Bridging the Gender Divide: Unfinished Agenda of the 21^st Century

Keynote Address, International Women’s Day, March 3, 2007, Minneapolis

Maria Jose Alcala, Senior Technical Advisor, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment

Technical Support Division, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

It is truly a privilege and an honour to be here on behalf of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). I thank The Advocates for Human Rights and the Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota for this gracious invitation. I am familiar with their valuable work on many of the issues I’ll be addressing today, and I also understand that Minnesota has an amazing history of activism on women’s rights issues, a history that many of you here today forged as leaders of the women’s movement. So your presence inspires us as we take stock of the present and look forward to the future.

International Women’s Day offers us a unique opportunity to gauge how the world’s women are faring. How is humanity progressing on the human rights of women and girls, on equality and inclusion? Are women and gender equality receiving the serious commitment and resources promised at Beijing and other high-level UN Conferences? Or do they remain invisible and peripheral to the leading global and national policy negotiations and budgets? What are the achievements we have to celebrate, and what are the critical challenges that remain?

The TITLE of my presentation is “Bridging the Gender Divide: Unfinished Agenda of the 21^st Century”. I chose it to express one of the great dividers of humanity of our time: gender, that invisible but omnipresent line that we’re taught since infancy exists between women and men, and which defines the `proper’ place for males and females in society. It’s the gender divide that keeps women and girls from enjoying their human rights as equals.

In all countries of the world, to a greater or lesser extent, women and girls face obstacles, discrimination, risks and violence, and even outright brutality – merely because they are born female. Being born female, in many societies, can mean a drastic difference in terms of the life path, opportunities, challenges and struggles individuals will face, especially if they live in poverty. For many women, discrimination based on sex is compounded by other forms of discrimination related to their age, race, ethnicity, income level, educational, HIV, migrant or other status. And when that gender divide becomes extreme it is likened to gender apartheid, in the words of one of my colleagues: In many societies, women are considered of such low value as compared to men that their life course of heightened risks, vulnerability and inequality is already laid out for them by the time girls reach puberty. Many girls in the world face this reality:

·        Over the next decade, more than 80 million of them will be married as children. They’ll have little say on the matter, much less the choice of husband or the chance to stay in school. Instead, they will face curtailed life choices before they’ve even begun their youth.

·        15 million (15-19 years of age) give birth each year. In developing countries, one quarter to one half of adolescent girls are mothers before their 18^th birthday.

·        55 million are out of primary school. [1] Many of them stay behind to help their mothers with household chores or care for ailing relatives with AIDS. Others are sent off to work, to help support their families, leaving them vulnerable to abuses and sexual exploitation. While gender gaps in primary education are closing, there are more girls out of school than boys in the poorest regions. And the gap widens considerably in secondary education – even though keeping girls in school through high school is one of the leading solutions to resolve many of the world’s problems.  

I start off by highlighting the plight of adolescent girls so as we continue, we keep them in mind as a priority group: it’s at this stage in life that we need to support their empowerment and opportunities, before the full weight of gender discrimination has a chance to derail their aspirations and dreams.

We should congratulate our organizers for the theme they have selected for this year’s IWD celebration – Crossing Borders, Connecting Cultures. For one of the first things I think we should be celebrating is that the global women’s movement is more connected now than ever before, keeping it strong and vibrant across national boundaries. Globalization, despite its dark sides, has also given us the age of rapid information-sharing and communications. This has enabled swift mobilization by women from far-away corners of the world on common causes to denounce human rights violations against women and provide a collective front against injustice. This connectedness – and connectivity – enables women to break down socio-economic, cultural, class or national boundaries in order to come together, more forcefully and effectively than ever before, on common platforms for the human rights of women. 

One of the greatest achievements of the 20^th Century was the development of an international human rights system that upholds the fundamental principle of equality between women and men. The CEDAW, adopted in 1979, enshrines this notion. CEDAW is one of the seven international core conventions, and the only one exclusively devoted to the human rights of women. Numerous international agreements adopted since then have intensified the focus on gender equality. The most comprehensive UN Platform for Action on women’s rights was adopted by governments in 1995 at the momentous Beijing Conference. The UN summits of world leaders and heads of state in 2000 and in 2005 reaffirmed the importance of gender equality to poverty reduction. In fact, gender equality and women’s empowerment comprise one of eight international goals in which the international community’s efforts are now focused. These are known as the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.  

