. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

An article from UN Women

Every year thousands of activists from civil society organizations around the world come to New York to take part in the Commission on the Status of Women, the global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. More than 3,900 non-governmental representatives from 138 countries participated in 2017. See some of their messages and perspectives on women in the changing world of work below.

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How has the world of work changed for women?

[1] Hazel Brown Executive Director of Network of NGOs for the Advancement of Women, Trinidad and Tobago

“I got married in 1962 and was told that married women who had jobs were required to give their earnings to their husbands. In 1962, the income tax law in Trinidad and Tobago considered an employed married woman in the same category of persons as children, imbeciles and people with insane mind. Eventually, we successfully advocated to change that law. But there remain other discriminatory laws that need to be amended. For example, domestic workers are not legally considered as workers and denied the benefits and the rights of all other workers, by law.”

[2] Diane Elsen, “Leontief Prize winner for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought”, author, researcher and professor, United Kingdom

“Until recently, there was a rise in female labour force participation. Now that has levelled off and in some countries, it’s going down. But women’s share in unpaid and care work is not going down. In some countries there is a narrowing of the gender pay gap, and in others the progress on this has stalled. But gender pay gap only accounts for wages from formal employment; it does not factor in the earnings of millions of women who work in the informal sector or without proper contracts. When we looked at the gender earnings gap in UK, for example, it’s bigger than the gender wage gap.”

[3] Shirley Pryce, Former domestic worker, current Chair of the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network, Jamaica

“Before, only men used to sit on company boards, have the top jobs in Jamaica. Now that’s changing. More women are taking on management jobs. For domestic workers too, things have changed. We are more respected that we used to be; we are better aware of our rights and employers are more educated about our rights. But for domestic workers to be truly empowered, we need laws to protect their rights. Jamaica has ratified the ILO Convention on Domestic Workers, but now we are need to develop a national law. As the head of the Caribbean Domestic Workers Network, I am also advocating with other Caribbean countries to ratify the ILO Convention and then implement it through national laws.”

[4] Christian Mendoza Galàn, Coordinator on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Mexico

“In Mexico, we have social security linked with formal [waged] work, so that makes it harder for women who are not in formal labour force. We have more work, less money, and less labour rights for women. Adding women’s unpaid work to their paid work, women have more amount of work. This limits our opportunities to develop. The unpaid care work also is related to women’s sexual and reproductive rights, because if we have more children, we have more work at home. And, we need to engage in paid work too because we don’t have enough money to sustain the family.”

[5] Mariyam Mohamed Representative of Uthema, Maldives

“There are more women joining the workforce now, but 47 per cent of women are employed in informal sectors, in jobs where they don’t get pensions or other benefits. We have a new gender equality law but it doesn’t address the care work that women do. Since 1980s, we’ve been talking about state funded daycare but it has not happened. It does not endorse affirmative action or gender-responsive budgeting. We have laws, but no one knows about them. There is not enough budget allocated for the implementation of the laws.”

What will it take to bring women on equal footing with men in the world of work?

[6] Dr. Archana Integrator with Prada, India

“I am working with rural women and women farmers in India. For them, the pace of progress [in economic empowerment] is slower still. For women to have equal economic opportunities, men’s participation in the household chores and care work is essential. At the same time, women’s participation in the economic and political spheres must be promoted. There are many pro-women laws and policies in different countries, but they are not enforced.”

[7] Emma Kaliya Chairperson of FEMNET, Programme Manager of the Malawi Human Rights Resource Centre, and Equal Pay Champion, Malawi

“When it comes to bringing women equal to men, we have to make sure that the existing laws are enforced. The employment act in Malawi, for example, doesn’t allow for discrimination against women. It provides for maternity leave and other provisions. But when it comes to practice, employers may give only one week of maternity to women. Enforcement is important because if employers do not comply with the law, they can be punished and that would serve as a deterrence to others. As an Equal Pay Champion, I want to engage the minister of labour and other stakeholders in the private sector, and partner with trade unions to improve the situation of women in the informal sector. We also have to remove the barriers, such as sexual harassment at the workplace.”

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Prospects for progress in women’s equality, what are the short and long term prospects?

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[8] Marie Andrea Anick Jasmin, Young filmmaker, Haiti

“The biggest challenge for women in Haiti is to see themselves in decision-making positions, and in what they perceive as “male occupations’. In Haiti, girls don’t see themselves as presidents, engineers or leaders. We must change the mentality and change will come with education at primary, secondary and university levels, sexual and reproductive education, and education that improves women’s self-esteem.”

