| Gender
Equality and Women’s Empowerment The ICPD review called on
countries to promote and protect the human rights of women and girls, with policies
including zero tolerance of violence against girls and women and promotion of male
responsibility.
UNFPA’s 30 years have seen remarkable progress in women’s collective status
and individual prospects. The ICPD Programme of Action and the Platform for Action adopted
by the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 reflected decades of effort by
and on behalf of women.
The advances, while incomplete, include:
- Improvements in educational enrolment and literacy;
- Increased participation in the paid labour force;
- Increased participation in management and administration;
- Greater use of the voting franchise and attainment of political representation;
- Legal action to establish and protect women’s rights in marriage, inheritance and
property;
- Greater access to and control over resources through employment and micro-credit
programmes;
- Recognition that gender-based violence is a social not a family matter. Many countries
have revised laws and family codes to strengthen measures against female genital
mutilation, rape, forced marriage, domestic violence, dowry murder, and "honour"
killings. For example, 15 African countries have outlawed FGM;
- Stronger mechanisms for addressing women’s rights issues as basic human rights
concerns.
Progress in reproductive health since 1969 has directly contributed to women’s
empowerment. The ability to make informed choices about the number, timing and spacing of
children accommodates women’s need for education, which is often interrupted by early
pregnancy or marriage; improves maternal and child health; and encourages balanced
consideration of employment and family opportunities. This in turn increases the scope for
practical choice and promotes healthier families.
Many important advances since the ICPD have been made as the result of the growing
strength of women’s organizations at all levels, and their increasing ability to
forge productive alliances with governments, as well as with legislators and other
civil-society actors, on the basis of the ICPD consensus. Working together, these
alliances have been able to secure legislative change and action to back it up, to change
administration and increasingly to change underlying attitudes towards gender issues.
Much remains to be done to address both new threats and persistent problems. The
HIV/AIDS pandemic is much worse than was anticipated in 1994. Increases in awareness,
participation, organization and action have not yet reversed the continuing feminization
of poverty 12 or reduced maternal
mortality and morbidity. Further action is needed to:
- Enable women to avoid unwanted sex, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases,
including HIV/AIDS;
- Reduce the persistence of male sexual aggression and the values that support it;
- Improve communication about sexual and reproductive concerns between spouses or with
their children;
- Appropriately value women’s contributions to their families and societies;
- Increase women’s opportunities for social and economic participation;
- Increase male participation in the family and the household;
- Enable men to share expectations and responsibilities and reduce the frustrations that
contribute to gender violence.
Men’s roles
The need to involve men in advancing women’s reproductive rights and health, and also
to ensure the reproductive health of men, has raised fundamental questions about programme
design and orientation. Reaching agreement on how to approach these issues has proved
difficult.
Women are more at risk than men from sexually transmitted diseases and other health
hazards; but in many societies decisions affecting sexual health are reserved for men. Men
need to appreciate the risks and lost opportunities entailed in gender inequality. They
must learn to support women’s social and reproductive rights, and closer partnerships
to achieve them.
Programmes need to encourage men to undertake actions: in support of women’s
rights and empowerment in family and public settings; in the socialization of male
children; in improving women’s health; and in eradicating gender violence and sexual
exploitation.
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