation to narrowly defined traditional female roles, and every time structures of opportunity in markets favour men’s enterprises or limit women to vulnerable or lowreturn employment, we are faced with an accountability failure that reinforces gender-based inequality.”

Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009 /also includes case studies from various regions. During the Philippine book launch, d'Cunha also cited some laudable state and social movement interventions that helped mitigate gender disparities such as India's anti-alcohol movement; gender-responsive budgeting mechanisms in Mexico; Timor Leste's legal framework on women's participation in reconstruction, among others.

However Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls of femLINKPACIFIC, a feminist communications organisation in Fiji observed, “There is the total invisibility of the realities of Pacific Island women in this report, aside from a mention of Fiji and Papua New Guinea on women's access to water. There is not one single case study from the Pacific Island region which would have been an opportunity to address the realities...to highlight the impact of our recent conflicts and human security realities including rising sea levels, transitional governance issues and political fragilities, as well as vert real and unique infrastructure barriers to women's empowerment, especially rural women.”

Reacting to positive official data on the Philippines' performance on the MDGs, Former Philippine treasurer and now Social Watch convenor Leonor Briones said, “The Philippines ranks well in the gender equity index but in terms of progress, it is stagnant.” She added that the state needs to put a huge investment on what may be deemed as “small items” such as toilets. Criticising massive multi-million dollar projects such as economic packages and defense modernisation as well as special purpose funds, Briones asserted that “PHP100 million [US$2.2 million] is a small price for autoclaves which can prevent the death of healthy-born babies compared to new helicopters.”

Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009, Who Answers to Women? Gender and Accountability? was launched together with another UNIFEM publication, /Making MDGs Work For All/, last 6 February 2009 in Manila, Philippines.