Context:
As International Women’s Day approaches, the United Nations has released a significant report, Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing, highlighting concerning setbacks in the advancement of gender equality.
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- This report shows a troubling reversal of the progress made since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which provided the most comprehensive global framework for gender equality.
- The overall findings indicate that despite decades of effort, women’s human rights are under increasing threat in many parts of the world.
Key Findings of the UN Women Report
Global Backlash Against Women’s Rights:
- Nearly 25% of governments worldwide reported a significant backlash against women’s rights in 2024, signaling a disturbing reversal of the progress made since the 1995 Beijing Declaration.
- Many countries have resisted legal reforms aimed at promoting gender equality and have failed to tackle misogyny in public discourse.
Gender-based violence:
- Gender-based violence remains a major crisis, with a woman or girl killed every ten minutes by a partner or family member.
- Although 90% of countries have laws against gender-based violence, enforcement is often inconsistent, and financial support for critical services is lacking.
- The digital space has also exacerbated gender violence with online harassment and harmful digital stereotypes emerging, like deepfake imagery.
Other Inequalities:
- Women continue to face significant economic inequality, earning on average 20% less than men.
- Over 772 million women work in the informal economy without social protection.
- Although 1,531 legal reforms have been enacted since 1995 to support gender equality, women still hold only 64% of the legal rights that men enjoy, thus pointing to the failure to translate laws into effective action.
- Women’s participation in politics has increased but remains far from parity. Women now occupy 27% of global parliamentary seats, up from just 11% in 1995.
The Beijing+30 Action Agenda: UN Women launched the Beijing+30 Action Agenda, a comprehensive roadmap aimed at addressing following six unfinished agenda of gender equality: –
- Bridging the Digital Gender Divide
- Freedom from Poverty
- Zero Tolerance for Violence Against Women and Girls
- Equal Decision-Making Power
- Women’s Roles in Peace and Security
- Climate Justice
Key Recommendation:
- Executive Director of UN Women, emphasized the urgency of these reforms: “Women and girls are demanding change — and they deserve nothing less.”
- The UN has called for substantial financial investment to achieve gender equality, with an estimated $360 billion per year required to meet global gender equality targets by 2030.
- The upcoming Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) will provide a critical opportunity to enshrine the Beijing+30 Action Agenda into national and international policies.