Our issues

[9] Roki Kumar Breakthrough, India

“It is not enough to say that women are working, so they are economically empowered. For a woman to be empowered, she should also be able to earn at the same level as a man. She should also have the right to spend her own money the way she wants. The biggest problem in my country is patriarchy. We cannot achieve gender equality without men playing a part.”

[10] Maria Eugenia Romero, Executive Director of Equidad de Género, Ciudadanía, Trabajo y Familia A.C., México

“In Mexico, we have free public health care. But when women try to see a doctor, there are no appointments available, or the clinic is too far away from them…or the medicines and contraceptives they need are missing. Providing healthcare to women is not seen as a right but as a luxury. We have found that generally women do not receive the contraceptive methods they want, but the one that is available.”

[11] Sandra Letio Youth entrepreneur, Uganda

“I was 23 years old and unemployed, looking for jobs, but finding none. I had USD 15 to invest and a basic recipe for making soaps. Today, my business is valued at USD 700,000. When I first started, many people refused to take me seriously, or give me contracts, because I was young. Some men even harassed me; said they would give me business if I married them. I am the ambassador for youth entrepreneurs in Uganda. We may be young, but we should be given equal opportunities.”

[12] Janneth Lozano Bustos Director of Community Support Corporation (Codacop), Colombia

“Most [indigenous] women work is in agriculture…Some of what they produce, they can sell. We work with women so that they learn to value that work as actual work. Before, they did not even recognize it as such. We are trying for women to have autonomy over their own resources. If she is the one who is raising the hen, and she is going to sell it, then she has the right to lead the negotiation and receive the money! Often it is her [male] partner who does that. If someone wants to buy something, [women] say, “I don’t know anything about that, talk to him”, and then it is the partner who would take the money, and she would never see a dime.”

[13] Patricia Munabi Executive Director of Forum for Women in Democracy, Uganda

“We need to first raise awareness about why it is important to look at a budget with a gender lens. When we began to work with citizens at grassroots levels on gender-responsive budgeting, we asked them what their actual needs were, and then taught them to track where the money is going. Because local women spoke out and said, ‘we need more funding for family planning,’ the government created specific budget lines for family planning. We’ve seen more girls going and staying in schools because communities demanded for separate toilets for boys and girls. Prior to the last election, the government promised to provide sanitary towels for girls, but then the Ministry of Education said there was no money in the budget for sanitary towels.”

[14] Dhitipriya Ghosh Head of Human Resource Management of Breakthrough, India

“Garment factories are the second largest employer for women in India. Women in garment factories are experiencing multiple tiers of violence. On the factory floor, they face rampant sexual harassment. We not only worked with the women, but also worked with the factory management, bringing the Human Resources Management team into the discussion. Once they realized that by making it a safe workspace for women, the productivity goes up, they enforced measures to make their factories safe workplaces. Within 3 years, we had a marked improvement in women’s safety in the workspace.”

[15] Lucia Makamure
Alliance and Partnerships Officer, Gender Links, South Africa

“In our part of the world, the biggest impact of climate change is access to water. Climate change has a woman’s face. It is mostly women, and young girls, who are affected. It’s girls and women who have to sacrifice the time they could use for studying and school, to go out to fetch water. They have to walk longer to find water. When it floods, it’s the women who have to now go out to look for food for the family. Gender must be at the heart of any climate change policy.”

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

An article from UN Women

The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel (HLP) on Women’s Economic Empowerment has presented its second report with final recommendations to the UN Secretary-General António Guterres. In its report, the Panel lays out concrete actions for accelerating progress towards women’s full and equal economic participation. The report also acknowledges that gender inequalities remain stubborn across the world, but they can be overcome if systematic barriers are removed.

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The HLP follows up on the seven main drivers of transformation, introduced in its first report, that was published in September 2016. These are: tackling adverse norms and promoting positive role models; ensuring legal protections and reforming discriminatory laws and regulations; recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid work and care; building digital, financial and property assets; changing corporate culture and practice, improving public sector practices in employment and procurement; and strengthening visibility, collective voice and representation.

The second report, reflecting the work by expert groups including Panel members, identifies practical actions for taking the agenda forward. It elaborates on how economic policies, legal reforms and investments make up an enabling environment that can bring transformational change in the world of work and ensure that one billion women become economically empowered. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres has highlighted: “Women’s economic empowerment is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda. We will not achieve the Sustainable Development Goals if there is no accelerated action to empower women economically. We know that women’s participation in all spheres of life, including in the economy, is essential to sustainable and durable peace and to the realization of human rights.”

