Women and gender issues

As the recent “horrific” abuse of women in India and around the world had laid bare, it was not a lack of normative or legal frameworks — but rather their effective implementation — that impeded efforts to combat such violence and end the culture of impunity that protected perpetrators, senior Government officials said today, as the Commission on the Status of Women moved into day two of its general debate.

With the scourge of violence against women and girls still rampant around the world, the international community must “rise to the occasion” and lay out concrete plans to tackle that long-standing, deeply entrenched crisis, stressed high-level speakers as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its historic fifty-seventh session today.

The fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women opens on 4 March at United Nations Headquarters, and will focus on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls, including two key areas — preventing violence and providing support services and responses to female survivors.

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women concluded its work today by adopting observations and recommendations arising from its consideration of eight country reports that it took up during its fifty-second session. Under consideration during the three-week session were periodic reports submitted by the Governments of Guyana, Indonesia, Bulgaria, Jamaica, Mexico, New Zealand, Samoa and the Bahamas.

Despite high unemployment, rising crime and socio-economic woes arising from the global financial crisis and natural disasters, the Bahamas had steadily improved the lot of its women through a range of legal reforms, awareness-raising campaigns and action plans, members of the country’s delegation told the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today.

Balancing the position of women in the national culture against step-by-step advances in their political participation, while ensuring that rural women participated in development, Samoa was meeting its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the country’s delegation said today.

New Zealand continued to uphold its proud record in women’s empowerment, with a high ranking in the Global Gender Gap report for 2011, its continuing efforts to increase female leadership in politics and the private sector and its solid progress in closing the gender pay gap, members of that country’s delegation told the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today.

Through a “juridical revolution” and a range of comprehensive assistance programmes, Mexico was gaining ground in its bid to end violence against women, including murder, bolster their political representation at the most senior levels and slash maternal mortality, members of that country’s delegation told the Women’s Anti-Discrimination Committee today.

With women outpacing men in education and leading the country from the highest political offices, Jamaica was taking great strides towards gender equality, members of that country’s delegation told the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women today.

Bulgaria’s adoption of a gender-equality strategy and its enactment of legislation to combat domestic violence and discrimination had bolstered women’s status in politics and the workplace, led to better protection from abuse, and established a viable avenue for seeking redress, members of that country’s delegation said today while presenting its combined fourth to seventh periodic reports to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women.