With the chief of the UN’s gender empowerment agency declaring that women are still “sitting in the corridors when men are inside at the table negotiating peace”, the historic Generation Equality Forum in Paris concluded on Friday with new commitments designed to address that, and other injustices.
While the number of women heads of State or in government around the world has reached unprecedented levels, the challenge in achieving gender equality still remains, according to new UN data released on Wednesday.
Unless countries act now, the COVID-19 pandemic could erase recent “fragile progress” towards gender equality, the UN Secretary-General warned on Thursday, urging governments to put women at the centre of recovery and response.
Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has warned against complacency on women’s rights at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, a landmark agenda for the empowerment of women.
The historically male-dominated shipping industry should clear the decks for a new generation of women, whose empowerment would help fuel economic growth, and speed up the drive towards “safe, secure, clean and sustainable shipping”.
Without the full participation and leadership of women, “we have no hope” of realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the President of the United Nations General Assembly told gender equality leaders on Monday.
After hearing from many of the world’s top women politicians on Tuesday in a session on “Women in Power”, Secretary-General António Guterres, held a Town Hall meeting for civil society activists where he underscored the importance of women seizing the initiative in the struggle for gender equality.
There has been a “serious regression” in the political power of women across the world in recent years, UN General Assembly President María Fernanda Espinosa told delegates to the annual summit of women activists at UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday.
A group of seven United Nations rights experts issued a clarion call on Tuesday to break the taboo around menstrual health for women and girls that persists in many parts of the world and take concrete action to end “disempowering” discrimination.
