SPECIAL ADVISER ON GENDER ISSUES STRESSES COMPELLING ISSUE OF CHALLENGING OLD PARADIGMS TO MAKE GENDER EQUALITY A REALITY, AT WOMEN'S COMMISSION

1 March 1999

Press Release
WOM/1100

SPECIAL ADVISER ON GENDER ISSUES STRESSES COMPELLING ISSUE OF CHALLENGING OLD PARADIGMS TO MAKE GENDER EQUALITY A REALITY, AT WOMEN'S COMMISSION

19990301 Forty-Third Session Begins at Headquarters Focusing On Women's Health and Institutional Mechanisms for Advancement of Women

The most compelling issue emerging from the Beijing Platform for Action was whether the world would be able to challenge old paradigms and institutions perpetuating gender discrimination, and to make gender equality a reality, said Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Angela King, as the Commission on the Status of Women began its forty-third session this morning.

The session began with a general discussion on "Follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women: emerging issues, trends and new approaches to issues affecting the situation of women or equality between women and men" and "Initiation of the comprehensive review and appraisal of the implementation of the Platform for Action and preparation for the special session of the General Assembly in the year 2000".

Speaking on women and health, Ms. King said that today women live longer but do not necessarily have healthier lives. They were more exposed than men to a variety of health hazards and occupational stress in the work place because of the nature of their work as unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Their multiple roles as workers, mothers and housewives, their low nutritional status, and restricted access to education, further exacerbated the situation.

Patricia Flor (Germany), Chairperson of the Commission, said that health was an essential prerequisite for women's rights. How can a woman overcome poverty, start a professional career, or achieve her full potential if she is denied a healthy life? The Commission had a duty to make good and action- oriented recommendations in that area.

Ending violence against women and girls remained the greatest challenge facing humanity on the eve of the twenty-first century, said Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). Violence against women devastated lives, fractured communities, and was a

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barrier to development in every nation. If the world was to understand the causes of violence and how to prevent it, it needed to see violent acts not only in terms of individual actions but in a structural and cultural context of families, institutions and societies.

Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Nitin Desai said it must be recognized that gender equality and women's advancement were universal challenges. The question to be asked was "how will we reflect the cross-cutting character of those issues?" The outcome of Beijing required connecting that conference process with all the others. Mainstreaming was critical in that respect and a reason for linking the Commission's work with the work of other bodies.

Statements were also made by the representatives of Guyana (on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China), Germany (on behalf of the European Union and associated States), Sweden, Japan, Norway, Côte d'Ivoire, Namibia and Italy. The observer for the Holy See also spoke, as did representatives of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), International Organization for Migration, and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).

Also this morning, the Commission elected Hassan Kassem Najem (Lebanon) as Vice-Chairperson to replace Karam Fadi Habib (Lebanon) who was unable to resume his post for the session. The Commission elected officers at its last session for a term of two years. Its three other Vice-Chairpersons are: Marcela Maria Nicodemos (Brazil), Nonhlanhla Mlangeni (Swaziland) and Zuzana Vranova (Slovakia). Ms. Vranova was also given the responsibility of Rapporteur.

The Commission also allocated responsibilities within the bureau: Ms. Nicodemos will be responsible for draft resolutions, Ms. Mlangeni for institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women, and Ms. Flor for women and health.

Ms. Flor announced that Aloisia Worgetter (Austria) had agreed to continue to serve as Chairperson of the Working Group on the elaboration of a Draft Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Regional groups were requested to submit names of delegates to serve on the Working Group on Communications on the Status of Women by 6 p.m. Wednesday, 3 March.

The Commission will meet again at 3 p.m. today to continue its general discussion.

Commission Work Programme

The Commission on the Status of Women met this morning to begin its forty-third session with a general discussion on "Initiation of the comprehensive review and appraisal of the implementation of the Platform for Action and preparation for the special session of the General Assembly in the year 2000". (For background information, see Press Release WOM/1098 of 26 February.)

Opening Statements

PATRICIA FLOR (Germany), Chairperson of the Commission, said that the work programme for the session may look less strenuous than last year's. However, one of the critical issues under consideration, women and health, was a challenge on several counts. Health was an essential prerequisite for women's rights. How can a woman overcome poverty, start a professional career, or achieve her full potential if she was denied a healthy life? Data on maternal mortality, unsafe abortion, and vulnerability of infections diseases was staggering. The Commission had a duty to make good and action oriented recommendations in that area.

