Since 1995 the greatest change experienced in everyday life is the exponential growth of the internet and all forms of mobile communication. Developing countries have also embraced mobile phones as a less expensive way to have a communication infrastructure than land lines. However, this technology has also led to serious misuse, including the harassment and abuse particularly of women and girls. Even as it offers, through social media, opportunities being used by women as well as men for influencing governments, it also offers opportunities for the sale and coercion of human beings and the invasion of
privacy. At the Beijing Conference, we still sent documents by fax. If there was email it was slow and not reliable, and laptops were heavy and expensive. There were no tablets. The preceding three ‘women’s conferences’ – actually named ‘Equality, Development and Peace’ – had already paved the way for a thoroughgoing understanding of women’s inequality and pervasive experience of discrimination in every area and at every level – in all countries, communities, and social groups. And within families and couples. Men’s violence against women and girls was recognised as endemic. The EU, from the Treaty of Rome onwards, identified equality between women and men as a value of the Union and sought through Gender Equality Road Maps and measures to prevent discrimination, not only against women and girls but also against those within the range of ‘protected characteristics’ – all of which are cross - cutting with gender. But at Beijing in 1995, 35,000 to 40,000 women from all over the world gathered in Huairou to exchange stories and develop their vision and plans for a different future. The half hour distance from where the governments (overwhelmingly male) were gathered making history did not prevent the lobbying and the support for the UN agencies seeking to achieve the goals many, including the UK Government, shared.
UK - Beijing + 20 Shadow Report - UK Women: Rights & Progress
Извор: WUNRN – 07.02.2015