So, the commitments are there, the promises to equality have been made at the highest levels, and the priorities for governments to pursue at the dawn of the 21^st Century have been spelled out. But the gap between these pledges and reality is wide: It is a gap that is devastating to the hundreds of millions of women and girls for whom equality and opportunity remains a distant and lofty ideal. While there is much to celebrate, the challenges of bridging the gender divide and achieving equality for all women and girls are daunting, making it one of the most pressing and unfinished agendas for the 21^st Century.

But there is much scope for optimism, and let’s begin taking stock with some good news. The buzz on women’s gains in decision-making circles and in traditional realms of male power is certainly a cause for celebration. More women have made it to the highest office, with more taking the helm as heads of their countries, in Chile and Jamaica, for example. Liberia put in office Africa’s first elected female president in the continent’s history. More women have become ministers of defense, such as in Ecuador, among the most male-dominated posts. India has trained its first troop of female peacekeepers. A woman has again been named to the No. 2 position at the UN, just under the Secretary-General.[2]  Here in the US, for the first time, the Speaker of the House of Representatives is a woman. Harvard, the oldest university in the country, has elected its first woman president. Women have made their way into big business, management and the world of finance. They are film directors and sports stars, breaking new ground in athletics. The world over, more and more women have entered the labour force than ever before, a trend that has been an engine of world economic growth.

Yet the scorecard on equality is uneven and mixed. The overall political participation of women is still quite low: only 17 per cent of all parliamentarians in the world are women.[3]  Only 18 Ambassadors to the United Nations in New York are women, out of 192 member states.[4] In the area of employment, pay gaps, discrimination and sexual harassment and exploitation are a reality, and by no means exceptional or rare.

This reference to employment brings me to a critical issue of equality, and one that receives so little attention from public policies and budgets. I am referring to how little support working women receive in balancing their productive and reproductive roles. Over the past decades, as women have entered the labour force in record numbers, there has been no equivalent shift in terms of what has traditionally been expected from them as household managers and mothers. In the United States, for example, the proportion of working women with children under the age of six has increased from 15 percent in 1950 to 65 per cent today. Though attitudes are shifting and more men are pitching in to share in those family responsibilities, that distribution of labour is rarely ever equal. Most women carry a disproportionate burden of responsibility for keeping the household in order, caring for children, ill and elderly relatives, and sustaining community life -- all this while they hold down one or more jobs. And here we should not forget the extraordinary challenge this situation poses to female-headed families, especially those living in poverty, where women are the sole providers for their families.

As an international team of leading experts ¾the Gender Equality Task Force of the UN Millennium Project¾ reported in 2005, no country in the world, even the most prosperous, provides adequate child care support.  Public policies have been largely silent on this issue. And caring fathers are not given the opportunity to balance their childrearing and office duties either. The attitudes of their bosses, colleagues and peers make it difficult for them to transform traditional male roles. Men interviewed in surveys in Europe, for example, a region that leads in progressive care policies, expressed the difficulties they face, and the unsupportive environment in which they operate.

But here, too, we can detect a positive trend: more countries and employers are providing paternity leave; women’s groups in Europe are launching a “care campaign” to strengthen policies and raise public awareness; some groups are providing workshops for men on household tasks; and in Latin America, UNFPA has been helping to mobilize ministries, researchers and women’s groups on this issue of public policies to support families in reconciling reproductive and productive responsibilities.

Working women and parents of small children with sufficient income do, of course, have the advantage of being able to hire the help they need to balance their productive and reproductive roles. Where public and employment policies have failed them, they hire domestic workers. Domestic workers, in essence, subsidize the productivity of working parents and national economies. And over the past few decades, the face of domestic workers is that of an immigrant woman from lower income countries. Here in the US for example, an occupation that up until the 1960s or so was dominated by African Americans, is now filled largely by immigrant women, many from Latin American.

And here we turn to the issue of women and international migration more broadly.  I was very pleased to see that several of the workshops taking place later today will address this neglected aspect of international migration. Just last year, my organization launched its annual State of World Population Report focused on this topic, in order to raise the profile of women immigrants.