The High-Level Panel emphasizes the powerful role of public, private and civil society partnerships and encourages new collaborations, promoting new commitments that will carry this work forward. “With the second report we are also taking another step in building momentum within governments all over the world. We are about to launch a group of Champions with support from more than 20 governments who take the actions and recommendations from the panel further,” explains co-Chair Luis Guillermo Solis, President of Costa Rica.

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Does the UN advance equality for women?

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“Now is the time to act”, continues co-Chair Simona Scarpaleggia, CEO of IKEA Switzerland, and stresses the importance of demonstrating accountability. “The report is out and it shows how all sectors—public, private and civil society—can contribute to overcome systemic barriers for women’s economic empowerment,”, she says. “In IKEA Group, we are committed to doing our part by reaching gender equality in all leadership positions providing equal opportunities and equal pay by 2020.”

Individual Panel members and the many institutions they are associated with have already made significant commitments to take the agenda forward and more commitments were shared during the release of the second report, such as:

– MET Community’s commitment to promote the use of technology through [their] online platform to connect, train and provide visibility to female entrepreneurs in particular Latino rural women, Afro-American and indigenous women who want to start businesses;

– The OECD’s plans to support the G20 commitment to reduce the gender gap in labour force participation by 25 percent ahead of 2025 by setting normative standards through its gender equality recommendations on education, employment, and entrepreneurship, and public life;

– The Caribbean Domestic Workers Network’s continued advocacy across the region for the ratification of ILO Convention 189 setting labour standards for home workers and domestic workers;

– The Government of Finland’s continued support of daycare and early childhood education as essential parts of development programmes and a prerequisite for women’s economic and political empowerment and their ability to get decent work; and

Care International’s commitment to ensure that 30 million women will have greater access and control over their economic resources by 2020 through technological solutions and scaling of the its model of Village Savings and Loan Associations and the development of a new global partnership for ensuring access to financial services for the world’s poorest women.

About the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment

The HLP was established by the UN Secretary-General in January 2016 with the aim to place women’s economic empowerment at the top of the global agenda to accelerate progress of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The HLP is supported by the Government of the United Kingdom. Its two reports will be supported by tool kits to guide the implementation of its recommendations, which are forthcoming. Link to download the report

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

Continuation of the Opening statement by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women for the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women as published by UN Women

… There is a big opportunity for this Commission to recommend changes that match the ambitions of the Sustainable Development Goals in their scale of potential change. And when we do that we will address the needs of these women.

More than half of all women workers around the world—and up to 90 per cent in some countries—are informally employed. We cannot ignore them. This sector is just too big to fail.

Informal workers themselves are mobilizing to negotiate the changes they need, for example waste pickers through their local associations in Brazil, Colombia and India, and in many cases doing that successfully.

On International Women’s Day last week, Pakistan enacted a new law that recognizes home-based workers and entitles them to social protection.

Excellencies, let us look for a moment at some of the barriers that remain to be cracked.

There is under-representation of women in decision-making at all levels. They therefore have insufficient voice to drive the nature and extent of change needed.

There is still a myriad of laws in more than 150 countries that discriminate against women. This falls right in your court as decision-makers and law makers.

And we have to address the stereotypes, norms and practices that discriminate against women and girls, and have for generations denied women career paths on a par with men.

In this Commission, you have an opportunity to assist us to turn back these practices and to introduce changed practices both in businesses and in institutions. The global pay gap, at an average of 23 per cent, means that women are clearly earning consistently less than men.

Women regard this as daylight robbery. The deficit has robbed generations of women of income, future security and just reward. Each year they work three months more than men for equivalent pay.

In the digital age, we also seek technology-enabled solutions for women. We must therefore resolve to act on gaps in the access to technology that unfortunately have been growing. There are some 200 million fewer women online than men, and the gap is worryingly widening.

In a world that has moved to technology and will move even further, this obviously has to change for women too, as it is expected that 90 per cent of future jobs will need a level of digital literacy.

This Commission can drive faster change for multitudes of young people and older people who need to be ready for this future world of work.

Too few people are impacted by the actions to date that we have been driving in the economy.

Change is not yet addressing the root causes of women’s economic injustice, nor is it fulfilling their rights.

There is now an opportunity to act on the economic front. These changes must also mean a rights-based approach in which all people also enjoy democratic rights, free to organize, free to dissent, and human rights defenders free to support their fellow workers, fellow activists and not be killed and brutalized for doing this work. And young people must be free to be activists.

