Chapter Six: Actions and Initiatives

within this section:

Introduction

Achieving gender equality and empowerment of women requires redressing inequalities between women and men and girls and boys and ensuring their equal rights, responsibilities, opportunities and possibilities. Gender equality implies that women's as well as men's needs, interests, concerns, experiences and priorities are an integral dimension of the design, implementation, national monitoring, and follow-up and evaluation, including at the international level, of all actions in all areas.

Gender Perspective

The efforts towards ensuring women's participation in development have expanded and need to combine a focus on women's conditions and basic needs with a holistic approach based on equal rights and partnerships, promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Policies and programmes should be formulated to achieve the goal of people-centred sustainable development, secure livelihoods and adequate social protection measures, strengthened support systems for families, equal access to and control over financial and economic resources, and the elimination of increasing and disproportionate poverty among women. All economic policies and institutions, as well as those responsible for resource allocation, should adopt a gender perspective to ensure that development dividends are shared on equal grounds.

Recognising the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women in many countries, particularly in developing countries, it is essential to continue from a gender perspective to review, modify and implement integrated macroeconomic and social policies and programmes, including those related to structural adjustment and external debt problems, to ensure universal and equitable access to social services, in particular to education and affordable quality health-care services and equal access to and control over economic resources.

Equal access

Increased efforts are needed to provide equal access to education, health and social services and to ensure women's and girls' rights to education and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and well-being throughout the life cycle, as well as adequate, affordable and universally accessible health care and services, including sexual and reproductive health, particularly in the face of the HIV/AIDS pandemic; they are also necessary with regard to the growing proportion of older women.

Environmental management

Given that a majority of the world's women are subsistence producers and users of environmental resources, there is a need to recognise and integrate women's knowledge and priorities in the conservation and management of such resources to ensure their sustainability. Programmes and infrastructures that are gender-sensitive are needed in order to respond effectively to disaster and emergency situations that threaten the environment and livelihood security, as well as the management of the basic requirements of daily life.

Sustaining the livelihoods of populations in States with limited or scarce resources, including small island developing States, is critically dependent on the preservation and protection of the environment. Women's customary knowledge, management and sustainable use of biodiversity should be recognised.

Political will

Political will and commitment at all levels are crucial to ensure mainstreaming of a gender perspective in the adoption and implementation of comprehensive and action-oriented policies in all areas. Policy commitments are essential for further developing the necessary framework which ensures women's equal access to and control over economic and financial resources, training, services and institutions as well as their participation in decision-making and management. Policy-making processes require the partnership of women and men at all levels. Men and boys should also be actively involved and encouraged in all efforts to achieve the goals of the Platform for Action and its implementation.

Violence

Violence against women and girls is a major obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of gender equality, development and peace. Gender-based violence as well as violence against women resulting from cultural prejudice, racism and racial discrimination, xenophobia, pornography, ethnic cleansing, armed conflict, foreign occupation, religious and anti-religious extremism and terrorism are incompatible with the dignity and worth of the human person and must be combated and eliminated.

The family

Women play a critical role in the family. The family is the basic unit of society and is a strong force for social cohesion and integration and, as such, should be strengthened. The inadequate support to women and insufficient protection and support to their respective families affect society as a whole and undermine efforts to achieve gender equality. In different cultural, political and social systems, various forms of the family exist and the rights, capabilities and responsibilities of family members must be respected. Women's social and economic contributions to the welfare of the family and the social significance of maternity and paternity continue to be inadequately addressed. Motherhood and fatherhood and the role of parents and legal guardians in the family and in the upbringing of children and the importance of all family members to the family's well-being are also acknowledged and must not be a basis for discrimination. Women also continue to bear a disproportionate share of the household responsibilities and the care of children, the sick and the elderly. Such imbalance needs to be consistently addressed through appropriate policies and programmes, in particular those geared towards education, and through legislation where appropriate. In order to achieve full partnership, in both public and private spheres, both women and men must be enabled to reconcile and share equally work responsibilities and family responsibilities.

National policies and programmes

Strong national machineries for the advancement of women and promotion of gender equality require political commitment at the highest level and all necessary human and financial resources to initiate, recommend and facilitate the development, adoption and monitoring of policies, legislation, programmes and capacity-building for the empowerment of women and to act as catalysts for open public dialogue on gender equality as a societal goal. This would enable them to promote the advancement of women and mainstream a gender perspective in policy and programmes in all areas, to play an advocacy role and to ensure equal access to all institutions and resources, as well as enhanced capacity-building for women in all sectors. Reforms to meet the challenges of the changing world are essential to ensure women's equal access to institutions and organisations.

Programme support to enhance women's opportunities, potentials and activities need to have a dual focus: on the one hand, programmes aimed at meeting the basic as well as the specific needs of women for capacity-building, organisational development and empowerment, and on the other, gender mainstreaming in all programme formulation and implementation activities. It is particularly important to expand into new areas of programming to advance gender equality in response to current challenges.

Disabled women

Girls and women of all ages with any form of disability are generally among the more vulnerable and marginalised of society. There is therefore need to take into account and to address their concerns in all policy-making and programming. Special measures are needed at all levels to integrate them into the mainstream of development.

Knowledge, research and resources

Effective and co-ordinated plans and programmes for the full implementation of the Platform for Action require a clear knowledge of the situation of women and girls, clear research-based knowledge and data disaggregated by sex, short- and long-term time-bound targets and measurable goals, and follow-up mechanisms to assess progress. Efforts are needed to ensure capacity-building for all actors involved in the achievement of these goals. Efforts are also needed at the national level to increase transparency and accountability.

The realisation and the achievement of the goals of gender equality, development and peace need to be supported by the allocation of necessary human, financial and material resources for specific and targeted activities to ensure gender equality at the local, national, regional and international levels as well as by enhanced and increased international co-operation. Explicit attention to these goals in the budgetary processes at the national, regional and international levels is essential.

Actions to be taken at the national level - by governments

Further actions to be taken at the national level - by governments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and other actors of civil society

Actions to be taken at the international level - by the United Nations system and international and regional organisations, as appropriate

Actions to be taken at the national and international levels - by governments, regional and international organisations, including the UnitedNations system, and international financial institutions and other actors, as appropriate

Back to Contents
[ Previous | Next ]

Personal tools

Action Plan

Have you seen?

Status of Women in new zealand