Voluntary migration has always been about finding new opportunities, earning better wages and expanding horizons. But for women, we need to understand gender inequality itself comes into play as a push factor. When the demand from abroad is for female labour, for ‘women’s work’ such as domestic work, nursing, etc. — rigid family and community controls on women’s mobility and roles are loosened. This releases women, making migration especially empowering for many of them. Various studies and anecdotal accounts attest to women reporting that migration enabled them to escape family pressures to marry early, bad or abusive marriages and relationships, or oppressive limitations on their aspirations.

Women are half the world’s international migrants. They number 95 million, but they remain invisible in public policies and debates. They send billions of dollars back to their countries of origin every year, funds that their families back home rely on to sustain them. And they send a larger share of their savings, more regularly, than male immigrants. They contribute to the quality of life and productivity of both the countries that host them, and those they came from. But their social and economic contributions are taken for granted, their needs are ignored, and their human and labour rights too often trampled.

The gender divide can be especially harsh on immigrant women: They are treated as third class members of society, doubly-disadvantaged not only as women, but as foreigners. And I come back to the case of immigrant domestic workers as a key example to illustrate. Their work is completely undervalued. Reports of abuse come from every region of the world. Live-in domestic workers, who fear loosing their jobs or being deported, are sometimes kept as virtual slaves, underpaid, exploited, abused, hidden in homes and outside the purview of public policies and public view, without recourse to justice. And globally, we are talking about millions of migrant domestic workers whose human and labour rights lack effective protection from laws or unscrupulous employers.

Immigrant women need to be visible, in public debates and policies. They need to be heard. And I understand that many of you here represent organizations working to promote the human rights of immigrant women, and your good work is what I’m talking about. I venture to state that in the wealthier countries of the North, protecting the human rights of immigrant women remains largely uncharted territory and one of the top priorities of the unfinished gender equality agenda. Here too, we can be optimistic, as more and more women’s organizations and networks, including those established and led by immigrant women themselves, are taking on this challenge and more governments are paying attention.

But we have a long way to go. Because, while for many women, migration is truly an empowering experience, it has its very dark side: modern-day slavery, the phenomenon of trafficking. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that some 1.2 million persons are trafficked each year, both across and within national borders. Up to 80 per cent of those trafficked across borders are women and girls, most for sexual slavery. Most are young women, sometimes mothers of small children, who ventured abroad under false promises of a job. Instead, they end up living a nightmare, tortured, repeatedly raped, and trapped. Fortunately, here too, the world has woken up to the urgent need to end this abomination and efforts are expanding to end it. More, however, needs to be done to support women who have been trafficked, and to prevent trafficking in the first place. And prevention starts with reducing poverty and promoting gender equality, in the communities and countries where girls and young women are especially at risk.

Trafficking is one form of violence against women and girls. Gender-based violence is manifested in multiple forms in every country of the world, every day. Violence against women and girls is one of the most pervasive, widespread human rights violations in the world.  It knows no age, class, income, religious, racial or national boundaries. It is perpetrated in homes, in schools, neighborhoods, parks, the workplace, farms and refugee camps. It can take the form of domestic, sexual, emotional, or economic violence; or of harmful practices, such as female genital mutilation or cutting, child and forced marriage, femicide and so-called ‘honour’ killings, among others.

Most of its survivors will suffer the experience in silence, too ashamed to speak out, too fearful of repercussions. Or they may have nowhere to turn, given the very limited resources in most countries of the world devoted to tackling the epidemic of gender-based violence.

Domestic violence is the most common form, affecting anywhere between 10 and 60 per cent of women globally. In this country, an estimated 22.1 per cent[5] – that’s 1 in 5 – of American women will experience intimate partner violence at some point in their lifetime. Worldwide, WHO research shows that 20 to 75 per cent of women experienced one or more emotionally abusive acts. And sexual violence, too, is rampant: up to 20 per cent of women will be targets in their lifetime. And if these are “peace-time” estimates, consider rape as a weapon of war: in Rwanda, an estimated half million women and girls were raped in the three months of the genocide. 