Advancing women’s equality in total could bring a potential boost of 28 trillion US dollars to global annual GDP by 2025. That is five years before the 2030 Agenda endpoint. Wouldn’t it be great if we were to achieve this?

Just fixing the informal economy could impact 80 per cent of the women working outside home in sub-Saharan Africa and remove the threat of extreme poverty.

The change of discriminatory laws in over 150 countries could affect more than 3 billion women and girls in the world. And that is what tipping the scale is about. This will be game changing.

Macroeconomic policies and related laws would contribute to inclusive growth and significantly accelerate progress.

Innovations in climate-smart agriculture and the low-carbon economy envisaged in the 2030 Agenda, as well as digital economies and information communications technologies can rapidly move opportunities ahead.

Mobile cellular networks already cover an area occupied by 95 per cent of the world’s population offering huge potential for digital and financial inclusion.

Investment in a pipeline of girls well educated in STEAM subjects [science, technology, engineering, arts and math], could increase the current 25 per cent of women in the digital industries’ workforce and build skills matches for the ‘new collar’ jobs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution coupled with the anticipated demands of the green economy.

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Women also face difficulties when it comes to access to markets. Governments and the private sector can both make a significant contribution to this. If just 1 per cent more than existing annual global public procurement spending were to be directed to women’s enterprises, women could earn an additional 60-70 billion US dollars from supplying goods and services. This can be addressed in procurement policies and practices.

We have committed to eliminating violence against women including sexual harassment at work in the next 13 years by 2030.

That would give relief to many women who are traumatized by daily harassment at work. That includes the ability for women to have a fair hearing when they report violence and harassment at work.

Paid parental leave, more men sharing care work, and safe affordable childcare services together create many possibilities for more women to be active in the economy and enhance the essential parenting role of men.

The private sector has a role to play in this too, and in enabling women’s voices to be heard in shaping products, services and policies in the new industries, supporting asset ownership, digital and financial inclusion, and infrastructure development. When companies promote women, invest in their careers, and bring their voices into decision making, there is a better future for all.

Collectives like trade unions, and networks and associations like the International Domestic Workers Federation are vital, where the fight is not just for higher wages but for higher and equal wages. They are absolutely essential to ensuring that women are adequately represented to get the changes they want.

It is ever more urgent that we respect and protect women’s sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, and ensure the unmet needs of family planning for women are met. This would limit unwanted pregnancies and the consequences for mothers who may wish to work outside the home, and protect their rights .

Excellencies, what you agree to do during this CSW could be the much needed accelerator for the implementation and achievement of the 2030 Agenda. We must make, and can make, the world of work, work better for women, transforming economies and realizing rights.

We now have only 13 years until 2030. Every week and every month counts. So does the scale of the change we achieve, which must also benefit the displaced persons.

This Commission on the Status of Women must not be the Commission on the Status Quo.

This week the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment will present its final report. This contains important recommendations, all in line with the work of this Commission. The report will enable us to reach and motivate the partners who are essential for success.

At the UN, under the leadership of the Secretary-General, we are also making adjustments to support women in the world of work. We are committed to gender parity at senior levels by 2021. This is a challenge faced by many partners in both public and private sectors. Our Secretary-General joins the growing number of leaders who want a solution before 2030.
Incentives in every sector will be needed to recruit and retain female workers and also to make contributions to the business culture, and the norms and values that must change for women to realize economic justice.

Lessons from countries already making change are important to share. For this Commission, 35 countries have provided input on the review theme of how lessons from the Millennium Development Goals are being reflected in national processes and policies. We also expect progress on gender to be reflected in the reports for the July 2017 UN High-Level Political Forum. We also follow with interest the actions of countries that made critical commitments at the 2015 Global Leaders Meeting attended by more than 70 heads of state.

Partnerships are essential, especially our partnership with ILO that tonight will enable us to launch the forward-looking “Equal Pay Platform of Champions”, which will be attended by trade unions, by sports heroes, by film stars, governments and by youth.

Excellencies, we need to work together. There are challenges but there are also solutions. You have boldly committed to substantive and sustainable changes by 2030.

Across the world, civil society space is shrinking, and democratic actors and human rights defenders face daunting attacks. Strong movement building continues in the face of the existential threats that both provoke and besiege it.

We know that strong and autonomous women’s movements are a corollary of effective policy change on gender equality. We will consistently promote their safety and ability to organize.

At the same time, over the last two years, a resounding global gender equality compact has been accumulated, through the Beijing+20 Review, Agenda 2030 itself, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the New Urban Agenda and the New York Declaration on Migrants and Refugees.

