Generation Equality Forum a chance to cement gender equality
President Uhuru Kenyatta during a virtual launch of the Kenyan chapter of Generation Equality Forum at State House, Nairobi, in May.
What you need to know:
- In the 26 years since the Beijing meeting, the world has made great strides, in, for example shifts in laws, policies and social norms that have meant there are more girls in school today than ever before.
- However, momentum has stalled. Public rhetoric has gone unmatched by action, financing or implementation. Progress has been slow, uneven and fragile.
In September 1995, the world gathered in Beijing for the largest-ever meeting on gender equality, the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women.
International leaders promised bold actions and put forth the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
In the 26 years since the meeting, the world has made great strides in, for example, shifts in laws, policies and social norms that have meant there are more girls in school today than ever before.
A report released by UN Women, Unicef and Plan International last year, shows that the number of out-of-school girls has dropped by 79 million in the last two decades.
However, momentum has stalled. Public rhetoric has gone unmatched by action, financing or implementation. Progress has been slow, uneven and fragile. For instance, while a billion people have escaped from extreme poverty since 1990, women aged 25 to 34 are 25 per cent more likely than men to live in extreme poverty and although the rate of child marriage has declined from one in four to one in five, there are 650 million women in the world today who were married before their 18th birthday. New and emerging challenges mean that even the continuation of slow progress can no longer be taken for granted.
The current Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities, with reports of rising violence against women, as well as higher adverse economic impacts caused by both increased unpaid caregiving and the fact that women work in more insecure, low-paid and informal job-settings.
Even before the pandemic, the global participation of women in the labour force was steadily declining. In 2020, 46.9 per cent of women worldwide participated in the labour force, which was already a strong decrease from 51 per cent in 1990.
The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened this situation; in 2020, 64 million women lost their jobs, bringing the employment loss for women to 5 per cent, while that of men stood at 3.9 per cent. This huge setback in women and girls’ rights needs to be addressed through recovery packages that invest more in women and girls’ wellbeing and gender equality.
At a time when women and girls risk losing rights and falling even further behind, it is critical that the world re-doubles efforts to achieve a true generation of equality. The Generation Equality Forum, which kicked off in Mexico last March, with another set for France from June 30 to July 2, is a once-in-a-decade opportunity to permanently change our society and cement gender equality as a vital component of the Building Back Better agenda. The forum brings together governments, civil society, the next generation of women’s rights activists with the gender equality visionaries who were instrumental in creating the Beijing Platform for Action to tackle the unfinished business of empowering women.
Change is urgently needed and will only be possible if everyone joins forces and acts with determination to achieve gender equality and justice for all. To craft more just, equal and democratic societies is everybody’s business.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Former President of the UN General Assembly and Member of the Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.
