PWESCR - The momentum of struggles around economic integration and globalisation is growing just as economic injustices become increasingly acute and visible. In this political climate, governments, international financial institutions and corporations have adopted, in most cases, a gender-neutral version of equality that treats economic policy as unrelated to the advancement of women’s rights. A gender-neutral approach distorts reality and fails to frame women’s issues in the context of inequality and discrimination. Women of all ages experience inequalities within and outside their homes. Women constitute 70% of the world’s poor and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate. Women are continually denied access to basic healthcare, housing, education and work. Moreover, they suffer from the burdens imposed by gender-based hierarchies and subordination that restrict them from enjoying their human rights. 

In recent years, people across the world, particularly those most vulnerable to ESCR violations are increasingly demanding ESCR for themselves, for their families and their communities. Human rights mean little if individuals do not have economic autonomy. Women’s oppression and the dominance of patriarchal structures, whether within the family or in community, is sustained largely because of their lack of access to economic and social resources. In today’s social, economic and political climate, there is a danger that human rights may slide into irrelevance unless women understand them, governments recognize their corresponding obligations, and courts and corporate actors have content to address the threats that neo-liberal economic policies and discriminations pose to women's advancement within the home, community and society at large.

 

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	Advanced edited version	Distr. GENERAL E/CN.4/2006/WG.23/2 21 November 2005 Original:  ENGLISH