Adolescent girls and young women are especially under assault: studies reveal alarming levels of young women whose first sexual experience is forced – almost half of young women in the Caribbean, for example. Worldwide, about half of all sexual assaults are to girls 15 or younger. This is especially alarming in the context of HIV and AIDS, in countries where prevalence is so high. In some cases, gang rape is considered a rite of passage for young men. This reflects the general attitude common in many societies of male entitlement and acceptance of violence against women – by both men and women – as a normal part of gender relations.

This general social acceptance of violence against women and girls shows just how deeply ingrained gender inequality is, how severe the gender divide can be in our societies. Not only are women targeted, but they are often blamed, whether by their own families and communities, opinion leaders or the very justice system. This year the UN appropriately picked as its theme for IWD “Ending Impunity for VAW”, sending the message that there can no longer be tolerance for inaction and tacit complicity.

On the positive side, there has been progress at policy and legal levels. The UN Secretary-General’s 2006 Study on Violence Against Women reports on the many laws that have been passed by rising numbers of governments to prosecute domestic violence, marital rape, sexual harassment and human trafficking. But as we know, the gaps between laws and enforcement can be vast. Addressing gender-based violence also requires a multi-faceted response that takes into account an abused woman’s holistic needs for mental and physical health, personal safety and protection, and economic security.

I am happy to report that we can expect to see a major intensification of efforts against gender-based violence from the UN System over the coming years. And the women’s movement should hold us, and governments and donors, to that. Indeed, without the tireless mobilization of women’s groups, we wouldn’t be where we are today in addressing gender-based violence. And here I’d like to recognize the contributions of many of organizations with us here today, including our hosts from Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, who provide models and support for legislative reforms in countries abroad.

Another critical item of the unfinished agenda on women’s human rights is reproductive rights. In 1994, at the landmark UN International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, a woman’s ability to make voluntary, informed decisions regarding her sexuality and reproduction was affirmed by 179 governments of the world. This right was reaffirmed one year later in Beijing, and it underpins the core mandate of UNFPA: to make reproductive health and rights a reality for all by 2015.

Reproductive rights, like violence against women, are so often viewed as ‘women’s issues’. But they are so central to women’s empowerment, human rights, health, productivity, dignity and their very destinies that they are best framed as central to social and economic development. In fact, at the 2005 World Summit of governments, reproductive health was recognized, at the highest level, as being central to poverty reduction.

While significant progress has been made, this is an area that starkly reflects just how dramatic and harmful the gender divide is, especially in poor countries. The statistics related to sexual and reproductive health speak for themselves:

·        Over half a million women die every year from pregnancy-related causes. 99 per cent of these deaths occur in poor countries, primarily sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, maternal mortality was wiped out as a public health issue about 100 years ago. Afghanistan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world: A woman there dies in childbirth every 30 minutes.

·        Some 300 million women who have survived childbirth are suffering from short and long-term complications. These women and adolescent girls die or suffer injuries because they didn’t have access to proper health services. Because they had obstructed labour but no emergency care. Because they lacked access to contraception and had to resort to unsafe abortion. 19 million unsafe abortions take place each year – 5 million of them to adolescent girls.

·        While women in the developed world have a contraceptive prevalence rate of 70 per cent, there are 200 million women who lack access to family planning. In some of the most impoverished countries, only 6-8 per cent use any form of family planning. These are the same women who bear an average of 5, 7 or more children.

Family planning is one of the most basic human rights. It gives women control over their bodies, health and life choices. It allows them to time their childrearing so they can delay it until they have gained income security and life experience. For a teenager, early pregnancy can mean the difference between an education and a life-time of limited prospects for her and her children. Family planning is a life-saver: it can prevent up to one third of maternal deaths. In the form of condoms, it prevents HIV. For couples, it enables them to have smaller families and invest more per child, to nurture healthier, better educated future generations, which in turn is key for countries to build up human capital and break the poverty trap.

·        Women’s limited power within marriage and in sexual relations is also what’s fueling the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Whereas the face of AIDS was male when the epidemic began in the 1980s, women have fast risen as a proportion of new HIV infections. They now represent nearly half of all new cases in the world, and over the past 2 years, their numbers have risen in every region of the world. In sub-Saharan Africa, they are close to 60 per cent of all people living with HIV.

