International Women"s Day by CoE / IPS / UNIFEM 9:17am 8th Mar, 2006   8 March 2006    Exercising Power for Change, by Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of UNIFEM.    International Women’s Day 2006 is a time of celebration and reflection. We celebrate the significant progress that has been made in building a positive environment for gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide. To date, 181 countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); over 120 have adopted national plans of action for gender equality. Countries emerging from conflict are incorporating provisions for gender equality within their constitutions while others are adopting laws and policies to strengthen women’s access to health, education and employment opportunities and to end impunity for gender-based violence. And women are increasing their representation in high-level decision-making, as highlighted by the election of Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, and of Michelle Bachelet as Chile’s first woman president.    UNIFEM is proud to be part of the local, national, and global efforts that have contributed to these achievements. But on this day especially, we also have to ask what impact these laws and policies have made in the day to day lives of women, especially poor women, on the ground.    On International Women’s Day, as we remember the women shirtwaist workers who lost their lives in the New York City sweatshop factory fire — unable to get out because the doors were locked — it is important to look at the terms and conditions in which so many women and men work to earn their living — for wages that are too meagre to enable them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.    In our global world, women are entering the work force in greater and greater numbers. However, rather than benefiting from the new opportunities opened by globalization, women are less likely than men to hold paid and regular jobs and more often work in the informal economy, which provides little financial security and no social benefits. Nearly 330 million working women earn less than $1 a day — 60 per cent of working people who are still living in poverty. No wonder poverty still has a woman’s face, that it is passed on from generation to generation, that girls are pulled out of school to help make ends meet.    This is a critical moment in the struggle for gender equality, one which cannot be de-linked from larger political and economic shifts. The first target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), endorsed by the world’s leaders in 2000, gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2005, has already been missed. This is a warning we must take seriously or we will not be able to achieve the MDGs by 2015.    To bring change to the lives of women on the ground, women need to take power into their own hands. Women who have broken through gender, class and ethnic barriers have an opportunity to show their leadership and build strong and strategic partnerships. Today, there are twice as many women in powerful economic decision making positions than there were five years ago — there are 20 Ministers of Finance; 10 Ministers of Economy, Economic Planning and/or Development; and 11 Ministers or Secretaries of State addressing Budgets, Taxes, Auditing, Investments and Revenue.    Today, we call for a Global Coalition of Women Economic Decision-Makers — committed to making change happen in the lives of ordinary women and men on the ground.    It is important to act now. With the large increase in official development assistance that is anticipated with the roll-out of the new aid agenda, these women can be the building blocks of a power coalition to reshape macroeconomic decision-making — and eliminate the poverty, inequality and insecurity that define the lives of so many.    To move from numbers to influence, from a numerical to a strategic presence in decision-making, we need to show the world how change happens for gender equality and women’s empowerment. To do this, we need to empower grass-roots and women’s organizations to exercise a watchdog function. They can then help to make sure that national resources are allocated all the way to the ground and can bring realities and strategies from the ground to inform policy direction. We need to bring underrepresented and excluded groups, such as HIV+ women, women informal workers, indigenous women, women survivors of violence, rural poor women into the development process.    The Global Coalition can build the power to ensure that by 2008 we will have full and equal financing for development, so that by 2015 we will have made progress on each of the Millennium Development Goals, and on every dimension of gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes stronger economic security and rights, greater participation in political decision-making, equal access to all levels of education, and lives free of violence.    8th March 2006    UN: Women denied representation, making war on poverty hard to win, by Maxime Frith. (The Independent)    Millions of women around the world, including those in Western countries, are being denied effective representation because of the low numbers of female politicians, judges and employers, the United Nations has warned.    Campaigners say that unless urgent action is taken on the status of women, the Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty, infant deaths and standards of education will not be met.    To mark International Women"s Day, the UN has published a report that says rates of female participation in governments across the developed and developing world are still appallingly low. The report says that for women to be adequately represented in their country, at least 30 per cent of parliamentary seats should have a female representative.    In Britain, only 18 per cent of MPs are women, while only 8 per cent of MPs in Arab countries are female. Just 20 nations - including Rwanda, Mozambique, Guyana and Burundi - have reached or exceeded the 30 per cent mark and only three countries (Chile, Spain and Sweden) have complete gender parity in government.    Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said: "The rate of progress overall is slow. Women are every bit as affected as any man by the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century - in economic and social development, as well as in peace and security - often they are more affected."    He added: "The world is starting to grasp that there is no policy more effective in promoting development, health and education than the empowerment of women and girls, and no policy is more important in preventing conflict, or in achieving reconciliation after a conflict has ended."    United Nations figures also show that 70 per cent of the world"s 1.2 billion people who are estimated to live in poverty are women and children. A woman dies every minute from complications arising from pregnancy and childbirth, and HIV rates are now rising faster among women than men. Charities say that 700 million women are living without adequate food, water, sanitation and education.    