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Change Your Life! |
Women remain underpaid, under-represented, and under threat |
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June 2, 2000
Two U.N. reports released Wednesday painted a mixed picture of progress since the 1995 U.N. conference in Beijing, concluding that equality for women remains a distant goal on issues ranging from the workplace to education, health, human rights and political decision-making.
"Available data show that women are making gains, but persistent disparities exist between men and women," said U.N. Undersecretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Nitan Desai.
A 180-page report on "The World's Women 2000" produced by the U.N. Statistics Division and a 21-page report by the U.N. Children's Fund on "Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls" were released ahead of Monday's opening of a five-day ministerial conference to review progress on implementing the ambitious platform for action adopted in Beijing.
It called on governments to revise laws to ensure women's equal rights, to provide equal education for girls and to ensure the right of women to decide matters of sexual and reproductive health. It also urged governments and businesses to put women in top decision-making positions and called for the elimination of violence against women.
But five years later, the UNICEF report said "violence against women and girls continues to be a global epidemic that kills, tortures, and maims - physically, psychologically, sexually and economically."
And it said too few nations have moved to stop violence against females, ranging from infanticide to spousal abuse to honor-killings.
UNICEF said most data on violence against women is believed to be "not only conservative, but unreliable." Nonetheless, it concluded that "a growing body of research studies confirms the prevalence of physical violence in all parts of the globe, including the estimates of 20 to 50 percent of women from country to country who have experienced domestic violence."
The U.N. Statistics Division report also concluded that physical and sexual abuse affects millions of girls and women worldwide - and remains under-reported.
In education, school enrollment figures show the gender gap closing in primary and secondary schooling. But the report said the gap is still wide in 22 African countries and nine Asian countries where enrollment for girls is less than 80 percent of the enrollment for boys.
"It is unlikely this gap will be closed by the target date of 2005," Desai said. The report also showed some interesting regional difference in women choosing fields traditionally dominated by men for higher education study: 78 percent of women in the Caribbean chose science and engineering compared with 53 percent in Western Europe and 38 percent in southeast Asia.
While the statistical report showed women generally marrying later, having fewer children, and living longer, it also found that they comprise two-thirds of the world's illiterates.
When it comes to work, the study found that at least one-third of women are part of the work force in all regions except northern Africa and western Asia.
But it also concluded that "women remain at the lower end of a segregated labor market and continue to be concentrated in a few occupations, to hold positions of little or no authority and to receive less pay than men." In the five years since the Beijing conference, the report said, "women's participation in the top levels of government and business has not markedly increased."
During the first part of 2000, only nine women were heads of state or government. In 1999, women represented 11 percent of parliamentarians worldwide compared to nine percent in 1987, and in 1998, only nine percent of the world's Cabinet ministers were women, compared to six percent in 1994, the U.N. report said.
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