She added that health issues raised moral questions and touched on areas that still were taboo in societies. The Commission could only achieve consensus if it agreed not to renegotiate the Beijing outcome. It must acknowledge the real threats and to understand the different views. Without resources for the empowerment of women and girls, the shared vision of women's equality would not come true. Equal attention should also be paid to the second critical issue: institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women. With those two themes, the Commission would have completed its review of the critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action.

She said that preparation for next year's special session of the General Assembly entitled "Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century" would be taken up in the third week of the session. Recalling that this year was the twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, she said that with that in mind, the Commission should, in this session, approve an optional protocol to the Convention.

NITIN DESAI, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said that looking at the world outside, the one issue that clearly dominated discussions on development in the United Nations and elsewhere was the financial crisis that had hit the world economy. In that regard, the dimension that was of the greatest concern in the Organization was the developmental and human impact of the crisis. Within that scenario, there was a crucial gender dimension. The vulnerability that people were exposed to was disproportionately directed at women. They had more tenuous links with

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employment than men. When household incomes went down, women bore the greater burden of the adjustment. Reductions in education opportunities and health care were also other hardships that women bore disproportionately.

He said there were also longer-term endemic issues to be addressed. The majority of people in poverty -- those living on under two dollars a day -- were women. Girls and women had much lower access to food with a lower nutritional status. The longer-term issues of inequalities between boys and girls also needed to be addressed. Violence against women, in some cases written into laws, was also a troubling long-term endemic concern that must be corrected.

He said that the central theme of the Commission -- gender equality and the advancement of women -- was not the sole concern of that body. It was also relevant and applicable to all major recent United Nations conferences. It must be recognized that gender equality and women's advancement were universal challenges. The question to be asked was "how will we reflect the cross-cutting character of those issues?" The outcome of Beijing required connecting that conference process with all of the others. Mainstreaming was critical in that respect and a reason for linking the Commission's work with the work of other bodies. Gender equality and the advancement of women was not a sectoral issue but a cross-cutting one, he concluded.

ANGELA KING, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, said that the work of the Commission this session would be enhanced by the appointment of a new Director of the Division for the Advancement of Women, Yakin Erturk. The new millennium presented the Commission with a challenge to envision and create a world community based on equality of women and men. The most compelling issue emerging from the Beijing Platform for Action was whether the world would be able to challenge successfully old paradigms and institutions perpetuating gender discrimination, and to make gender equality a reality.

On women and health, she said that today, women lived longer but did not necessarily have healthier lives. Nearly 600,000 women died each year from reproductive causes. In many countries, particularly in the rural areas, women still did not have access to adequate health care. They were more exposed than men to a variety of health hazards and occupational stresses in the work place because of the nature of their work as unskilled or semi- skilled workers. Women were more vulnerable to communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS. Their multiple roles as workers, mothers and housewives, their low nutritional status, restricted access to education, and lack of gainful employment, further exacerbated the situation.

She said that, to contribute to the search for viable solutions to the health care challenges of the twenty-first century, an expert group meeting on "Women and Health -- Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective into the Health

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Sector" was organized by the Division for the Advancement of Women, in cooperation with the Government of Tunisia, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Commonwealth Secretariat. It was held in Tunis from 28 September to 2 October 1998 and it focused on, among other things, preparing a framework for designing national health policies with an integrated gender perspective.

The second theme, national machineries for the advancement of women, was critical in the implementation of the 11 other critical areas of concern of the Platform for Action, she said. Such machineries provided the institutional base and accountability structure for achieving gender equality. Analysis of over a hundred such machineries showed that the effectiveness of national machineries was linked to other developments affecting gender at the national level as well as to the commitments made by Governments at Beijing.

She said that the Expert Group Meeting organized by the Division for the Advancement of Women and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in cooperation with the Chilean Government, held in Santiago from 31 August to 4 September 1998, outlined three main roles for national machineries with regard to gender mainstreaming. Machineries acted as: catalysts, partners of civil society, and as a part of monitoring to hold governments accountable at the national level.

In considering the two critical areas of concern before the Commission at the current session, she said, urgent action was required. Governments, United Nations entities and civil society were stakeholders in promoting women's health and strengthening national machineries. Clear and proactive recommendations should result from the Commission's deliberations. The Commission's role was to establish that women had different health needs than men, that current gender inequalities in medical research should be recognized and eliminated, that research funding focused on women's needs as well as men's, that women had equal access to health care and information, and that policy-makers and planners must take those factors into account.

