Tackling Overlapping Emergencies, Closing Gender Gap in Work, Services, Technology Requires Multi-Sourced Data, Speakers Tell Commission on Status of Women
Speakers underscored the importance of citizen-generated and gender-disaggregated data to tackle inequality, while others offered suggestions on closing gender gaps in care work, technology and geospatial services and nutrition, as the Commission on the Status of Women today held an interactive dialogue, “Getting back on track: Achieving gender equality in a context of overlapping emergencies”.
Maris Burbergs (Latvia), Commission Chair-designate, in opening remarks, stressed: “The world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030”, highlighting how women and girls around the world are facing an unprecedented set of overlapping threats and challenges. Progress on Sustainable Development Goal 5 will remain out of reach unless long-term structural barriers to gender equality are addressed and dismantled.
Introducing the five panellists and two discussants, he encouraged participants to make clear recommendations for key actions that can be taken to strengthen policies and recovery efforts that, in turn, empower women and girls most affected by emergencies.
Annie Namala, Executive Director of the Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion, and National Convener of the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan campaign, said citizen-generated data brings together overlapping vulnerabilities to identify solutions. Describing the Centre’s work, she said that volunteers helped collect and interpret data and established a direct contact with communities. Emphasizing that “data itself does not tell stories”, she underlined the importance of listening to the community and talking to key informants to understand the data.
Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also underlined the need to collect up-to-date, reliable, sex-disaggregated data. Pointing out that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a widening gap between men and women, thus exacerbating food insecurity, she advocated for strengthening the links between gender equality and women’s empowerment and food security and nutrition.
Jerome De Henau, Senior Lecturer in Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University, United Kingdom, said the pandemic showed how much care work was relied upon to sustain economies while demonstrating how exposed, undervalued and gender-unequal care work was and remains. Investing in universal care services and well-paid, childcare-related leaves can, among other things, reduce gender inequalities at work and in the home, as well as help people who either provide or receive support live independent lives, he said.
Hamsatu Allamin, Founder and Executive Director of the Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development, Nigeria, recounting the myriad of Boko Haram’s atrocities and resulting devastation, particularly on women and girls, described the Foundation’s initiatives, including eight social networks for vulnerable groups of women, girls and youth under the “Jire Dole” network, which work with 29,000 registered participants. She also reported that, for the first time ever, the Foundation started engagement with Boko Haram women in a community-based deradicalization process to demystify radical ideologies and challenged the narrative of extremism.
Marina Irigoyen, Gender Advisor for the SERVIR-Amazonia programme at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, noted that with no public representation, communication and access to information in the Amazon is affected. However, women are now implementing cell-phone use in their operations. As part of “Terra on Track” — a programme that seeks to monitor deforestation — they can see who is invading their territory and send alerts to organize, sometimes with State support, to put a stop to those invasions. “We do have a way forward to a more inclusive world through the use of those technologies and we have evidence for it,” she stressed.
The two discussants also weighed the importance of gender-disaggregated data for tackling gender inequality, with Jemimah Njuki, Chief of Economic Empowerment at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, calling for more and better gender data to monitor the impacts of crises on gender inequality and inform policies and programmes to empower women and girls.
As well, Mary Wangui Mugwanja, Chair of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, said the Crime Prevention Commission has consistently highlighted the need for gender statistics and sex-disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based crime prevention and to mainstream a gender perspective into the criminal justice system.
In the course of the interactive dialogue, Member States speakers, regional blocs and representatives from civil society and non-governmental organizations shared their national experiences in addressing climate change and other emergencies while other speakers drew attention to specific challenges faced by women and girls that hinder their empowerment, such as gender-based stereotypes, unpaid care work, conflict situations, gender-based violence, and disabilities.
The representative of the European Union said its Recovery and Resilience Facility made €670 billion available to overcome the pandemic, including to mitigate the crisis’ social and economic impact on women. In addition, by 2025, 85 per cent of all the bloc’s new external actions will promote gender equality as a principal objective.
The representative of the Philippines said that to address the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and strict lockdown measures, her Government implemented gender-related policies and programmes to help the most vulnerable Filipinos, including, among others, cash and non-cash assistance to the poorest households, including pregnant and lactating women and solo parents.
The representative of the International Medical Cooperation Committee, pointing out that unpaid care work is seen as a female responsibility, said every minute more that a woman spends on unpaid care work represents one minute less that she can potentially invest in her educational skills.
