[women-rights] International Women's Day 2006: Exercising power for change

***Learn more about International Women's Day, 8 March 2006:
http://www.hrea.org/feature-events/iwd.php

 
Statement by Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of UNIFEM, on the occasion
of International Women's Day, 8 March 2006.

United Nations, New York — International Women’s Day 2006 is a time of
celebration and reflection. We celebrate the significant progress that has
been made in building a positive environment for gender equality and
women’s empowerment worldwide. To date, 181 countries have ratified the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW); over 120 have adopted national plans of action for gender
equality. Countries emerging from conflict are incorporating provisions
for gender equality within their constitutions while others are adopting
laws and policies to strengthen women’s access to health, education and
employment opportunities and to end impunity for gender-based violence.
And women are increasing their representation in high-level
decision-making, as highlighted by the election of Africa’s first woman
president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, and of Michelle Bachelet as
Chile’s first woman president.

UNIFEM is proud to be part of the local, national, and global efforts that
have contributed to these achievements. But on this day especially, we
also have to ask what impact these laws and policies have made in the day
to day lives of women, especially poor women, on the ground.

On International Women’s Day, as we remember the women shirtwaist workers
who lost their lives in the New York City sweatshop factory fire — unable
to get out because the doors were locked — it is important to look at the
terms and conditions in which so many women and men work to earn their
living — for wages that are too meagre to enable them to lift themselves
and their families out of poverty.

In our global world, women are entering the work force in greater and
greater numbers. However, rather than benefiting from the new
opportunities opened by globalization, women are less likely than men to
hold paid and regular jobs and more often work in the informal economy,
which provides little financial security and no social benefits. Nearly
330 million working women earn less than $1 a day — 60 per cent of working
people who are still living in poverty. No wonder poverty still has a
woman’s face, that it is passed on from generation to generation, that
girls are pulled out of school to help make ends meet.

This is a critical moment in the struggle for gender equality, one which
cannot be de-linked from larger political and economic shifts. The first
target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), endorsed by the world’s
leaders in 2000, gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2005,
has already been missed. This is a warning we must take seriously or we
will not be able to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

To bring change to the lives of women on the ground, women need to take
power into their own hands. Women who have broken through gender, class
and ethnic barriers have an opportunity to show their leadership and build
strong and strategic partnerships. Today, there are twice as many women in
powerful economic decision making positions than there were five years ago
— there are 20 Ministers of Finance; 10 Ministers of Economy, Economic
Planning and/or Development; and 11 Ministers or Secretaries of State
addressing Budgets, Taxes, Auditing, Investments and Revenue.

Today, we call for a Global Coalition of Women Economic Decision-Makers —
committed to making change happen in the lives of ordinary women and men
on the ground.

It is important to act now. With the large increase in official
development assistance that is anticipated with the roll-out of the new
aid agenda, these women can be the building blocks of a power coalition to
reshape macroeconomic decision-making — and eliminate the poverty,
inequality and insecurity that define the lives of so many.

To move from numbers to influence, from a numerical to a strategic
presence in decision-making, we need to show the world how change happens
for gender equality and women’s empowerment. To do this, we need to
empower grass-roots and women’s organizations to exercise a watchdog
function. They can then help to make sure that national resources are
allocated all the way to the ground and can bring realities and strategies
from the ground to inform policy direction. We need to bring
underrepresented and excluded groups, such as HIV+ women, women informal
workers, indigenous women, women survivors of violence, rural poor women
into the development process.

The Global Coalition can build the power to ensure that by 2008 we will
have full and equal financing for development, so that by 2015 we will
have made progress on each of the Millennium Development Goals, and on
every dimension of gender equality and women’s empowerment. This includes
stronger economic security and rights, greater participation in political
decision-making, equal access to all levels of education, and lives free
of violence.

UNIFEM Press release