Caption: A skilled birth attendant (midwife) consults with her patient in rural Nepal. World Bank/Aisha Faquir
The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) has announced its involvement in an international partnership to improve civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems in the Asia-Pacific region.
Shun-ichi Murata, ESCAP Deputy Executive Secretary, hailed the partnership, announced in New York yesterday at an event that included former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the city’s former Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who represented Data2X, ESCAP’s partner, which is an international initiative aiming to close gender gaps.
“Leaving no one behind will be a core tenet of the post-2015 development agenda, and providing every man, woman, girl and boy a legal identity, and including them in official statistics that should guide the decisions we make, are absolutely critical to achieving this aim,” said Mr. Murata. “This partnership with Data2x is a significant step in that direction.”
We, the 700 participants in our diversity from around 350 groups, networks, and institutions and 56 countries of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe region, gathered in Geneva from 3-5 November 2014 for the NGO Forum review of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPA) and recommendations for the future.
We recognise and celebrate the significant achievements made in this region impacting women’s lives, as well as at policy and institutional levels.
However, the ECE region is economically and socially diverse, and many changes over the last 20 years raise deep concerns for sustainability, women’s and human rights. We are at a tipping point as a region with convergence of multiple crises: financial, energy, climate and food. The austerity measure response to the economic and financial crises has resulted in unprecedented unemployment, drastic cuts to public expenditures, and household level social and economic insecurity, disproportionately impacting women and girls. We recognize the global demographic shift to an aging population - particularly relevant to our ECE Region. The global gap between rich and poor grows daily.
We face myriad threats to the Beijing commitments. Women experience time poverty; overburdened by unrecognised unpaid work. In addition to gender mainstreaming, we must urgently address the root causes of inequality. Violations of and threats to girls and women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights call for protection and advancement of the BPA and prior commitments, ICPD and CEDAW in the post 2015 agenda. Transformation requires addressing the structural and macro issues that perpetuate inequalities, discrimination and exclusion.
Philanthropy and the Social Economy: Blueprint 2015 is an annual industry forecast written by leading philanthropy scholar Lucy Bernholz about the social economy — private capital used for public good.
Philanthropy & the Social Economy: Blueprint 2015
Извор: WUNRN – 15.12.2014
Examples: Women on EU Boards & Maternity Leave
Brussels - The European Women’s Lobby and 19 other gender equality and environmental organisations, including trade unions and consumer groups, call on the European Commission to ignore a hit list of proposals that business lobbyists want ditched by the new executive.
The undersigned organisations, representing diverse public interests, strongly oppose the worrying deregulatory tendency under the headline of ‘cutting red tape’. The open letter is a response to the statement issued by BusinessEurope on 25th November under the heading ‘Business input to the screening exercise by vice-president Timmermans’.
Find the Open Letter to First Vice-President of the European Comission Frans Timmermans here
The European Women’s Lobby specifically reacted to claims made by Business Europe on the Women on Boards and Maternity Leave legislation. Read here EWL’s clarifications.
Gender balance in boards The proposal should not be withdrawn but speeded up. Not only is parity in decision-making right because it is essential that the opinions, needs and wishes of women and men in their diversity are taken into account, but a huge range of studies have shown that gender balance in the boardroom has proven to be competitively and financially better for the company.
BusinessEurope opposes EU action to increase the proportion of women on non-executive boards in large listed companies. It claims that the proposed legislation and quotas ‘’disregard the highly diverse conditions in different sectors/companies and do not take into account the way corporate boards function and are renewed”. However, these are precisely the key reasons why the legislation is necessary in the first place.
Pregnant workers The proposal should not be withdrawn but speeded up. The inadequate rights and low level of pay enjoyed by women during maternity leave currently represent a large driving factor of the gender pay gap (EU average is 16%), the gender pension gap (EU average is 40%), and low female participation in the labour market (EU average is 62%). Women in the European Union demand and deserve full pay throughout their leave (which should be at least 18 weeks) and without work-related conditionality.
Abandoning the Maternity Leave Directive will have serious negative consequences for pregnant workers across the European Union with direct impact on women’s contribution to the economy and on the future labour force.
Don’t axe gender and environment laws, NGOs tell Timmermans - article by Euractiv here
Извор: WUNRN – 05.12.2014
Priya Nanda, Abhishek Gautam, RaviVerma, Aarushi Khanna, Nizamuddin Khan, Dhanashri Brahme, Shobhana Boyle & Sanjay Kumar - 2014
In-depth research on gender, power and masculinity and various programmatic efforts to engage men have made it abundantly clear that men and boys must be an integral part of efforts to promote gender equality. This is especially relevant in India, where caste, class and linguistic ethnicity have tremendous influence on how men construct their sense of masculinity and define what it means to be a “real man” or what is expected of them. Recent research suggests that men’s attitudes and more broadly, masculinity, perpetuate son preference and to some extent, intimate partner violence in India.
With this in mind, ICRW conducted research, surveying a total of 9,205 men and 3,158 women, aged 18-49 in the following seven states across India: Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra.