The representative of Burundi, underscoring that mastering technology requires practice, said women must be able to acquire necessary resources. Noting that “the brain has no gender”, she called on States to believe in and invest in Burundian women. “I am part of the last generation, I hope to be fighting these challenges,” she stated, underscoring that technology is a woman’s field as well.
The Commission on the Status of Women will reconvene on Friday, 17 March, to conclude its work.
Interactive Dialogue on Emerging Issue
The Commission on the Status of Women this morning held an interactive dialogue on the emerging issue “Getting back on track: Achieving gender equality in a context of overlapping emergencies”, bringing together stakeholders on selected thematic areas, such as food security, poverty eradication, employment, unpaid care work and gender statistics.
MARIS BURBERGS (Latvia), Commission Chair-designate, in opening remarks, said women and girls around the world are facing an unprecedented set of overlapping threats and challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, higher poverty rates and the global cost of-living crisis, coupled with the climate crisis and conflicts. Thus, the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. Extreme poverty is projected to deepen for women and girls globally and the gender gap in food security has more than doubled between 2019 and 2021. Further, there is a negative trend in unpaid care work. Households affected by school and preschool closures during the COVID-19 pandemic had to shoulder close to 700 billion hours of additional unpaid childcare globally, with women carrying about 70 per cent of those hours, affecting their labour force participation, which is projected to remain below pre-pandemic levels.
He also spotlighted the gender gaps in conflicts, wars and through renewed efforts to keep girls out of school, with 54 per cent of girls not in formal education living in conflict-affected areas. As well, women and girls remain among the most vulnerable and are the least likely to receive support in emergencies, which are becoming more frequent and complex, leading to global challenges that further exacerbate gender disparities. Moving forward, progress on Sustainable Development Goal 5 will remain out of reach unless long-term structural barriers to gender equality are addressed and dismantled, he said, encouraging participants to make clear recommendations for key actions that can be taken to strengthen policies and recovery efforts to empower women and girls most affected by emergencies.
The interactive dialogue featured presentations from Annie Namala, Executive Director of the Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion, and National Convener of the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA — Do not break your promises) campaign; Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), who joined virtually; Jerome De Henau, Senior Lecturer in Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at The Open University, United Kingdom; Marina Irigoyen, Gender Advisor for the SERVIRAmazonia programme at the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture; and Hamsatu Allamin of Nigeria, Founder and Executive Director of the Allamin Foundation for Peace and Development.
Discussants included Jemimah Njuki, Chief of Economic Empowerment at the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), and Mary Wangui Mugwanja, Chair of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, who joined virtually.
Ms. NAMALA, spotlighting citizen-generated data to make marginalized communities’ voices heard, said the intervention “Hundreds of Hotspots” was created in 2018, and works in partnership with the global process “Leave No One Behind. Making Voices Heard and Count”. Marginalized communities’ challenges and opportunities cannot be perceived by looking at one dimension of their experience. Citizen-generated data brings together overlapping vulnerabilities to identify solutions. The intervention looked into a number of vulnerabilities, including identity and discrimination; access to education and public good; and access to social protection, among others. With the help of local female volunteers, the intervention also engaged with specific vulnerable communities, including sex workers, single women and LGBTQI+. Community consultations were included to identify key issues, with volunteers helping collect and interpret data and establishing a direct contact with communities. Noting that “data itself does not tell stories”, she underlined the importance of listening to the community and talking to key informants to understand the data. She further recalled working with the Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in a community-based monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic across 30 districts in India. Multiple rounds of data collections were run and passed to Governments. Identifying language, skills, capacities, technological challenges and resources as key challenges, she said that a global level of accepted standards and indicators should be developed that strengthens Government systems addressing marginalized communities.
Ms. PHILLIPS, speaking via video teleconference, stressed that emergencies rarely happen in isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a widening gap between men and women, with more than 939 million women aged 15 or older experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity in 2021 compared to 813 million men in the same age group. This gap — driven mostly by increases in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean — grew from 1.7 per cent in 2019 to 4.3 per cent in 2021. Gender inequalities are notably significant in countries facing high exposure to extreme climate events where rural women — who have limited adaptive capacities — often have to resort to short-term coping strategies at the expense of their long-term resilience to climate shocks and stressors, she noted. Against this backdrop, overcoming gender inequality is a key and indispensable step in strengthening climate resilience. Building the resilience to conflict is also vital, she added, emphasizing that conflicts and instability have been a major driver of the increasing hunger, particularly in the Near East and North Africa, since 2012. She advocated for strengthening the links between gender equality and women’s empowerment and food security and nutrition. She also underlined the need to collect up-to-date, reliable, sex-disaggregated data.
