Women and gender issues

To ensure Government funding for women’s empowerment and gender equality, budget-makers must call on all ministries to identify their top gender-related priorities and teach staff how to mainstream them into sectoral budgets, State finance officials told the Commission on the Status of Women today, as it held an interactive panel discussion on that subject.

“Crystal clear” priorities – many of which would require major shifts in the attitudes of world leaders - began to take shape in the Commission on the Status of Women today, with senior-level Government officials calling for innovative strategies to improve the health of rural women, protect their rights and facilitate their engagement in economic and public life.

The use of microcredit had financially empowered millions of impoverished women in rural areas around the world, but had not been enough to improve their economic lot, a senior official of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) told the Commission on the Status of Women today as it held a panel discussion on “Economic Empowerment of Rural Women”.

Unleashing the potential of rural women — a quarter of the world’s population — was critical to ending global poverty and hunger, high-level speakers said today as the Commission on the Status of Women opened its fifty-sixth annual session. “Empowering women is not just good for women, it is good for all of us,” Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).

The fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women will open on 27 February at United Nations Headquarters, focused on the theme of empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, sustainable development and current challenges. The Commission will agree on urgent actions needed to make a real difference in the lives of millions of rural women.

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 forty-ninth session.

Singapore’s delegation to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women asserted today that gender equality was central to the country’s burgeoning socio-economic growth and responded to the Committee’s concerns over trafficking in persons, reservations to the women’s Convention, reinforced stereotypes and other issues, as it presented its latest periodic report.

Ratification by Djibouti of the international women’s Convention in 1999 had sparked a transformation in Djibouti that had “changed the landscape of the country”, the head of the delegation and Minister of the Promotion of Women and Family Planning of Djibouti said today, as the State party appeared before the monitoring Committee for its first-ever periodic review of implementation.

The delegation of Nepal today assured experts of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women that gender violence, discrimination and protection of minorities were being considered in the constitutional process under way and that strong measures were being taken to combat human trafficking and harmful social practices, as that country’s combined fourth and fifth periodic report came under review.

The progress of a general law against gender discrimination, the adequacy of programmes meant to address the low participation of women in elected positions and the vulnerability of divorced migrant women were discussed today by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, as it took up the Republic of Korea’s seventh periodic report.