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Education
Discrimination |
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The need for women's equality is
stressed throughout the Programme of Action, and particularly in Chapter IV. The
Programme of Action declares equality to be an ethically mandated end in itself.
Improving women's political, social, and economic status, and improving women's health,
are also essential for slowing population growth and achieving sustainable
development.
Women's empowerment will mean that men must also take responsibility for their own
fertility, for their part in preventing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases
(STDs), and for the well-being of their partners and children.
EDUCATION.
While levels of education have risen a great deal during the last twenty years, and
estimate 960 million people are illiterate --two-thirds of these people are women.
because education is one of the most important means of achieving self-determination for
women, the Programme of Action urges countries to ensure that girls and women have the
widest and earliest possible access to, not only primary education, but secondary and
higher levels of education as well, including technical and vocational training if they so
desire.
EFFECTS OF
DISCRIMINATION.
The effects of discrimination against females are pervasive. Women perform much of
the world's labour and receive very little of the pay. They bear the chief burden of
child-rearing, often alone (one-third of all families worldwide are headed by women).
They are frequently the financial mainstay of their families.
Their lack of Education can mean that ignorance is passed on to succeeding generations,
particularly their daughters. They often have little or no say in the number,
spacing, and timing of their husbands puts them at risk of disease and death.
Less obvious, but also damaging, a kind of gender-blindness has led researchers to ignore
the special needs of women, so that the resulting policies do not serve their needs.
Projects that women want and need badly, such as piping water into villages,
thereby saving the women thousands of hours of water-carrying, tend to be ignored.
Discrimination against girl children starts even in the womb. Untold numbers of
female foetuses are aborted in prenatal sex-selection. Their mothers do not always
get the nutrition or care they need when pregnant. In many societies, girl children
are valued less, fed less, and educated less or not at all. Many are married off
when they are too young, physically and emotionally, to be wives and mothers, and they
have more children and poorer health as a result.
These problems afflict half of the human race, and their families and societies as well.
They therefore affect us all.
In the name of human rights, the Programme of Action calls on all societies to eliminate
practices that discriminate against women, to ensure women's full involvement in
policy-making, and to improve their ability to earn income and achieve economic
self-reliance. Discrimination against girls must also cease; girls and boys should
be treated equally in their nutrition, health care, inheritance rights, education, and
social, economic, and political activity --in short, in every facet of life.
The Programme of Action proclaims the need to promote gender equality in the family,
noting in particular that men should take more responsibility for their own fertility and
for parenting. Children, it declares, must be taught the male responsibility in
family life from the beginning of their education. Parents and schools are also
urged to see that attitudes that are respectful of women and the idea that girls are to be
regarded as equals are instilled in boys from the earliest possible age.
In addition, countries are called on to facilitate the equal participation of women in the
political process; eliminate violence against women; enforce laws requiring marriage to be
based on free and full consent; and prohibit female genital mutilation, infanticide,
prenatal sex selection, and child prostitution. Dealing with these problems will require
nothing less than a social transformation.
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