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Beijing +10 Meets Millennium +5

2005 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as well as the five-year anniversary of the Millennium Summit. Virtually all ADB member countries participated in those historic meetings and endorsed their outcome documents – the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The reviews of progress in implementing these commitments have underscored how closely linked they are: gender equality and the empowerment of women, which is the overarching goal of the Beijing Platform, is also strongly supported by the Millennium Declaration and is reflected directly in two of the MDGs. It is also recognized that gender equality is a critical condition for the success of the other MDGs.

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This seminar reviewed the outcomes of the recent ten-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action, as well as the work of the UN Millennium Project related to gender, and discussed their complementary findings and recommendations and relevance to ADB.

Dr. Patricia Licuanan was a member of the Philippine delegation to the recent session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that reviewed the Beijing Platform. She surveyed the gains as well as gaps and persistent challenges in implementing the Platform. In the ten-year review by the CSW, she noted that countries reaffirmed their commitments to the Beijing Platform, emphasized that its implementation is essential to achieve the MDGs, and stressed the need to include a gender perspective in the upcoming Millennium Summit.

Dr. Caren Grown, who is a lead author of the UN Millennium Project report, Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women (2005), presented the final recommendations of the UN Millennium Project related to gender. She noted that gender equality involves equal opportunities for women and men in three interdependent domains:

1. capabilities
2. access to resources and opportunities
3. security

To achieve gender equality, the UN Millennium Project recommends strategic actions in seven priority areas:

1. post-primary education
2. sexual and reproductive health and rights
3. infrastructure investments that reduce women’s and girls’ time burdens
4. property and inheritance rights
5. employment
6. representation in national parliaments and local government
7. gender-based violence

These priority areas are a subset of the critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform, and therefore should be treated as a minimum; they are also interdependent.

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• Dr. Patricia Licuanan 
  Presentation [ PDF ]
  President, Miriam Collge



• Dr. Caren Grown 
  Presentation [ PDF ] | Notes [ PDF ]
  Director for Poverty Reduction and Economic Governance,
  International Center for Research on Women