March 2, 1998
A report to be released March 1 by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) finds progress on promises made by governments at the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. However, women's organizations from a majority of reporting countries say economic restructuring is severely affecting the realization of the Beijing commitments and reducing women's access to jobs, rights to health care and equal opportunity. In light of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, WEDO's report, Mapping Progress: Assessing Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, spotlights the ways in which economic globalization is undermining women's rights and equality in key areas.
On the positive side, over 70% of the world's 187 countries have drawn up national action plans or drafts as required by the Beijing Platform. WEDO's in-depth report covers 90 of these 187 countries. Governments in 61 countries acknowledged the expertise and experience of women's NGOs by involving them in formulating these plans. Further, governments are strengthening mechanisms to implement the plans; 66 have already set up national offices for women's affairs, 34 of them with the power to initiate legislation.
"In countries around the world, women's groups have pushed their governments for specific actions to live up to the promises they made at Beijing," observed Bella Abzug, WEDO President and former U.S. Congresswoman. "In a growing number of countries, governments are being challenged to act on their commitments by women's caucuses, formed along the lines of WEDO's Women's Caucus that mobilized thousands of women during the UN conferences."
Since the Beijing conference, 58 countries have adopted legislation or policies to address women's rights. For example, 26 countries, a number of them in Latin America and the Caribbean, China and New Zealand have passed laws to curb domestic violence. In Egypt, the Supreme Court has issued a landmark ruling prohibiting the practice of female genital mutilation in state-supported and private facilities. In Thailand, a new law stiffens penalties and speeds trials to prevent and suppress the trafficking of women and children. Due to gender segregation policies in Iran and the introduction of co-education in Pakistan, girls' school enrollment has increased. In Zimbabwe, a new inheritance law has been drafted to favor neither sons nor daughters.
But, women's groups report, fiscal austerity measures in industrialized as well as developing countries and the current economic turmoil in Asia have had a crippling effect on many positive legislative efforts. "On balance, women are still the shock absorbers for structural change," noted Susan Davis, WEDO Executive Director. Women in economies in transition, whether in Europe, Central Asia, South Asia, Africa or Latin America, pay a disproportionate share of the costs of economic globalization while being excluded from its benefits. An abhorrent aspect of the global economy is the prostitution of women in a sex industry that spans the world.
In Canada the deepest job losses have been in the government, health and education sectors dominated by women. The incidence of low-paid employment among Canadian women is now second only to Japan among industrialized nations. In the Ukraine, an estimated 80% of those currently unemployed are women. In Zimbabwe, where macroeconomic restructuring is ongoing, the informal sector has ballooned, drawing on the poorly paid labor of mostly women and more recently girls.
"Mapping Progress, the fifth in a series, reveals incremental progress by governments in implementing the Beijing agenda and the growing political strength of women's movements across the world," said Bharati Sadasivam, WEDO's Program Coordinator for Women's Rights, who conducted the survey.
The report will be released March 1 to coincide with the 42nd session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and marks the midway point to the UN's five-year review of the Fourth World Conference on Women. Interviews with some activists who contributed to the report can be arranged through the WEDO office.
WEDO is an international advocacy network actively working to transform society to achieve social, political, economic and environmental justice for all through the empowerment of women, in all diversity, and their equal participation with men in decision-making.
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