Sex discrimination in personal status laws negatively impacts the ability of women to conduct various aspects of their daily lives. The discrimination goes beyond family law and marital relations to prohibit rights to confer citizenship, travel, participation in public life, etc.

Equality Now

Sex Discrimination for Women in Marital Laws

Извор: 04.04.2015 -WUNRN

March 25, 2015 - Gender equality in the news media was scrutinized on March 25 in more than 130 countries around the world.

National newspapers, television, radio and internet news broadcasts and tweets were analyzed by the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) from Argentina to Zimbabwe, Bangladesh to Yemen, Barbados to the Solomon Islands, and New Zealand to Canada.

Teams of volunteers around the world measured how well national media are doing in the fair and balanced portrayal of women and men in the news. They monitored thousands of stories in hundreds of newspapers and news broadcasts.

“It is overwhelming to experience the energy of thousands of volunteer women and men who share one objective: to advocate for the fair and balanced portrayal of women and men in the media. 24 hours of media monitoring starting with the sunrise in Fiji and New Zealand and sunset over Alaska and French Polynesia!”, said WACC General Secretary, Karin Achtelstetter.

The GMMP is the largest research and advocacy initiative in the world on gender equality in news and journalism. It is organized by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) in cooperation with regional and national coordinators.

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Learning resource kit for gender-ethical journalism and media house policy

The kit is the result of collaboration between the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) to redress gender disparities in news media content.

Little progress has been made since the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action called for more gender sensitivity in the media and self-regulatory mechanisms to eliminate gender-biased programming. Research such as the Global Media Monitoring Project shows just how marginalised women remain in the news. In 2010, the GMMP revealed that women make up only 24% of the people heard, read about or seen in the news.

The IFJ launched the Ethical Journalism Initiative to confront on-going discrimination in the news and reconnect journalists to their mission by enforcing core ethical standards. Challenging sensationalism and stereotypes, checking facts, abiding by codes of conduct, supporting independent self-regulatory bodies are some of the actions identified to uphold media quality and rebuild the public’s trust in the news. Fair gender portrayal is one of the issues to be given priority if media hope to fully reflect the role women play in society. The widespread use of social media, blogs and the development of online news should not be overlooked. Numerous cases reveal a failure to portray gender issues fairly and accurately and very few initiatives exist to develop ethical standards and avoid unfair and outdated stereotypes.

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59th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women

The fifty-ninth session of the Commission on the Status of Women took place at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 9 to 20 March 2015. Representatives of Member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world attended the session.

The main focus of the session was on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, including current challenges that affect its implementation and the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women. The Commission also undertook a review of progress made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 20 years after its adoption at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The review (Beijing+20) also included the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General Assembly, the first five-year assessment conducted after the adoption of the Platform for Action, which highlighted further actions and initiatives.

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Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland has pledged his support for the HeforShe global effort, calling on as many men as possible to join the fight for women’s empowerment.

The HeforShe commitment aims to galvanise 1 billion men and boys worldwide to take action against violence and discrimination against women, on the basis that gender equality is not only a women’s issue, but a human rights issue.

Commenting, the Secretary General said:

“When you work in human rights you see that the strongest, safest and most prosperous societies are those in which women are empowered and the genders are more equal.

“I am delighted to join the ranks of men supporting HeforShe and I urge others to do the same. I also want to applaud this campaign for exposing the web of everyday power-plays which combine to exclude and suppress women.

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