Women's empowerment falls short
Austcare has changed its name to ActionAid Australia For more information please visit the ActionAid website www.actionaid.org.au
Archie Law, CEO, Austcare
8 March 2009
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Stephen Smith, accepted a Millennium Development Goal 3 (MDG) Champion Torch from Denmark's Ambassador to Australia on 28 August 2008.
MDG3 promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women which is critical to women living in less developed countries. Nearly 100 torches travelled around the world before the UN High Level MDG meeting on 25 September 2008 to highlight the need for countries to meet MDG3. The acceptance of the torch highlighted the Australian Government's commitment to gender equality and women's empowerment and, unfortunately, much remains to be done to achieve this goal.
I hope that on this International Women’s Day (8 March) all Australians took a moment to reflect on the horrible fact that women are consistently over-represented within the most marginalised and poorest groups in the world. Women’s unequal social and economic status leads to women suffering poverty, hunger, violence and abuse.
Women are the world's primary food producers and in developing countries they produce 70 – 80% of the food but only own 1% of the land. Cultural traditions and social structures therefore leave women more at risk of hunger and poverty than men. To compromise women’s right to food compromises their children’s right to food. Women bear the primary responsibility for feeding the members of the household and ensuring their health. Women’s right to food is also critically important before and during pregnancy if they are to give birth to healthy children.
Increased investment in education for women and girls has a dramatic positive effect on the entire community. Research confirms that educated women have healthier families, their children are better nourished, less likely to die in infancy and more likely to attend school. A recent UN study of 63 countries concluded that gains in women’s education made the single largest contribution to declines in malnutrition during 1970–95. Literacy is also vital to ending gender inequality as it increases women’s participation in household decision-making, community affairs and national politics.
Despite the importance of education, governments invest too little in the lives of women and girls. In most countries, girls have far less access to education than boys. According to UNESCO, most of the nearly one billion adults who cannot read and write are women. In Pakistan, 93 percent of women and 64 percent of men from poor families never attend school. Girls are more likely to have household chores that keep them out of school. Where money for education is scarce, daughters are passed over in favour of sons and girls are less likely to attend secondary school than boys.
Women’s rights have been systematically set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international instruments which commit signatory governments to uphold, protect and promote women’s rights. The challenge is to make these rights a reality and this requires the following action:
1. Governments must remove all laws from national legal frameworks and national constitutions that perpetuate gender inequality. Existing laws that support women’s rights must be implemented.
2. Governments must ensure access to quality education for all girls and for women who have missed out on school and this includes indigenous women in Australia.
3. Governments should establish sex disaggregated data-bases at national and regional levels to inform better policies, programmes and processes for women’s access, control and ownership of productive assets, including land.
4. Public policy makers must increase their awareness and sensitivity to discrimination and violations of rights at the household level and develop appropriate legislation and programming.
5. International donors should increase their current spending on education which totals $4.8 billion. Estimates suggest it should reach $ 15 billion to cover $ 12.15 billion for primary and $ 1.4 billion each for adult literacy and early childhood education.
These steps are essential to achieving MDG3 and enabling women to claim their human rights. We need to act now – to prevent women suffering, respond to their vulnerabilities and build their resilience. The choices we ultimately face are courage rather than fear; action rather than paralysis; and hope rather than despair. If we don’t make the right choices now we will never defeat poverty!