INTERNATIONAL: Push to Close Gender Gaps 'Slow'

The corridors and podiums of the United Nations have been taken over by powerful women: government ministers, senior UN officials, and women's rights leaders from around the world.

They have gathered in New York to chart the progress of a landmark declaration on women's empowerment and gender equality, which was issued at a UN conference in Beijing 15 years ago.

There is a mood of achievement. Britain's minister for women and equality, Harriet Harman, spoke of major changes since she started out in government in 1997.

"There were hardly any women in senior positions, so there wasn't really any sort of a network whereby you could work internationally with other women in other governments," she said.

"Now there are women in government in all continents and most countries. They're in positions to take forward the women's agenda not only in their own country but to work internationally."

Benchmark

That may be so in parts of the West. But globally, Beijing has not translated into major gains for ordinary working women, especially in the developing world. Some activists say there has even been a regression of women's rights.

The Beijing Platform set an important benchmark for achieving gender equality in 12 critical areas, including health, education, employment and political participation.

There's been progress in some areas: more girls now attend school, especially at the primary level, and women are more likely to run businesses and be given loans.

But women are still disproportionately poor and illiterate. For example, two thirds of adults who can't read are women, more than half a million women die in childbirth every year, and 70% experience some form of violence in their lifetimes.

Why has progress been so uneven? One reason, says the former Irish President Mary Robinson, is that too often the agenda is driven by politicians and donors rather than women on the ground.

"It's far too top down, it's not really listening, and it's certainly not funding women's priorities, it's funding donor priorities," she says.

• "The extraordinary thing is that women are such agents for change now: there are women in conflict situations, there are women in the informal economy. They're organising, they're connecting, they're full of ideas, but they don't get through the bureaucracies to have their voices really heard and appreciated."
• Another reason, she says, is that governments fail to keep their promises to improve women's lives, and aren't held accountable.
• UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has promised to prioritise women's empowerment.
• New women's agency

Speaking at a packed plenary session, he declared that more women hold senior United Nations posts now than at any time in the history of the organisation: the number has increased by 40% in the past three years.

He noted that the UN had decided to set up a powerful new women's agency headed by a high-ranking official. And he highlighted recent steps taken to combat sexual violence in conflict: a UN resolution which now recognises it as a war crime, and his appointment of a (female) special representative to lead the campaign against it.

Activists welcome these steps, but say they go only so far.

The number of women at the lower professional levels within the UN has not risen, they say. Setting up the new women's agency has become bogged down in the politics of wider UN reform. And while the UN has condemned sexual violence, it has been less active in tackling sexual harassment in its ranks.

During the women's conference, a US appeals court threw out a sexual harassment case involving two female UN employees. This was because the United Nations would not lift the diplomatic immunity of the alleged perpetrator, a former senior UN official.

Women's groups have urged that immunity be waived in such cases. They have also complained to the Secretary General that the UN's internal justice system does not adequately deal with women who bring complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination.

"This is about gender equality within the UN," says Yasmeen Hassan, deputy director of the Equality Now pressure group, "and we have written to the Secretary General and other agencies that this should be corrected. That hasn't been done. The system has been revamped, but it still isn't adequate."

For many here, the UN reflects a wider reality: there has been progress on getting women into positions of power, but little redistribution of power in favour of women at the grassroots.

And some fear current trends are entrenching forces hostile to such a shift.

Terrorism, the rise of religious fundamentalism and the financial crisis have all impacted women and women's rights, says Ms Hassan, "and they also seem to be having an impact on the women's movement internationally, and how seriously their concerns are taken.

"Progress has been very slow," she says. "I feel that in recent times there has been a backlash on women's rights and I am not very optimistic currently about the Beijing process or where we go from here."

“The extraordinary thing is that women are such agents for change now: there are women in conflict situations, there are women in the informal economy ”
Mary Robinson, former Irish Prime Minister

IMPROVEMENTS

• Access to education has increased globally for girls at all levels, particularly in primary education: in 2006, there were 95 girls for each 100 boys enrolled in first grade, compared with 92 girls in 1999
• Globally, women held 18.8% of seats in single/lower chambers of parliament in November 2009, compared to 11.3% in 1995.
• In 2009, 25 countries had 30% or more women parliamentarians, compared with only five countries in 1995.