NOELEEN HEYZER, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), said ending violence against women and girls remained the greatest challenge facing humanity on the eve of the twenty-first century. Violence against women devastated lives, fractured communities, and was a barrier to development in every nation. It was a tragedy that involved both the victims and the victimizers. "If we are to understand the causes of violence and how to prevent it, we need to see violent acts not in terms of individual action alone, but unavoidably, in relational terms and in the structural and cultural context of families, institutions and societies."

She said that in 1998, UNIFEM brought together an unprecedented number of United Nations agencies, governments, national and regional non- governmental organizations (NGOs) and thousands of community-based groups and

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media organizations in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, the Pacific and Africa, in a series of campaigns to eliminate violence against women and girls. Those campaigns had been pivotal in creating a favourable environment for the introduction of changes in policies and national legislation. The campaigns had mobilized political will and had re-energized a constituency to advocate for changes in key institutions such as the criminal justice system, health care, media and education.

The inter-agency regional campaigns demonstrated a new approach for engaging in a coordinated follow-up to United Nations conferences by focusing on common cross-cutting issues, she said. The campaigns reflected the commitment of the Organization to help forge the political will necessary to implement programmes and policies aimed at enabling every woman to posses the power and freedom to live a life free from violence. Violence in women's lives would not be eradicated until all members of society refused to tolerate it. Only with political will, the development of diverse partnerships and the mobilization of sufficient resources, could a vision of hope be affirmed, where a future free from violence against women and girls was no longer a distant dream but a reality.

General Discussion

JUNE PERSAUD (Guyana), on behalf of the "Group of 77" developing countries and China, said that, while the heightened sensitivity to the status of women had served the useful purpose of pinpointing the sources of discrimination, there was still work to be done on eliminating those sources. Political commitment at the national and international levels provided the necessary environment for gender mainstreaming. Government polices remained crucial for promoting change. It must be understood that, where development was threatened and where resources were few, women suffered the most.

She said the condition of women should not just be a point of academic concern. The promotion of women's rights made for healthier societies. The Group of 77 and China hoped to contribute to showing the clear way forward to promoting women's rights, and to the full implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action. It was now time to confront the obstacles that have stood in the way of the full implementation of the Platform for Action. The review of the implementation of the Platform must analyze success stories of some policies and assess the reasons for the failure of other polices. It was imperative to move the debate forward in that regard. "We must asses where we are, how we got there, and where we should be", she concluded.

CHRISTINE BERGMANN, Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth of Germany spoke on behalf of the European Union and Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

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She said that there was agreement that the special session of the General Assembly should not renegotiate the results of the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. The goal of the session was twofold: to review progress achieved and obstacles encountered in the implementation of the Beijing Conference and the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women; secondly, to identify strategies to overcome those obstacles as well as further new actions and initiatives for achieving gender equality in the twenty-first century.

She said the Union strongly supported a holistic view of Beijing by assessing progress in the 12 critical areas of concern of the Platform for Action along cross-cutting themes, good practices which might serve as an example for future actions, lessons learned during implementation, and obstacles encountered and tackled. She stressed that review and further initiatives regarding the implementation of Beijing should be based on mechanisms for measuring qualitative progress in the implementation of women's enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms. The Union therefore wanted to suggest that the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women should consider a voluntary benchmarking regime, both qualitative and quantitative, to provide a framework for the preparation of reports at the Beijing +5 meeting. That would be a tool for the Commission on the Status of Women's work from 2001 to 2005.

She said the goals of the special session could be put into three categories. The first was to translate political will into action and that would require commitment from the highest political levels. The second category was to build capacity for the empowerment and gender equality. The third and final category was to engage civil society, including a discussion on how best to forge a deeper partnership with women's organizations and other relevant actors including men.

MARGARETA WINBERG (Sweden) said that gender equality was inseparable from human rights and democracy. For the great majority of women worldwide, especially poor women, life was a struggle -- for survival, for improving not only their own situation but also that of their children. The empowerment of women was one of the greatest challenges today. A democratic deficit -- when women did not participate equally in decision-making -- could not be justified in a democratic society. Nor could the absence of women's experiences and resources. More women in the labour market would lead to more women in political life. That was happening in Sweden, where almost as many women as men were in the labour market and the government had an equal amount of women and men.

A cornerstone of good governance was a strategy to review all policy fields from a gender perspective and ensure that all decisions were in line with such a perspective, she said. Sweden was committed to making gender mainstreaming a guiding principle of its policy. A prerequisite for success

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was a strong national machinery -- having the tools and resources to exert influence on the policy at all levels.

