WUNRN
UN Women Sets 2030 "Expiration Date" for Gender Inequality
Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of the United Nations Entity for Gender
Equality and the Empowerment of Women address journalists during a press
briefing on the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which
was held in Beijing in September 1995. Photo by: Evan Schneider / U.N.
By
Jenni Cardamone -
27 June 2014
Almost two decades after 189 governments made a
historic commitment in China to a world of equality between women and men, it’s
time to discuss progress made and challenges ahead.
U.N.
Women hosted on Thursday in New York a public event to launch their
year-long campaign to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the historic 1995
Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, where tens of thousands of
government, NGO and private sector officials produced the Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action, a document lauded as visionary for its time and which
today continues to pave the way for women’s empowerment and gender equality.
“Progress has been made — but we need more, and
faster,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said. She pointed out, there is still “unfinished
business” in the 12
critical areas of concern for women that were laid out in Beijing.
For instance, although the prevalence of female genital mutilation has
declined, 30 million girls are still at risk in the next decade. Likewise, 35
percent of women around the world today have experienced some type of physical
or sexual violence, according to a recent report by the World
Health Organization.
“We are giving gender inequality an expiration date,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said, adding that men and boys must join the conversation and citing U.N. Women’s He For She campaign.
At
the event, other participants, like U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson,
reminded participants that the essence of the Beijing vision is to build a
better world for all of us, not just women and girls: “Remember, nobody can do
everything, but everybody can do something.”
Eliasson pointed out how even today only 21.8 percent
of parliamentarian worldwide are women. One of them is Ine Eriksen Soreide, the
Norwegian minister of defense, who cited her country as an example for gender
equality.
“We have full participation of women in all sectors of
society — and that is why we are a wealthy country,” Soreide said.
Gloria Steinem, a well-known U.S. advocate for women’s
empowerment, noted that “we can’t be separated from the mainstream, we are the
mainstream” and stressed that “the human race is like a bird with two wings. If
one wing is broken, no one can fly.”
So how do we move forward and put the principles laid out in the Beijing Declaration to action? It’s time to implement, according to Greta Gunnarsdottir, permanent representative of Iceland — another world leader on gender equality — to the United Nations. “Let’s move gender equality to the top of the global agenda,” she said.