WUNRN
Direct Link to NO CEILINGS – FULL PARTICIPATION REPORT – WOMEN & GIRLS
http://noceilings.org/report/report.pdf - 51 Pages
When Women & Girls Succeed,
Everyone Benefits
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that
gender equality is not only important to women and girls—it is critical to
communities, economies, and societies. When
women and girls are healthy and educated, their
children and families prosper. Research shows that investing in women and girls
has multiplier effects: Even one extra
year of schooling beyond the average can
increase women’s wages by about 10 percent, and a World Bank study suggests
that raising the share of women with secondary education is linked to increases
in economic growth.3,4 Educating women causes a ripple effect, leading to increased
educational attainment across
generations among both girls and boys. Women
with more education have a lower chance of dying during pregnancy and
childbirth and have healthier children;
half of the reductions in child mortality
between 1970 and 2009 can be attributed to increased educational attainment in women of reproductive
age.5,6 Women’s
access to quality health information and services,
particularly family planning, is essential to broader economic and health
development goals.7
The benefits of expanding women’s economic opportunities
are equally clear. When women participate in the economy, poverty decreases and
gross domestic product (GDP) grows. It is estimated that closing the gap in
women’s labor force participation across OECD countries will lead to average
GDP gains of 12 percent by 2030, including about 10 percent in the United
States, almost 20 percent in Japan and Korea, and more than 22 percent in
Italy.8 The UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) forecasts that if women farmers had the
same access to productive resources as men, total agricultural output would
rise, and the number of hungry
people in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.9
There are still major gaps in achievement for women and
girls. Security is tenuous for women and girls, even in their own homes.
Critical barriers—including legal
restrictions and limited access to resources—undermine
women’s economic opportunities. And women’s voices are still under epresented
in leadership positions—from
legislatures to boardrooms, from peace negotiations to the
media. Even in those areas where we have seen progress, too many obstacles
limit the full participation of women and girls. Many countries still lack laws
safeguarding women’s rights and even where laws are strong, implementation and
enforcement often lag. Social
norms, an equally important influence on gender equality,
are hard to change. And recent gains for women and girls have not been shared
by all. Geography,
income, age, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual
orientation, and cultural norms, among other factors, remain powerful
determinants of a woman’s chance at equal rights and opportunities.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
200 Million Fewer Women than Men Online
UNITED
NATIONS, March 10, 2015 (IPS) - Two hundred million fewer
women have access to the internet than men, according to a report released
Monday.
The report published by No Ceilings also said an estimated 300 million
fewer women than men own a mobile phone, with these gaps primarily
concentrated in developing countries.
Women’s
participation and safety online was a popular topic on the first day of the 59th Commission
on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations.
The
2015 CSW also coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
(Beijing+20), the historic agenda for women’s empowerment. Women’s
participation in media and new communication technologies is covered under Section J of the Platform.
Discussions
at the CSW covered both the positive and negative impact of information
communication technology on progress towards gender equality.
Jan
Moolman, Senior Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications spoke
about how women have achieved empowerment by using the internet.
She
said new media helped individuals to construct and represent themselves online.
She also said new media offered women “opportunities for movement building” and
the “opportunity to leap over many kinds of barriers.”
Moolman
added that threats against women online needed to be treated as a freedom of
information issue, because they were used to try to silence women when they
spoke up on gender equality.
“If
we have 52% of the population unable to express themselves freely that is a
freedom of expression issue,” Moolman said.
U.N.
Women (United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of
Women) are also increasingly using new media with their campaigns. For
example through social media campaigns such as HeForShe, infographics
and a new monitor of countries which have committed to step-it-up
for gender equality.
Speaking
about the HeForShe
campaign at Facebook Headquarters in London yesterday, U.N. Women Global
Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson spoke about how she herself had received
threats after speaking out on gender equality.
“The
minute I stepped up and talked about women’s rights I was immediately
threatened, I mean, within less than 12 hours I was receiving threats.”
A
website was set up with a countdown threatening to release nude photographs of
the British actor. Watson said that she knew the website was a hoax, but that
the experience helped her friends and family see the need for progress on
gender equality.
“I
think it was just a wake up call that this is a real thing that’s really
happening now, women are receiving threats in all sorts of different forms,”
she said.
Watson
also said that the threats helped convince her of the importance
of campaigning for gender equality.
“If
anything, if they were trying to put me off, it did the opposite.”
No Ceilings is an
initiative, supported by the Clinton Foundation, which has compiled thousands
of data points on gender equality across a range of areas, including access to
information and communication technologies.