These aspirations are shared by the world, for a better world; for women, for us all.

Thank you.

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

A report by UN Women

Chair of the Commission on the Status of Women, H.E. Mr. Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Secretary-General of the UN, President of ECOSOC, President of the General Assembly, Ministers and representatives from capitals, Women and civil society representatives,

At the outset, I would like to thank the Chair of CSW, his Excellency Ambassador Patriota, and his Bureau, for all their work in preparing this complex event.

I also want to thank the UN Women team across the world for their hard work and preparations, including the important regional pre-CSW consultations that allow us all to get together in this session and be as ready as we are.

In Cape Town, South Africa, UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka meets girls involved in the Grassroots Soccer SKILLZ programme, a grantee of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. Photo: Karin Shermbrucker
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A special thanks to the representatives of Member States, civil society and youth who have travelled from all over the world to collaborate with us. And I thank Member States for their inclusion of civil society and youth in their delegations, helping to make this meeting truly universal in its deliberations.

There are 750 young people here who on Saturday and Sunday were engaged in an assembly and a festival of ideas. What an engagement that was! We also have 8,600 pre-registrations, which means that we potentially have the largest number ever of civil society representatives with us in this CSW61.

I would also like to acknowledge our Secretary-General, at his first Commission in his new capacity. Secretary-General, it is wonderful to have you with us here. I thank him for leading the agenda on gender equality from the front and for his insightful remarks and unwavering drive to tackle gender inequality from Day One of his tenure.

This Commission concerns itself with the status of women. It reviews the progress made by women and girls, and assesses the remaining challenges. It is a barometer of the progress we are making on achieving a world that is free of gender discrimination and inequality, a world that leaves no-one behind. It will help us measure achievement of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It also helps us to pursue action in priority areas and benefits from the Commission’s Agreed Conclusions.

The priority theme for CSW61, as set out in the Secretary-General’s report for the session, is “Women’s Economic Empowerment in the Changing World of Work”. Inclusive economies and a positive world of work are powerful ways of breaking away from the cycles of poverty that besiege our nations.

Currently, in the gender equality agenda, we see progress in some areas, but we also see an erosion of gains. The much-needed positive developments are not happening fast enough. We also need to work together to make sure we reach a tipping point in the numbers of lives changed.

We need swift and decisive action that can be brought about by the world of work so that we do not leave women even further behind.

Excellencies, let us agree to constructive impatience.

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Does the UN advance equality for women?

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The Sustainable Development Goals give us a framework to work for far-reaching changes. In this session of the Commission we will be able to bring renewed focus to the needs of those who are currently being left behind and those who are currently furthest behind.

They include young women; some of whom were at the Youth CSW. They include refugees and migrants. They include women affected by gender-based violence, including workplace sexual harassment.

They include women who are denied sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights and services; and women facing discrimination on multiple and intersecting fronts over and above their gender: such as sexual orientation, disability, older age, race, or being part of an indigenous community.

They include women in the informal sector, and care givers, those who provide services in the home that are much needed to sustain society.

Almost all women do some form of work. If you are a woman you are a worker—period.

Virtually all economies rely on the unpaid care and domestic work that is largely provided by women and girls. Yet this form of work positions masses of women uniquely to be “left behind”.

Positive changes in the world of work must enable care work to be valued and to be shared by parents and within the family unit. This will bring about far-reaching positive changes for women, society and economies.

Investment into the care economy of 2 per cent of GDP in just seven countries could create over 21 million jobs. That would provide child care, elderly care and many other needed services.
The Secretary-General’s report gives greater attention to women who work at the base of the pyramid, as these are the ones who are at the highest risk of being left behind.

The Commission must also look at how to increase the participation of these women, as well as women’s participation in male-dominated sectors that have meaningful economic benefits.

The Commission can make fresh gains in how we bring the informal sector into a structured and meaningful economic relationship with benefits, respecting the rights of women in this sector.

The informal sector is dominated by the millions and millions of women who are the working poor. Women workers in the informal sector are all around us.

They are in the rapidly growing urban communities, as well as in rural areas. They are the under-the radar and under-valued cogs in the bigger wheels of the formal economy. They are the low-cost farm workers, flower sellers, street food vendors, care workers, and home-based producers of garments and car parts. Almost none of them have legal or social protection.

And they are missing out on the opportunities offered by the changing world of work, which has technology as one of its advantages…

[Editor’s note: We found it too difficult to abbreviate this speech into the usual length for a CPNN article without losing important statements; hence it is continued on the following page.]