It was a privilege to attend the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, the United Nations’ largest gathering on gender equality and women’s empowerment. It is inspirational to be in a room filled with women from around the globe working for the same causes.
It has been thirty years since the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and one would expect that we had advanced much further in society. However, as I sat listening to the global voices of women, it became clear that the distribution of power continues to be gender inequitable and gender continues to be viewed as an ideology rather than a human right.
Although many laws have provided for women’s presence in all spaces, including the political arena, in Chile for example, the rights of women are the first to be questioned in times of crisis, and increasing gender gaps define the strategy that’s important in the redistribution of power. In Papua New Guinea, despite the tremendous progress made, many gaps and societal stereotypes about the various fields for women like ecology still remain. That includes economic disparities that are still ignored. After eighteen years there has only been an increase of 4% in the employment of women. This is a call to defeminize jobs. That means transforming hearts and minds regarding wage differentiation that works against women.
These are but two examples that may seem extreme; however, since the Beijing 30+ one in four countries have backlashed on gender equality, rolling back women’s rights.
Therefore, we still have a long way to go, and much more work to do in unlocking opportunities so that all women and girls will have access to power in the future. With the gathering of women in the parallel Spring Seminar of IWC it is abundantly clear that this group is up to the gender challenges we continue to face. As a result, I returned to my congregation renewed and invigorated, ready to make a noticeable impact and cause a measurable change in the lives of women and girls.