YORIKO MEGURO (Japan) said one of the most noteworthy achievements in her country was a fundamental law for a gender-equal society which was submitted to the Diet during the past month. The panel theme "women and health" was of crucial importance for all women in every stage of life. The concept of reproductive health and rights had been introduced in the domestic and international programmes of the Japanese Government. Domestically, her Government had instituted a programme of integrated services throughout women's lives, from birth, through adolescence, pregnancy, childbirth, middle and old age.

She said that internationally, Japan had engaged in efforts through its initiative on Women and Development, which was launched at Beijing in 1995. With the cooperation of recipient countries and donors, Japan supported activities to reduce maternal and infant mortality. The experience and know- how that it had accumulated in that field had been useful in that respect. Japan had launched the "global issues initiative on population and AIDS" in 1994 as its own action plan, with a total commitment of $3 billion in official development assistance (ODA) to fight the problem of population and AIDS in developing countries for the period 1994 to 2000.

INGER JOHANNE WREMER, Director General, Ministry of Children and Family Affairs of Norway, said women's health was a priority for her Government. A recent report from a Government-sponsored Committee showed that Norwegian women generally enjoyed a long and healthy life -- living longer than any male population in the world. The report also pointed to a significant correlation between the victims of violence and bad health. Many health problems, such as depression, sleeplessness and mental disorders could be traced back to traumatic experiences involving violence and abuse. The report also stated that women's health was also directly related to their status in society. Women's positions in the labour market and a more equal distribution of labour within the family would therefore have a positive influence on women's health.

She said the empowerment of women lay at the very core of the gender equality process. A comprehensive policy of mainstreaming gender equality perspectives was one way to obtain women's empowerment. A well-functioning national machinery for gender equality and the advancement of women was instrumental in implementing such a policy. The goals of the special session of the General Assembly should be to review the progress made since Beijing, identify obstacles, and develop further strategies and new initiatives to overcome barriers to gender equality. Most important in that review were empowerment and mainstreaming.

LEOPOLDINE TIEZAN COFFIE (Côte d'Ivoire) said the status of women in developing countries was not satisfactory. Resources had not been on par with

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needs and the economic crisis had been a serious handicap for the empowerment of women. Resources need to be targeted toward the poorest members of society. The United Nations system should dedicate more time and resources in that regard.

Her Government had committed itself to improving the status of women by enhancing their place in decision-making positions, she said. Among the steps taken by the Government, she cited the following: the minimum age of marriage was set at 18; polygamy had been outlawed; and laws had been implemented to eliminate violence against women. Training programmes for women were established to improve their chances for employment. There had also been an increase in the number of maternity clinics. A National Plan of Action for Women 1999-2005 had been established in Côte d'Ivoire to create a programme for action for improving the status of women. Her country was committed to equality for women -- a lack of resources could slow down the march, but could not hold it back.

NETUMBO NANDI-NDAITWAH (Namibia) said that four years had passed since the Beijing Conference and there had been significant strides in advancing women's struggle for complete equality. Unfortunately, women were still suffering discrimination based on their sex. National machineries reflected the level of economic development as well as political and cultural conditions that prevailed in any given country. Therefore, no model could be prescribed as to how a national machinery should be constituted. It was crucial that national machinery took into account the individual conditions of each country to ensure that the mechanism would be sustained. The main purpose of such machinery was to be the central policy-coordinating unit for the advancement of gender equality.

ELLEN LUCAS, observer for the Holy See, said that the Church had a long history of involvement in women's health care, an issue with which the Holy See was still very concerned. By the most recent count available, the Catholic Church supplied a worldwide network of 985 Catholic organizations dedicated to the promotion and distribution of financial resources for social and spiritual development. It maintained 54,742 day care centres for 2.3 million girls and over 100,000 health care institutions worldwide, including hospitals, crisis pregnancy centres, shelters for battered women, leprosaria, nursing homes for the elderly, centres for the seriously disabled, orphanages for boys and girls and homes for destitute and dying women and men.

In August 1995, before the Beijing Conference, Pope John Paul II committed Catholic institutions to make further efforts to assist the advancement of women and girls. Four years after Beijing, tuberculosis, tropical diseases and AIDS were still the great killers of women as well as men in poor countries. Much more should be done than was now being done to reduce that toll. The remedies were often simple. When the Women 2000 special session meets next year, the Holy See was hopeful that it would give

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due consideration to those goals for improving women's health, especially in the developing world.

CHIARA INGRAO (Italy) said the Beijing Platform for Action was one of the most powerful tools in the hands of women worldwide. It should not be renegotiated. The status of women in developing countries was a cause for concern. The widening disparity between women in developing and developed countries might reopen the divide that women had closed at Beijing.

