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Empowering women and advancing their rights is not only the right thing to do but it can lead to progress on a range of issues, including the fight against poverty, hunger and violence, the head of the United Nations agency tasked with promoting women’s rights said recently.
“Promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment is not solely a plea for justice or for fulfilling human rights commitments. It is both of those things, but also so much more,” Michelle Bachelet said in her opening statement to the annual session of the Executive Board of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).
“Where we fail to capitalize on the potential and talents of one half of the population, we also squander the potential to reduce poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and violence,” she stated.
“The evidence base for this is growing,” added Ms. Bachelet, the Executive Director of UN Women and former Chilean President.
She noted that in a recent report, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that closing the gender productivity gap arising from unequal access of women to productive resources would reduce the number of undernourished people by 12 to 17 percent. That translates into 100 to 150 million fewer people living in hunger.
Countries, she added, are beginning to count the cost of domestic violence to health and in lost workplace productivity, which in the United States reaches $5.8 billion each year.
“In today’s world, can we afford not to increase investment in eliminating gender discrimination when it has the potential to yield such high returns?
“UN Women’s good fortune is that it comes into being at a time when countries and businesses are asking this question, and rethinking their investment strategies,” she stated. “Our challenge now is to meet the rising demands and expectations.”
Ms. Bachelet has identified six priorities for the new agency, including ending violence against women, ensuring their full participation in conflict resolution and enhancing their economic empowerment.
“Our overarching vision is that every country in the world, at whatever level of development, has access to the technical expertise and support needed to advance gender equality in line with their national priorities.”
UN Women was established last year by the General Assembly to oversee the world body’s programs aimed at promoting women’s rights and their full participation in global affairs.
It is the merger of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).
According to news released by the UN News Service, as the world’s best soccer teams face off in Germany for the Women’s World Cup, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is using the event to spotlight the need to empower women to play leading roles in daily life, from the home to the school to the workplace.
UNDP has begun a public awareness campaign about the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) based around the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which started last Monday and runs until 17 July in nine cities across Germany.
The campaign – based on advertisements and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook – aims to raise support for efforts to attain the MDGs, the globally agreed social and economic targets with a 2015 deadline, particularly those goals relating to women.
Women continue to earn less than men when they do the same work, have unequal access to land and inheritance rights in some countries, and are under-represented in legislatures around the world, UNDP noted.
One of the agency’s Goodwill Ambassadors is the Brazilian soccer star Marta Vieira da Silva, known to fans as Marta, and she is participating in the Women’s World Cup both on the field for her country and off the field for UNDP.
“The strength, industry and wisdom of women remain humanity’s greatest untapped resource,” Marta says in an advertisement issued to coincide with the tournament. “Only through women’s full and equal participation in public and private life can we hope to break poverty cycles and achieve the MDGs.”
Marta, the winner of FIFA’s Women’s World Player award for the past five consecutive years, was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador last year to promote the MDGs with a special focus on the gender dimension of poverty.
(Source: UN News Service)
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