25 years after UN women's meeting, equality remains distant

Twenty-five years ago, the world's nations came together to make sure that half of Earth's population gained the rights, power and status of the other half. It hasn't happened yet. And it won't anytime soon. In today's more divided, conservative and still very male-dominated world, top UN officials say the hope of achieving equality for women remains a distant goal.

“Gender inequality is the overwhelming injustice of our age and the biggest human rights challenge we face,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said. Last week, in his address at the virtual meeting of world leaders at the General Assembly, he said the COVID-19 pandemic has hit women and girls the hardest. “Unless we act now," he said, "gender equality could be set back by decades.” Ahead of Thursday's high-level meeting to commemorate the landmark 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing, the head of the UN agency charged with promoting gender equality lamented the “slow, terribly uneven” progress, “pushback” and even regression in reaching the goals in the 150-page platform adopted by the 189 nations that met in China's capital.

While there has been progress since Beijing, UN Women's Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told The Associated Press on Tuesday that gains have been modest. What's more, she says, “there is also sometimes an exaggeration and an illusion of much bigger progress than there has been.” She pointed to the number of women in parliaments, which moved from about 11 per cent in 1995 to a global average of 25 per cent today. Now, women hold just 23 per cent of managerial positions in the private sector. And among the 193 UN member nations, there are 21 female presidents and prime ministers worldwide, about twice as many as in 1995.

This means that men still hold about 75 per cent of the power positions in the world, Mlambo-Ngcuka said. They “make decisions for us all, and that is what we have to crack.” Guterres has stressed the uphill struggle, which he attributes to “centuries of discrimination, deep-rooted patriarchy and misogyny."(AP) RUP RUP.

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