And the face of HIV/AIDS is not only increasingly female, but increasingly young: in this region, young women represent 75 per cent of all youth living with HIV, and similar figures apply in the Caribbean and the Middle East.[6] The majority of women who are HIV positive were infected by their only partners, their husbands, undoing the traditional notion that marriage is ‘safe’.  Three-quarters of all new HIV infections occur through sexual contact between men and women: This makes clear that women’s limited power and gender inequality are at the root of the feminization of the epidemic. 

·        Less talked about is a whole other epidemic, that of other sexually transmitted infections. WHO estimates some 340 million new curable cases every year, a figure that triples when HIV and incurable infections are tallied.[7] Some of them lead to cervical cancer and infertility in women, among other problems. Not only are women physiologically more vulnerable to these infections, but their consequences are also considerably more dangerous for women.

Sexual and reproductive health, as we can see, is a matter of life and death, and about the quality of life of individuals, families and countries. And it’s so cost-effective, because these health problems can be easily averted through expanded access to preventive education and services. Investments in prevention can save not only women’s lives and prevent millions of cases of disease, but save children from becoming orphans before they’ve even met their mothers; or provide major savings to public budgets, in terms of the much costlier care required when problems and emergencies have already presented themselves. These are only to name a few ways in which sexual and reproductive health services are a smart investment, for every country.

And based on UNFPA’s decades of experience in this field, we can confirm that making the ICPD a reality is possible, even in some of the most conservative societies, with the right infusion of political leadership and resources, and community-based culturally-sensitive approaches.

We’re on the countdown to 2015 for fulfilling the Cairo promise and the promise of gender equality. But we need to talk more about men. Gender equality is about two, it’s about relations between men and women, at all levels of society. We can only make determined progress if men and boys are fully brought on board as partners for equality. This is an area UNFPA has been working in for years, and expects to do a lot more of, whether reaching out to men in barbershops, bars, truck stops, sports stadiums, classrooms, police academies, armed forces or in mosques. And this socialization process needs to take place early in life, by teaching boys and girls that they have equal worth and potential, that there is zero tolerance for violence, by building values of mutual understanding, and shared rights and responsibilities. But boys also need role models, and a positive trend is that more and more men have and continue to make that shift, to being supportive partners, husbands, fathers and peers, to what we call, alternative masculinities. They are standing up against violence against women and girls. And they are increasingly challenging traditional notions about women’s status and roles.

Half the world’s population, three billion, live in poverty on under $2 dollars a day. Half of them are women and girls who will bear a heavier experience of poverty because of their gender. Despite the adversities they face, the scarce resources at hand, these women persevere and provide the backbone of their families and communities. In fact, most women in the world today are either sole, primary or partial breadwinners for their families – a little recognized fact. Research shows that investing in the empowerment of women and girls is key to resolving many of the world’s pressing problems. Gender inequality is clearly a disservice to families and countries trying to lift themselves out of poverty, because progress for women is progress for all.

We should also recall, in the context of ongoing conflicts in different parts of the world, that women are key to ensuring that countries emerging from war and unrest have a better chance at lasting peace and security. Women are the ones who restore the fabric and stability of communities, they are the widows on whom children and the disabled depend for sustenance, they are the young mothers who have been left with children to care for but no jobs or income to keep them in school. IWD is a day of solidarity, and a way to celebrate the women – and men – in those countries, who despite the adversities and risks to their very lives, remain resolute in their struggle for the human rights of women and girls.

I would like to conclude on the issue of accountability. Promoting gender equality has now been placed squarely at the top of the global agenda. The movement for the human rights of women and girls has to seize this opportunity, by ensuring governments, donors, the UN system and other key players are held accountable to that promise.

We have much to celebrate, because ending the gender divide is doable. We have the know-how thanks to the many successful programmes available across the world. We know how to keep girls in school, by providing incentives to poor parents, and putting extra cash in the hands of mothers for their children’s health and education. We know how to prevent sexual and reproductive health problems, and stop AIDS. We know that empowering women economically empowers families and communities living in poverty.  And we know that with more women in political power, they can change not only the face of politics, but the priorities of public policy.

Let’s aspire to have the 21^st century recorded in history as the era in which the gender divide gave way to decency, common sense and the realization of the promise of equality. Happy Women’s Day!! Thank you for your time and attention.