The equality of women is crucial to fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals to halve global poverty by 2015, says the World Alliance of YMCAs.

The warning came from on International Women’s Day on Sunday, being marked worldwide to highlight the gender inequality that still exists today.

The theme this year is “Work and family: The way to care is to share!”, to highlight the fact that women are increasingly finding paid work but continue to shoulder the majority of household and childcare tasks in the home.

The World Alliance of YMCAs said in a statement that the equality of women, as primary care-givers and those often responsible for providing food to their family, were being disproportionately affected by extreme poverty and increasing levels of hunger around the world.

“Navigating these turbulent waters demands significant reappraisals of the global system, not least of which is the question of gender equality,” the alliance said.

The alliance stressed the importance of meeting the third Millennium Development Goal to promote gender equality and empower women.

“It is just such empowerment that is required if the rest of the Goals are to stand a chance of being achieved,” the alliance said.

“The rest of the MDGs, which include targets for education, poverty and child mortality, are inextricably linked to gender equality, making it even more imperative to maintain positive progress in the area of women's empowerment.”

The alliance pointed to the need to challenge traditional understandings of masculinity and envision alternatives that place equal value on the contribution of men and women to society.