Press conference on GENDER EQUALITY REPORT

 

While there was much to celebrate in progress toward gender equality, there was still much at risk a decade after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, research experts told correspondents here this morning.  Despite notable gains in such areas as political participation, education and labour force participation, women continued to face limits on income, authority and power, among other areas of concern.

The experts -- Thandika Mkandawire, Director of the Geneva-based United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD); Shahra Razavi, also of UNRISD; Ann Zammit, an independent consultant; Anne-Marie Goetz of the Institute of Development Studies; and Urvashi Butalia, of Aman Trust of India –- were at Headquarters to release the UNRISD’s report on “Gender Equality:  Striving for Justice in an Unequal World”.  The UNRISD, an autonomous United Nations agency, was established in 1963 to promote research on pressing social issues of development.

The report observed that women’s role in public life had grown in what they called a “rising tide” since 1995.  While women’s share in national assemblies had gone from a mere 9 per cent on average to almost 16 per cent, the figure was 30 per cent more in 16 countries.  More women held office everywhere except Eastern Europe and Central Asia, where the figure plummeted after communist party quotas for women were dropped.

UNRISD Director Mkandawire, told correspondents that the reason for preparing the report was largely in response to a feeling that many of the debates that were going on now -- on structural adjustment, economic liberalization, democratization and ethnic conflicts and similar issues -- were not systematically informed by the knowledge that was being generated in research in gender and women’s affairs.  Thus, there was a parallel universe whereby, on one side there were policies being made, but on the other the policy makers were not drawing adequately on what was known on research on gender, he said.

The experts pointed out that women in public life had worked to make laws responsive to women’s reproductive health rights, and to bar violence and discrimination against women.  Internationally, prosecutions against wartime sexual assault as a crime against humanity meant those responsible for sexual violence were starting to be held accountable in their own countries and the world at large.  Numbers did not tell the whole story, however.

Despite their greater prominence in political life, women had, in many cases, yet to translate their visibility into leadership positions and influence over the decision-making process.  Many instances remained in which they were simply used as an extension of male power structures.  To that end, the experts believed that the transition from a heightened presence of women in politics to actual advance for gender equality issues and women-friendly policies took time, and would depend on the effectiveness of women’s movements in holding governments to account, and on the capacity of public sector agencies to translate ambitious gender-equity policy agendas into effective implementation.

Political liberalization had sometimes harmed feminist politics, as was the case in Eastern Europe, where feminism had been associated with a repressive State.  In other countries, according to the report, political liberalization had been only partial and disillusionment with States’ failure to deliver development or democracy seemed to have helped make conservative ethnic and religious movements attractive to women.  Moves to decentralize authority to local entities as part of reform efforts had included encouragement of women’s participation.  But, the report pointed out, there were sometimes more women in national than local politics, because of resistance from local traditional patriarchal systems.

That resistance, according to the experts, could mean that decentralization reinforced men’s power over social institutions governing marital relations, conflict resolution and property rights.  Thus, local government remained a key area to watch over the next decade, as more and more women asserted their leadership ambitions and challenged patriarchal systems at that level, said the report, pointing to signs that women in local government were affecting spending and building acceptance of women’s political authority.  On the economic front, free market and deregulation-oriented policies had not largely benefited women.  The report cited severe financial crises, sluggish economic growth, lower government spending, increased poverty and the erosion of government public services and social protection, in that regard.

Apart from post-Soviet Eastern and Central Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa, women had increased their economic activity generally.  But even then, labour markets continued to be stratified by gender.  Even in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, men tended to work full-time, while women worked part-time and there were earning gaps between men and women full-time workers.

Further, care work, whether paid or unpaid, remained predominantly women’s work in both North and South, with debilitating consequences for women and girls in contexts where the HIV/AIDS pandemic was imposing a heavy care burden, the experts said.  Additionally, women were also working under deteriorating terms and conditions.  Rural poverty continued to push women into cities, and many young women from the countryside were in small-scale domestic production, petty trading or elsewhere at the bottom of the informal employment ladder.

In the area of war and conflict, the experts noted that women had been given more credibility in peacekeeping and conflict resolution and were “beginning to claim, and win, places at the peace table” and in negotiation of a “gender-friendly peace”.  Women ex-combatants still tended to be relatively marginalized, if not completely neglected, in efforts to help ex-combatants after wars.  The report cited prosecutions of wartime violence against women by war crimes tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, but pointed out that most wartime sexual crimes against women still went unpunished and prosecutions had the inclination to be “painfully slow”.

A correspondent asked the team of experts to comment on claims in some quarters that the United Nations was shifting the focus away from the goals identified in the Beijing Platform and even the Women’s Convention, by increasingly calling on Member States to rally the Organization’s work around the Millennium Development Goals.  Ms. Razavi said the team believed the Beijing Platform for Action had much more to offer in terms of the goals it had set; and was a much more comprehensive agenda than the Millennium Development Goals.

That was why the UNRISD report had focused on no less than eight of the 10 areas of concern identified by the Beijing Platform for Action as areas that needed attention.  She conceded that it was true the United Nations increasingly “supposed” to rally its work around the Millennium Development Goals, but as far as the report was concerned, the team viewed that trend as a dilution of the goals that Beijing had set and, thus, a diminishment of expectations and standards.  There was, therefore, an urgent need to continue to put women at the centre of all developmental processes, she said.

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