Even in the developed world, women face endemic discrimination. Full-time female workers in Japan earn just 51 per cent of the wages of their male counterparts, while only one in five managers in Italy is a woman and just 14 per cent of the seats in the US Congress are taken by women.    In a speech to mark International Women"s Day in Britain, Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, who chairs the UK Atomic Energy Authority, said that girls still suffered from discrimination in schools and work. She told a conference organised by the Aurora Network for women in business that 30 years after the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in the United Kingdom, women account for half of the working population but for just one in four managers, 9 per cent of the judiciary and 10 per cent of senior police officers.    Lady Judge highlighted the fact that only 14.5 per cent of people employed in the fields of technology and engineering are women, despite evidence that when they do enter the professions, female engineers earn more than men. "Research indicates that those girls that are interested in maths and science are channelled into medicine, nursing and veterinary science because these are perceived as "caring" professions," she said.    "Girls have few role models that show that women can be engineers and there are few companies that provide work experience for women in engineering. If we are to survive as a leading nation in this global- ised world, we must utilise this country"s intellectual capability to the fullest extent."    Julia usermann, the president of the human rights charity Rights and Humanity, said: "We have much to celebrate on International Women"s Day.    "All over the world, women are making progress in political participation, economic empowerment and increased access to education. But wherever we turn, poverty, violence and Aids have a woman"s face.    "The empowerment of women is the single most effective tool for development. There is increasing evidence that securing women"s rights benefits not just women and their immediate families, but the wider society and national economies."    8th March 2006    Millions of Girls still Out of School on International Women"s Day    To mark International Women"s Day, the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) urges world leaders to take action to reverse the unacceptably slow progress on girls" education. If they continue to delay, their inaction on girls" education will mean increased poverty later and will condemn countries hard-hit by AIDS and other diseases to a grim future of underdevelopment and dependence over the next decade.    Donor representatives meet in Moscow next week to review progress of the Education For All Fast-Track Initiative, the global plan agreed in 2002 to assist countries serious about getting all girls and boys into school. GCE believes this is a key opportunity for rich countries, especially the G8 nations, to come forward with pledges to enable the Initiative to reach more countries in the coming years. Campaigners expressed disappointment that political momentum from 2005 has not yet translated into hard cash to provide teachers, books and school buildings.    "Last year the world missed the first Millennium Development Goal: to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005," said Rasheda Choudhury, a GCE board member. "World leaders barely raise an eyebrow as millions of girls are denied life-saving education. As the representatives of rich countries gather again next week, we exhort them to take urgent action to get all girls and boys into school."    Education equips girls and women with a basic confidence in their abilities and rights, an ability to acquire and process information, and increased earning power. It costs as little as US$100 per year to provide this critical asset, and in the 21 st century there can be no excuse for 60 million girls to be denied it.    What is the Global Campaign for Education?    · The GCE is a broad coalition of development and education research agencies and unions active in over 100 countries. The GCE"s aim is for every child in the world to get a quality education. Members include Oxfam, Action Aid, Education International, Save the Children, PLAN International, World Vision and the Global March Against Child Labor. For more information see: www.campaignforeducation.org    Facts on Girls" Education    · This year alone, failure to reach the 2005 UN girls" education goal will result in over 1 million unnecessary child and maternal deaths; 10 million over a decade.    · HIV/AIDS infection rates are doubled among young people who do not finish primary school. If every girl and boy received a complete primary education, at least 7 million new cases of HIV could be prevented in a decade.    · Education is a key economic asset for individuals and for nations. Every year of schooling lost represents a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in girls" future incomes. Countries could raise per capita economic growth by about 0.3% percentage points per year – or 3 percentage points in the next decade - if they simply attained parity in girls" and boys" enrolments.    · Failure to educate girls and women perpetuates needless hunger. Gains in women"s education contributed most to reducing malnutrition between 1970-1995, playing a more important role than increased food availability.    · Women with education are better able to successfully resist debilitating practices such as female genital cutting, early marriage and domestic abuse by male partners.    7/3/2006    International Women"s Day: Red Card to forced Prostitution. (Council of Europe )    With a view to tomorrow’s International Women’s Day, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly President René van der Linden today urged the organisation’s member states as well as the European Community to adhere to the Convention on action against trafficking in human beings. “Whilst fully supporting all current initiatives for a ‘red card to forced prostitution’, I hope we can avoid yellow cards for our member states for not having taken the necessary legal action to prevent trafficking in general, and forced prostitution in particular,” he said. Mr van der Linden stressed that after drugs and arms, trafficking in human beings represents the third most lucrative criminal business. Estimates of the number of victims vary from 120 000 to 500 000. “In Europe, trafficking in human beings is above all synonymous with forced prostitution. This form of modern-day slavery replaces chains by rape, psychological terror and complete dependence through the deprivation of the women’s personal and civil identity. These are unbearable facts. Forced prostitution is a crime and a blatant violation of human rights,” Mr van der Linden said. “    On the occasion of this year’s World Cup in Germany, a strong temporary rise in the demand for sexual services is expected. This represents a considerable risk of an increase in forced prostitution,” he added.    “The Council of Europe Convention on action against trafficking in human beings offers the necessary legal means to prosecute traffickers, to better protect victims, safeguard their rights and to fight trafficking. It was opened for signature on 16 May 2005, but has so far been signed by only 25 out of the 46 member states and not ratified by any member state. It is high time to take resolute action. As the organiser of the World Cup, Germany could take the lead and set an example by ratifying the Convention,” René van der Linden concluded.    Mar 6, 2006 (IPS)    Handful of Nations reject Politics as Usual, by Lisa Söderlindh.    Developing countries, particularly those emerging from armed conflict -- like Rwanda, Burundi, Iraq and Liberia -- are doing a better job at integrating women in politics than are most longstanding, established Western democracies, according to the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).    Still, the vast majority of the world"s women remain absent from all levels of government, say experts meeting here for the 50th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.    Although remarkable gains have been made since the Commission was established 60 years ago to advocate women"s issues, "the world community still has far to go on actual representation of women at the highest levels of national and international leadership", U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette said at the start of the two-week session here, which ends on Mar. 10.    Women today comprise an average of 16.4 percent of legislators in the upper and lower houses of parliaments. Europe"s Nordic countries have consistently held the lead, with an average of 40 percent women legislators as of October 2005.    "Most countries in Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as North America, particularly the United States and Canada, are countries that belong to the category that I would call "the old democracies", IPU Secretary-General Anders B. Johnsson told IPS.    "But I see very little debate there, or real efforts being made to emulate the examples that now are being set by the developing countries," he added.    The IPU is an international organisation of parliaments that works for peace and cooperation among peoples and for the firm establishment of representative democracy.    On its latest list of 187 countries ranked by the national percentage of women in their lower or single house of parliament, Canada came in at number 44 with 20.8 percent women, Britain was 50th, the United States was 69th, France was 85th and Italy was 89th.    Meanwhile, Rwanda tops the list with 48.8 percent women in parliament; Iraq ranks number 16 and Burundi number 19. Many countries in Latin America also made significant progress during 2005, according to the IPU.    "It is true what one use to say, in Western Europe at least, that political parties, which are often the basis for how politics are made, are clubs of old men, and they run the parties and institutions that they serve for themselves," Johnsson said.    Looking at political representation from a gender and human rights perspective, "We women are part of democratic society and democracy speaks to leadership by all the people, and for all people. If 50 percent of the people are not being involved in leadership, then clearly, one cannot speak of having democracy," Ingrid Charles Gumbs, director of gender affairs for the Caribbean state of St. Kitts and Nevis, told IPS.    "When thinking about the whole world, with 16 percent women in parliament, this is ridiculous," she said. "Think of countries like mine, St. Kitts, in which we have highly capable women, but yet no single woman in parliament, except for the speaker of the parliament."    Sophia Abdi Noor, an NGO representative from Kenya, emphasised the cost of women not being heard or represented at the policy-making level. "My unique issues as a woman are not reaching this level, because there is no one there to understand or listen to such issues," she told IPS.    "And when there are no policies that accommodate women"s role in society, when my own government sees me as a second-class citizen and discriminates against my rights as a woman, whom am I going to turn to?"    Despite international treaties stressing women"s participation in decision-making processes, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979, "To me, and back home, those are just instruments that stay on the paper and in the boardrooms, nothing more than that," Abdi Noor said.    More than 10 years ago, heads of state meeting at the U.N."s Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing agreed that women must account for a critical mass of at least 30 percent of parliamentarians. Since then, the total number of women in parliaments has grown by 50 percent, but only 20 countries have reached the target.    At this rate, the 30 percent quota will not be met until 2025, and equal representation is even further off, according to the IPU.    "If we continue to progress at the same level, it will take us at least one or two generations before we are really reaching anything like parity," Johnsson told IPS.    While the number of parliaments with no women at all actually increased during 2005, some of the largest gains seen this year -- in developing countries and in several Latin American countries -- can partly be attributed to the adoption of quotas for women.    Of the 39 countries that held elections in 2005 for lower or single houses of parliament, 15 implemented special measures such as voluntary quotas (New Zealand, Norway, Poland and Portugal), legislated political party quotas (Argentina, Bolivia, Burundi, Honduras, Liberia and Venezuela) and reserved seats or mandates (Afghanistan and Tanzania).    "Gender quotas are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for obtaining gender balance in parliament, but as long as discrimination of women and inequality persists, quotas [are necessary]", said Swedish professor Drude Dahlerup, who led the first global study of gender quotas in politics.    She pointed to the successful use of quotas in some post-conflict countries like Rwanda, where 30 percent of the seats in parliament were set aside for female legislators in the 2003 elections. As a result, women went from less than 15 percent of legislators to nearly 49 percent -- unseating Sweden as the highest-ranking country in terms of women"s representation in parliament.    In Sweden, where party quotas are voluntary, the struggle to reach the current total of more than 45 percent women in parliament took more than 50 years.    "I think the key issue is to enable women to work and have a home, and a family. And that is possible through good child care, good elderly care, individual taxation, all these changes that were brought about in the 1970"s in Sweden," Jens Orback, Sweden"s minister for gender equality, told IPS.    In the end, Orback said, it is not just a question of women, "It"s a question of gender, and it"s important that men are also engaged in gender equality." Visit the related web page
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item