Mr. DE HENAU said the COVID-19 pandemic showed how much care work was relied upon to sustain economies while demonstrating how exposed, undervalued and gender-unequal care work was and remains. Investing in universal care services and well-paid, childcare-related leave can, among other things, reduce gender inequalities at work and in the home, as well as help people who either provide or receive support, live independent lives. “Without people being well looked after, an economy cannot function and prosper, in the same way that without telecommunications and transport means, an economy would grind to a halt,” he stressed. Yet in most countries, spending on education, health care and social care services is not considered in the same way as spending on infrastructure, despite the wider benefits to society these social care services provide beyond its direct users. Working with the International Labour Organization (ILO) on a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he helped create a simulator tool that was launched here last week. It quantified some of the annual investment requirements and gendered employment benefits of investing in care. Free to use, the simulator’s user can create scenarios with investment requirements and employment effects projected to two years of choice: 2030 or 2035. In a scenario created for the International Labour Organization (ILO) for 2035, the simulator showed an investment in care services could create more than 300 million jobs globally, including at least 240 million for women and 270 million formal jobs.
MS. IRIGOYEN said that as populations [in the Amazon] have been decimated by colonialism, they often have no public representation, directly affecting their communication and access to information. Technology and geospatial services are at the helm of addressing the global issues of deforestation, forest fires, illegal mining and territorial invasion. In that regard, in São Félix do Xingu, in the state of Pará, in Brazil, there are women who have organized to create cacao pulp and are now implementing cell-phone use in their operations. As part of “Terra on Track” — a programme that seeks to monitor deforestation — they can see who is invading their territory and send alerts to organize, sometimes with State support, to put a stop to those invasions. Highlighting other initiatives, she said women from indigenous populations and other communities, such as in Peru, are being trained to use drones to monitor invasions in the Castañas forests. To help women use geospatial monitoring to address those issues, skill building, training and early-age school instruction are needed, as well as bringing visibility to empowering women, especially rural women, in those operations. “Early career women” must be developed so they can serve as an example for the rest of their communities in the use of geospatial services, helping to close gender gaps. “We do have a way forward to a more inclusive world through the use of those technologies and we have evidence for it,” she emphasized, calling for the support of all countries and international cooperation.
Ms. ALLAMIN described Boko Haram’s counter-normative actions, including parent rape, as a way to signal commitment to their new society and group. Thus, men killed their fathers, raped their mothers and siblings. Women slaughtered fellow women and commit other atrocities and crimes for recognition and higher positions. Boys and men were forcefully recruited and indoctrinated, and girls and women, abducted from their communities, faced forced marriages and serial gang rape to produce future generation of fighters. Upon escape or being rescued, those women and girls returned with pregnancies and babies from captivity and experienced rejection by communities and families. Neither society nor the Government remembers these “invisible women”, who were heroes at the height of the violence, she said. In this complex context, Allamin Foundation works with stakeholders following a human rights approach. Eight social networks for vulnerable groups of women, girls and youth under the “Jire Dole” network work with 29,000 registered participants. For the first time ever, the Foundation started engagement with Boko Haram women in a community-based deradicalization process to demystify radical ideologies and challenged the narrative of extremism. From Boko Haram to Boko Halal, the Foundation aims to reach children with messages of peace, tolerance and coexistence in peace club settings across Islamic schools. Moreso, the Foundation created a movement of women and youth, the PeaceMakers, as bridge builders between Christians and Muslims and created safe spaces for vulnerable groups for women and youth, she said.
