Women farmers plow their fields in preparation to plant corn in Gnoungouya Village, Guinea on June 15, 2015. Many farmers were highly affected by the Ebola outbreak and are slowly beginning to return to their fields to work. Photo: World Bank/Dominic Chavez
20 October 2015 – The lives of women and girls around the world have improved in several areas over the last 20 years but they continue to be victims of gender based discrimination and violence, according to a new report launched today by the United Nations.
Coming on the heels of the recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), The World’s Women 2015 report brings into sharp perspective the need for gender equality outlined in Goal 5, which aims to empower all women and girls by 2030.
“We cannot achieve our 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, without full and equal rights for half of the world’s population, in law and in practice,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at a recent event on gender equality organized on the margins of the Sustainable Development Summit.
What is the Impact of Segregation?
One of the strengths of this approach to exploring segregation is the possibility to analyse the interaction between segregation and job quality outcomes. For example, in the case of supervisory responsibilities we find that opportunities for supervisory responsibilities are highly concentrated in certain occupations for both women and men and these opportunities tendto be low in female-dominated occupations. Men are also more likely to be supervisors than women in every single occupational group, even the mostfemale-dominated ones. Similarly gender pay gaps in favour of men exist in almost all occupations but average pay levels within female-dominated and maledominatedoccupations vary according to the nature of the work. This means thatsome female-dominated occupations provide average pay levels for women as wellas men that exceed men’s average pay in the labour market as a whole.
The year 2015 marks a defining moment for the health of women, children, and adolescents. It is the end point of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, and their transition to the Sustainable Development Goals. It is also the 20th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development’s plan of action and the Beijing Declaration and platform of action.
Although great strides have been made in reducing maternal and child mortality, showing that change is possible, many countries are lagging behind in reaching millennium development goal 4 (to reduce the under 5 mortality rate by two thirds between 1990 and 2015) and goal 5 (to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015 and achieve universal access to reproductive healthcare by 2015), and there are vast inequities between and within countries. In 2010, confronted with unacceptably high rates of maternal and child mortality, the UN secretary general called on the world to develop a strategy to improve maternal and child health in the world’s poorest and high burden countries, starting with 49 low income countries. The articles in this collection examine the evidence and the thinking that form the basis of the new global strategy.
Consider for Women Human Rights Defenders
Abstract
Since the United Nations General Assembly's adoption of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders in 1998, there has been considerable effort to recognise and protect the right of individuals, groups and communities to promote and protect their own rights and the rights of others. Over time, a multi-level, multi-actor international protection regime for the rights of human rights defenders has emerged, derived from the international human rights regime. Actors in this goal-driven regime adopt a human security approach, emphasising the importance of having a holistic, multi-dimensional understanding of ‘security’. In this article, we note positive developments in state commitment to the protection of defenders, as well as the debates, tensions and contestation that continue to exist. We emphasise the need for critical appraisal of the construction, function and evolution of this protection regime as well as its multi-scalar social and political effects, both intended and unintended. We highlight three specific areas where critical scholarship is needed to understand the nature of this protection regime, discussing the contributions of authors in this special issue: the definition and use of the term ‘human rights defender’; the effectiveness of protection mechanisms; and the complex relationship between repression, activism and risk. In conclusion, we identify key areas for further research related to human rights defenders, stressing the need for the development of theory and practice related to their ‘risk’, ‘security’ and ‘protection’.
