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WUNRN
Gender Excerpts:
III Activities to Apply a Gender
Perspective
8. Pursuant to the
requirement under her mandate to apply a gender perspective
in
her work, the independent expert has placed a high priority on the issues
of
minority women. Information received by the independent expert consistently
reveals that women belonging to minorities experience unique challenges and
multiple or intersectional discrimination emanating from their status as
members
of minorities and as women or girls.
9. The independent expert has
established a practice of holding forums dedicated to
minority
women's views and voices during her country visits. She has conducted
such
forums during her visits to Hungary, Ethiopia, France, Dominican Republic,
Guyana, and Greece. These forums for women have revealed highly significant
country and community specific information about the lives of minority women,
which
is reflected in the visit reports of the independent expert. They have
been
vital to a deeper understanding of issues facing minority communities
in
general.
10. The forums for women have also
revealed, over the course of several forums, a
number
of issues that are common to women from many minority communities.
Particular problems are faced by girls in accessing educational institutions
and
continuing their education through higher levels, especially in patriarchal
family
and
community structures. Poverty and discrimination add to the weight of the
"burden of family care" shouldered by most women. Minority women,
whose
families are most often extended ones, find those burdens particularly
constraining. Heightened levels of domestic violence and physical assaults
in
public spaces, coupled with a multifaceted denial of access to justice have
been
common complaints heard from women from marginalized minority
communities. They also face blockages within their homes and communities
that
deny them a role in decision-making. In the larger society they are denied
a
voice in decisions of the national policy because they are women and
because
they are minorities.
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