status of women

A senior United Nations official today stressed the need for more rapid advancements on gender equality, saying the pace of change since the 1995 World Conference on Women, held in Beijing, on many issues has not been sufficient and major disparities between genders remain.

The greater participation of women and girls in sports can help lift their involvement in society, fight gender stereotypes and accelerate progress towards gender parity, the head of the United Nations entity for gender equality and women’s empowerment declared today.

Twenty years ago in Beijing, countries signed on to a comprehensive global blueprint for gender equality and women’s empowerment, and achieving that goal remains “humanity’s biggest project,” according to senior United Nations official Lakshmi Puri.

Youth delegates such as Momal Mushtaq, a self-described “feminist” from Pakistan who was banned from riding a bicycle back home, and Tunisian women’s advocate Aya Chebbi, who declared that her “bold” generation was already today’s leaders, engaged in a lively dialogue with their senior counterparts on the side lines of the annual Commission on the Status of Women underway at the United Nations.

Actress Geena Davis today told a standing-room only event on gender and the media at the United Nations that the paucity of female characters in entertainment media for young children can be changed overnight, saying: “We don’t have to fix the ‘unconscious bias’ they are raised with later on. We can fix it from the very beginning.”

The importance of strong laws against sexual, domestic and other gender violence was highlighted today as members of parliaments from around the world gathered on the sidelines of the annual session of the United Nations women’s commission on its second day.