Ms. NJUKI emphasized that the COVID-19 pandemic’s compounding effects have pushed people even further behind, systematically undermined gender equality and threatened the survival of both people and the planet. Overlapping crises and emergencies are often deeply rooted in an economic system that fails to value, protect, nourish and invest in what is essential. Moreover, women and girls’ capacity to take action and build a resilient future notably depends on removing structural barriers and gender gaps while increasing their inclusion in decision-making and peacebuilding processes, she stressed. Against this backdrop, she urged all to ensure public investments in the care economy in order to support women’s re-entry into the labour force and the well-being of children and older persons; prioritize universal, gender-responsive social protection systems; mainstream an intersectional approach in policies and programmes by respecting, protecting and promoting the human rights of women and girls; and facilitate just transitions with gender-responsive climate-resilient food systems at the centre to address the interrelated food, jobs, care and climate crisis. There must also be more and better gender data to monitor the impacts of crises on gender inequality and inform policies and programmes to empower women and girls, she added.
As the floor opened for questions and comments, several speakers shared their national experiences in addressing climate change and other emergencies, while outlining specific measures they have undertaken to empower women and girls through technology.
The representative of the Philippines said that to address the effects of the pandemic and strict lockdown measures, her Government implemented gender-related policies and programmes to help the most vulnerable Filipinos, including, among others, cash and non-cash assistance to the poorest households, including pregnant and lactating women and solo parents. Her Government also strengthened referral and reporting platforms to ensure gender-based violence cases were properly referred to relevant agencies for appropriate action.
The representative of the European Union said that by 2025, 85 per cent of all the bloc’s new external actions will promote gender equality as a principal objective. Within the European Union, its Recovery and Resilience Facility made €670 billion available to overcome the pandemic, including to mitigate the crisis’ social and economic impact on women.
The representative of Japan reported that the COVID-19 pandemic catalysed his Government’s use of digital technology to empower women through acquiring digital skills and flexible employment arrangements. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare is also promoting e-learning courses and online training for public vocational staff. This enhances access for women, addresses childcare or other necessities, and helps participants find steady employment, including through career counselling.
A representative of the non-governmental organization Fundacion Abba Colombia, speaking for women and girls from Colombia, requested examples of recovery efforts that prioritize women’s access to decent jobs, social protection and sustainable livelihoods. Highlighting the importance of technology and education, she said her organization is implementing technology materials and innovative educational tools in field projects to support women’s personal and professional growth.
Other speakers drew attention to specific challenges faced by women and girls that hinder their empowerment, such as gender-based stereotypes, unpaid care work, conflict situations, gender-based violence, and disabilities.
The representative of the International Medical Cooperation Committee pointed out that unpaid care work is seen as a female responsibility. Every minute more that a woman spends on unpaid care work represents one minute less that she can potentially invest in her educational and vocational skills. The unequal distribution of unpaid work between women and men represents a break in women’s economic empowerment, she emphasized.
The representative of Ukraine said the continued destruction of her country has exacerbated gender inequality, with its strong impact on the female-dominated rural population. Her country today is littered with mines that are difficult to remove, and the number of adults and children with disabilities is increasing. Despite these conditions, the use of digital technologies helps to simplify and expedite administrative procedures, she said, noting a platform that helps provide social and monetary aid from State support, international organizations and volunteers.
The representative of the United States, noting a significant funding gap in gender-based violence programming, said her Government recently launched an initiative — Safe from the Start — to further promote women’s leadership, prioritize gender-based violence programming, and shift funding, influence and decision-making to women and girls.
A representative of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre (ARROW) asked the panellists to what extent responses to emergency situations, such as COVID-19, are gender responsive, adding that Member States must recognize that women play a critical role in COVID-19 crisis management and mitigation. Further, information and services related to sexual and reproductive health and rights must be incorporated into the national crises and disaster management policies, budgets and programmes. The representative of the World Food Programme, pointing out the importance of sharing data, asked the panellists if they could offer any recommendations on the ways that data collected by citizens could be linked to data collected by Governments.
The representative of the International Justice Watch Association, speaking via video teleconference from Iran, said any conversation about women’s rights must include the crippling effects of sanctions. The most severe unilateral coercive sanctions are imposed by the United States, along with secondary sanctions that have exacerbated the situation for Iranian citizens, particularly women. The sanctions have blocked bank transactions, delivery of food and medicines and have limited opportunities for women. Despite that, Iran’s women have had success using digital tools to become entrepreneurs. Rather than politicize women’s rights, the universal coercive measures should be lifted to help Iranian women in their efforts, she said.
Ms. NAMALA, responding, urged States to take the discussions on diversity and heterogeneity of women’s groups further on national and local platforms. On citizen-generated data, she said the United Nations Statistical Commission has taken a step trying to create a consensus with national statistical offices to fill data gaps with citizens’ gender data. Noting that the expert group meeting in Bangkok focused on developing a framework to build the process forward, she said the World Data Forum will include a discussion on citizen-generated data.