When social contradictions became more acute, women suffered the most, she said. That was the case with the rise of globalization and economic free trade. Such forces caused societies to become more standardized, less caring and more money-oriented. There was a need for a new perspective based not on economic factors alone, but on political and social equality. Another major area of concern for women's rights was the rise of fundamentalism, which was particularly damaging for women. Regardless of the religion, fundamentalism attacked women's rights wherever it emerged. Battling the forces of fundamentalism was a challenge that should be shared by all peoples North and South.

A representative of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said the unions were better placed than other entities to address the health and safety of women workers. The ICFTU was committed to promoting safety and health in the workplace. Every year hundreds of thousands of men and women were killed on the job and contracted diseases as a result of hazardous conditions in the workplace. Violence and sexual harassment in the workplace were more of a concern for women than men, however.

Also, working women should benefit from the right of protection of motherhood -- pregnancy was not a disease, she said. Women were exposed in many countries to high levels of murder, physical attack and harassment in the workplace. Although much work had been done in the area of workplace health, most had been done from a male-based approach. Gender perspectives should be incorporated at all levels in the area of health and safety. Governments should avoid establishing programmes that would never be implemented.

NARCISA ESCALER, Deputy Director General of the International Organization for Migration, said that the world was observing a more diverse pattern of both regular and irregular migration. In temporary migration, following conflict or for employment, as well as in irregular migration, families were often separated. Women were commonly the sole support for the migrant family. In many places, there was a limited understanding of the impact and health needs of migratory populations in general, much less an understanding of the needs of migrant women and girls. Health policy planners needed to be sufficiently aware of current migration patterns to adequately anticipate and plan for the consequences of large migratory flows.

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She said health systems in countries that received large migrant populations might have to modify some of their programmes in both preventive and treatment services to reflect the cultural origin of the significant recently-arrived populations. Those issues gained particular importance for female migrants who moved to places where medical practices differed from those of their regions of origin. Her organization's experience also showed that health conditions for migrant women were considerably inferior to those of male migrants, especially in many post-conflict situations.

THELMA KAY, Chief, Women in Development Section, Social Development Division, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said the ongoing economic crisis had highlighted the vulnerable situation of women; a growing number of them had been affected by shutdowns and lay-offs in the manufacturing sector. An increasing number of women were being pushed out of the formal labour market or forced by dire economic circumstances to accept previously unacceptable work conditions. The deflationary policies pursued by several countries of the region had led to substantial cutbacks in the supply of public goods and services such as primary health care and education.

As a consequence, she continued, households were being forced to provide some of those services and, given the highly skewed pattern of the division of labour within households, women were finding themselves having to bear a disproportionate burden in providing those services. In instances where additional income was needed to sustain household consumption at acceptable levels, girls were being forced to take up some of the activities of the household which were otherwise performed by the mother. In some cases that had led to their withdrawal from schooling. The negative effect of such occurrences were irreversible.

She said the economic consequences of the crisis had made it very difficult to maintain the momentum achieved in alleviating poverty in the region. It had aggravated the upsurge in crime and the commodification of women, with trafficking in women for sexual exploitation constituting one of the worst forms of violations of women's rights. The crisis had led to other forms of sexual exploitation such as sex tourism and pornography, as well an increasing tendency towards violence against women.

SBAITY KASSEM, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), said the Second Arab Meeting for the Follow-up to Beijing was organized in collaboration with the League of Arab States and UNIFEM and was held in Beirut from 12 to 15 December 1998. Seventeen out of 22 Arab States took part in that meeting which was convened as a regional preparatory for Beijing +5. The Meeting focused on providing Member States with tools to assist in preparing their national reports. A model national action plan was adopted which incorporated a vision for gender equality in the next millennium. Towards that end, a model for gender mainstreaming at the national level was adopted.

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She said that in implementation of the Economic and Social Council agreed conclusions of last July and the Commitment Statement that followed regarding mainstreaming a gender perspective into policies, plans and programmes, ESCWA had set up an ad hoc working group on gender mainstreaming in the secretariat. The group formulated a plan for gender mainstreaming which was currently in effect. As a first step, gender mainstreaming had been introduced into those activities that lent themselves to that approach, and on a gradual phased basis. During the 2000-2001 biennium, ESCWA would continue to focus on building and maintaining a gender sensitive database on indicators, policies and measures of impact on gender, women and the family for dissemination and exchange of information.

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