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Achieving gender equality remains
distant goal: UN
AP, UNITED NATIONS
Wednesday, Mar 03, 2010, Page 1
Women still outnumber men among the world's poor, account for two-thirds of
illiterate adults and are more likely to work at low paying jobs without social
protection, 15 years after nations pledged to close the gender gap at a historic
UN conference in Beijing.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said on Monday that while many
countries had made progress in improving education for girls and adopting
national laws and programs to promote women's rights, gender equality remains a
distant goal.
¡§While we have seen advances in the past 15 years, we have not seen enough,¡¨
Migiro told the opening session of the Commission on the Status of Women. ¡§We
need to move from commitment to action.¡¨
Migiro said women continued to be plagued by sexual violence and the maternal
mortality rate remains ¡§unacceptably high,¡¨ while political representation
remains too low. She said only 25 countries had at least 30 percent women in
parliaments last year.
The commission will spend the next two weeks reviewing progress on the platform
adopted by 189 countries at the 1995 UN women's conference in Beijing that
called for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender
gap in 12 critical areas, including health, education, employment, political
participation and human rights.
¡§In real life, women still face unequal treatment and are disadvantaged in
gender competition,¡¨ Chinese representative Meng Xiaosi (©s¾å¾o), the vice chair of
the State Council's committee on women and children.
She said gender stereotyping was still ¡§deeply entrenched¡¨ and discrimination
against women ¡§continued to be widespread in the subconsciousness, in hidden
standards and under the table.¡¨
The Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China,
said the plight of women in developing countries had been exacerbated by the
global economic crisis, continuing food and energy shortages and the challenges
posed by climate change.
Spanish Minister of Equality Bibiana Aido, speaking on behalf of the EU, said
that ¡§even though EU women have already attained high levels of education, women
are still underrepresented in decision-making positions in politics and in the
labor market.¡¨
She also warned that the economic crisis may have ¡§negative effects¡¨ on progress
toward gender equality.
On a positive note, Gambian Vice President Isatou Njie-Saidy, also minister of
women's affairs, cited a significant increase in the number of girls going
beyond elementary school in the west African nation, an increase in the number
of women working and running major businesses, and a drop in maternal mortality
from 1,050 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 556 per 100,000 in 2006.
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