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Gender Issues on the Global Agenda
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At the Millennium Summit in 2000, 172 nations of the world endorsed the need to achieve equality and women’s empowerment as one of eight priority Millennium Development Goals - MDGs.
In so doing, they reaffirmed commitments made to the world’s women at a series of international conferences in the 1990s and early 2000s, including the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, 1995 World Summit on Social Development, 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001.
The inclusion of women’s empowerment and gender equality as one of the MDGs is a sign of progress — a recognition that gender equality is important not only as a goal in itself but is also critical to achieving all the other goals.
However, the way forward is less certain than it appeared in 1979, when the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted, committing its signatories to eliminating the obstacles that limit women’s equal enjoyment of human rights, access to resources, and equal participation in decision making in all societies.
" While progress has indeed taken place in all regions, it is everwhere uneven and slow, subject to setbacks and reversals"
As of June 2003, 172 nations had signed this convention. But 13 years after it entered into force, and 8 years after Beijing, what can we say has changed?
In 2002–2003, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) examined women’s progress along several different dimensions, including literacy and education; paid employment and political decision making; addressing the impact of armed conflict on women and their important role in peace building; and the end of violence against women. While progress has indeed taken place in all regions, it is everywhere uneven and slow, subject to setbacks and reversals.
FLEXIBILITY An ethnic minority teacher in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic cares for her baby while teaching
As UNIFEM noted in Progress of the World’s Women 2002, gender equality can mean different things to different societies. The notion of progress itself is subject to different interpretations by different groups of women. And progress in one area does not guarantee progress in all areas: women may enjoy certain rights yet still suffer extreme discrimination. But some generalizations are possible.
First, any assessment of progress toward gender equality must be understood in the context in which our world is now shaped: economic globalization, national fragmentation and conflict, and problems without borders—all with major consequences to women’s lives.
The financial crises in Asia and Latin America and the ongoing struggle between rich and poor countries over the terms of world trade have highlighted the challenges of globalization. While some people, including many women, have benefited from new market and employment opportunities, others have experienced new or deepening inequalities.
The fragmentation of states along lines of ethnicity, language, and religion—often resulting in war and armed conflict—has been accompanied by systematic gender-based violence, including rape, forced pregnancy, and deliberate infection with HIV/AIDS.
And a rise in problems that know no borders—including the proliferation of small arms, trafficking in weapons, drugs and human beings, and the spread of HIV/AIDS—has challenged the capacity of states to ensure basic security, especially that of women and children.
INTERCONNECTED Progress toward gender equality must be understood in the context in which our world is shaped
In this context, a review of data for each of the MDG indicators shows that countries with the lowest achievement in education, literacy, and nonagricultural wage employment tend to be the poorest—and are almost all in sub-Saharan Africa. While barriers to women’s entry into paid employment are clearly crumbling, and women’s share of nonagricultural employment is increasing in most countries, the benefits to women are less clear.
Women’s share approaches parity with that of men in less than half the countries for which data are available. And even where they approach parity, they still experience gender gaps in pay and conditions.
By contrast, women’s share of seats in parliament, which depends less on wealth and more on political will, is highest where affirmative action measures, such as quotas, have been adopted.
Despite the dire conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, for example, women have managed to increase their voice in public decision making; at the end of 2002, 13 countries in that region ranked higher in women’s share of seats in parliament than some of the world’s richest countries, including France, Japan, and the United States.
SCHOOL LUNCH Good nutrition is critical for building strong minds and bodies of the next generation
Just as gender equality and women’s empowerment are critical to achieving all MDGs, from reducing the numbers of people in absolute poverty to reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, achieving this goal depends on progress in eliminating violence against women—in situations of armed conflict and in those that are free of such conflict. Here, too, progress is mixed.
Violence against women exists in every country of the world. Global estimates indicate that violence against women is as serious a cause of death and incapacity among women of reproductive age as cancer, and a greater cause of ill health than traffic accidents and malaria combined.
A review by the World Health Organization found that 10–69% of women report having suffered this violence; they are raped, assaulted, trafficked, harassed, or forced to submit to harmful practices such as female genital mutilation. In most cases, the abuser will be a member of the woman’s family or someone known to her.
This reality must be set in the context of the violence of all kinds that defines everyday life in many countries. Whether it breaks out as full-scale war, ethnic or religious violence, terrorism, or the violence that regularly affects many poor and disenfranchised communities, the growing inequality and insecurity in the world increases violence against women. The toll is terrible and heartbreaking. But it can be stopped. Expertise, investment, and —above all— political will are required.
In the last decade, gender-based violence has moved from the shadows to the foreground. It is increasingly recognized as a violation of human rights, a crime against women and society. But continued progress demands concerted action at all levels. An increase in human traffickers highlights the urgency.
According to the Human Security Commission, over 1 million women and children are trafficked annually for forced labor, domestic servitude, or sexual exploitation. This is an example of the down escalator that women are running ever harder to go up.
"UNIFEM believes that women can make progress in this world, where borders shift and boundaries are redined-but can always be crossed"
UNIFEM believes that women can make progress in this world, where borders shift and boundaries are redefined—but can always be crossed. The challenge is to find a way to reduce the high price that women pay for crossing borders and boundaries of all kinds—not only national, but also economic, political, cultural, and psychological.
It is important to mainstream gender into policies and programs, but what we have learned is that for these to bring about real change in women’s lives, women must make them their own. Our search for new development frameworks must not lose sight of women’s empowerment, which alone will enable them to bring about a better and more secure future.
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