Ms. PHILLIPS underlined that many women working in agro-food systems are in vulnerable, part-time or underpaid employment — categories that are not characterized by decent jobs and therefore have an impact on their eligibility for social protection. Regarding the evidence she examined in terms of food crises, she noted that most responses were not gender responsive. However, Governments that were already designing gender-responsive policies or had mechanisms for women’s participation in planning processes tended to have more gender-responsive policies.
Mr. DE HENAU, pointing out that care jobs are green jobs, underlined the need to invest in care, have more men in this field as role models and ensure the better sharing of care responsibilities and its valuation to promote gender equality. He then echoed the call for more good quality data to improve research and make policies better and more effective.
Ms. IRIGOYEN reinforced the idea of States, local Governments and non-governmental organizations joining efforts on respective programmes and underscored importance of sustainability and digital literacy. Recognizing the depth of knowledge local communities have, she encouraged States to share this knowledge. Enabling home facilities for women with childcare could contribute to the development of geographical systems, she said, also underscoring the importance of sponsorship and mentoring for younger women.
Ms. ALLAMIN said violent extremism has lasting consequences and does not stop with victims. She encouraged States to bring the voices of civil society actors to the table to collectively address the issue. Noting that development and empowerment progress fall short of creating long-term opportunities for civic engagement, she said new programmes must embed a positive youth development approach.
Ms. MUGWANJA, speaking via video teleconference, said that, while today’s discussion focuses on achieving gender equality in the face of overlapping emergencies, it is important to emphasize the unique impact on women from the developing countries. Women from these regions frequently face insufficient economic provisions, weak educational systems and a lack of technological opportunities that aggravate gender inequality and poverty. As the principal policymaking body of the United Nations in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice, the Crime Prevention Commission consistently strives to mainstream gender into its mandate areas. The “Kyoto Declaration on Advancing Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice and the Rule of Law: Towards the Achievement of the 2030 Agenda” was prepared by the Crime Prevention Commission and adopted by the fourteenth Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. The Declaration is the body’s key policy document and calls for mainstreaming a gender perspective into crime prevention and criminal justice systems. The Crime Prevention Commission has consistently highlighted the need for gender statistics and sex-disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based crime prevention and to mainstream a gender perspective into the criminal justice system. In that regard, she said she looks forward to strengthening its work with the Commission on the Status of Women.
The representative of Burundi, an activist, artist, engineer and computer developer, said she would be unable to complete her many projects without access to the Internet, computer tools and strong financing infrastructure. “I am trapped in my situation because I am from a weaker sex,” she said, noting that as a woman she feels like a “second class citizen”, particularly to men who have abused and threatened her. Underlining her determination to pursue her goals, she said mastering technology requires practice. Thus, women must be able to acquire necessary resources. Noting that “the brain has no gender”, she called on States to believe in and invest in Burundian women. “I am part of the last generation, I hope to be fighting these challenges,” she stated, underscoring that technology is a woman’s field as well.
Ms. NAMALA, taking the floor again, said that she is glad the world has left the “trickle-down theory” and “bottom of the pyramid” approaches to development and economic growth behind. While “leaving no one behind” and “reaching the furthest behind first” are a work in progress, she voiced her hope that all can take this new journey with conviction, commitment and collaboration.
Mr. DE HENAU reiterated the importance of changing men’s behaviour and making them more caring instead of looking to women for change. In order to achieve gender equality, the world must not only consider moving beyond capitalism and overproduction but also share resources better, consume less and spend more time caring for each other, he said.
Ms. IRIGOYEN noted that women could be a driving force to face the emerging challenges. Stressing that women “are not superwomen” to assume all the risks and efforts alone, she called for joint support, experienced mentoring, leadership and opportunities for women.
Ms. ALLAMIN said the momentum of unity of the global community and the resolve for inclusive action and solutions should be sustained and maintained, while taking into account the changing dynamics of violent extremism. In this regard, she underscored the importance of a collective solution to crises.
Also speaking were representatives of Malaysia, Italy, Indonesia, Pakistan, Dominica, Sudan, Eritrea, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Malawi.
The representatives of several other non-governmental groups and civil society organizations also participated.