International Women's Day 2021

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

 

The United Nations (UN)-selected theme for this year’s celebration of International Women’s Day is Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID19 world. A celebration that is calling for equal representation and participation in decision-making. 

Despite significant advances in gender equality, considering increases in the number of elected women, or women appointed to decision-making positions, figures from the UN Secretary General’s Report, prepared for the upcoming Sixty-Fifth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, still indicate large disparities in the representation of women in public life, and their participation in decision-making. Not to mention the pace of change, which is criticized as far too slow. For example, women are Heads of State in just 21 countries and represent only 24.9% of all parliamentarians worldwide. Just a handful of countries, fourteen to be precise, have achieved gender parity at the cabinet level, at a rate of .52% per year from 2010 to 2020. Thus, assuming such a rate remains constant, gender parity might not be achieved until 2077, in other words 30 years from now. Likewise, just four countries have achieved gender parity at the parliamentary level, although 25 countries have 40% or more women parliamentarians.  

As a result of these trends, even if gender equality has progressed, with women taking on an increased role in public life, most decisions concerning women are still being taken by men. The reasons for the absence of gender parity, put forward in the Secretary General's Report, include the absence of political will to change power relations, together with the persistent obstacles of inequalities, conflict, violence against women, the effects of climate change and of the COVID19 pandemic. Tenacious obstacles, which each tend to reinforce discrimination against women, when they do not take back small gains that have been achieved.   

Further breakdown of the data shows large regional disparities. In particular, the data shows that Latin America, the Caribbean, North  America and Europe have achieved much higher gender parity than the rest of the world, especially compared to Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), where only 6% of parliament seats are held by women. Taking the COVID19 pandemic as a case in point, the Secretary General's Report further highlights the fact that, while 70% of workers in the healthcare sector are female, an analysis of COVID19 decision-making task forces in 87 countries revealed only 3.5% had gender parity. A particularly troubling finding, since past history of decision-making shows that, when women are excluded from the process, the outcomes of decision-making are usually harmful, or ineffective, for women, particularly those who are at the center of multiple intersecting discrimination, such as women who are poor, have disabilities, belong to ethnic or racial minorities, and/or are migrants.

Solutions put forward in the Secretary General’s Report emphasize: adoption of, and compliance with gender quotas set forth in legislation; increased activism of women in civil society to promote gender parity legislation, to abolish discriminatory practices, and to uphold women’s rights as human rights in all spheres of activity; as well as direct funding of women’s organizations, which remain significantly under-invested.

References

UN Women – International Women’s Day 2021 https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/international-womens-day

UN Women – Generation Equality Rising   https://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/feature/generationequalityrising/en/index.html

UN Women - Generation Equality Forum https://forum.generationequality.org/

UN Secretary General’s Report on Women’s full and effective participation and decision-making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. https://undocs.org/E/CN.6/2021/3