Refugees International: Articles: The Promotion of Gender Equality & Empowerment of Women

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The Promotion of Gender Equality & Empowerment of Women

International Women's Day 2004
07/29/2005

UN Millennium Development Goal #3

Despite increased attention towards gender equality and the empowerment of women in recent decades from local and national governments, humanitarian organizations and the international civil society, women and girls worldwide continue to face discrimination. Although there is wide recognition that educational opportunity is a major factor in improving women’s lives, girl’s primary and secondary education completion rates are drastically lower than their male counterparts.

There have been substantial gains in the education of girls in Latin America, but throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa, girls continue to lag behind. One in three girls completing primary school in Africa and South Asia lacks basic literacy and numeracy and an estimated 58 million girls of primary school age are not enrolled in school. Of those enrolled, many will be forced to leave school after just a few years of education. As a result, two-thirds of all illiterate adults are women. This gender disparity continues to reverberate throughout a woman’s life as women remain far less likely than men to own or control property and household assets.

Shouldering a disproportionate share of domestic labor, women and girls have limited financial opportunities and are often under-represented in civic participation. Only 14 countries in the world have parliaments in which women hold one-third or more seats Additionally, the problem of gender-based violence also plays a role in limiting the abilities of women and girls to fulfill their full potential. While it is very difficult to get accurate numbers as to how many women are impacted by female infanticide, domestic violence, and rape, women’s reproductive rights have been lagging as conservative countries block discussion of sexual and reproductive health at key international conferences and actively seek to roll back advancements throughout the world.

The provision of universal primary education and an end to discrimination in secondary and tertiary education for girls is an essential building block for the empowerment of women and in gaining gender equality. But education alone cannot ensure success --- education must be paired with improvements in access to meaningful employment, political and civic participation, and property rights.

The Third Goal

The third goal of the UN Millennium Challenge is thus to promote gender equality and empower women.

To Achieve Gender Equality

Target: Eliminate Gender Disparity In Primary and Secondary Education Preferably by 2005, and At All Levels by 2015

2005 was established as the target year for the first time-bound measure of this Millennium Development Goal. Progress in achieving the first benchmark has been inconsistent and inadequate. Nineteen countries have failed to achieve gender parity in primary education and twenty-four countries have failed to alleviate the gender gap in secondary education. As improving access to education and eliminating gender discrimination are required steps to achieving gender equality by 2015, the inability of these countries to make improvements signals the need for increased attention and intensified country-specific interventions.

To achieve gender parity and to empower women, the UN Task Force on Education and Gender Equality has set forth seven prioritized actions, including: building upon the provision of universal primary education for all children by improving girls’ accessibility to secondary education; guaranteeing basic sexual and reproductive health; reducing disproportionate time and labor burdens on women and girls by investing in infrastructure; maintaining equality under the law by guaranteeing non-discriminatory property and inheritance rights; eliminating gender disparities in employment by reducing discriminatory hiring practices and workforce segregation, decreasing the earnings gap between men and women, and reducing female dependence on informal and non-remunerative employment; increasing the participation of women in national parliaments and local government; as well as combating violence against women, particularly domestic abuse and rape.

The Displaced and Stateless Populations

In every region of the globe and nearly every segment of society, women and girls face discrimination, both blatant and discrete. Women and girls in developing countries are particularly constrained. For women and girls seeking refuge from conflict or persecution or who are not protected by a national government, however, gender inequality can be even more devastating.

Maternal mortality provides a stark example of how displaced and stateless women suffer. Today, more than two-thirds of all births occur outside of health facilities or without skilled obstetric care. As a result, a pregnant mother in the developing world is 50 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than a mother in a developed country. Refugees, the internally displaced and stateless populations face disproportionately high levels of maternal mortality. Displaced women’s access to adequate health facilities, trained personnel, reproductive health services and information, and comprehensive sexuality education is often limited. Because of the use of rape as a weapon of war, women fleeing conflict situations are also vulnerable to the spread of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases. Stateless and displaced women world-wide disproportionately suffer from lack of attention to their health needs. However, where refugees are able to be assisted by international agencies, refugee women are often able to make extensive gains in education, health care, and income-generating skills due to assistance from the international community. Lack of resources for internally displaced and stateless populations prevent these women from making the same gains. There is danger in erosion of these gains for refugee women when they repatriate back to post-conflict societies where women’s needs are not prioritized.

By continuing to focus on providing women and girls additional opportunities to access education, both formal and informal, the international community can ensure that this goal can be met. Therefore, Refugees International recommends that the following actions are taken to address the needs of displaced and stateless persons:

All national governments mainstream women’s needs and gender issues in their MDG-based poverty reduction strategies.
Education and curriculum reform to remove gender discrimination should be partnered with the scaling-up of investments by donor countries to secondary and tertiary education for girls.
All governments promote equality for women under the law by guaranteeing basic property and inheritance rights.
All governments take all measures necessary to criminalize rape and redress violence against women.
Governments, UN agencies, and national and international humanitarian organizations, and donor countries provide for the specific needs of female refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and stateless populations, including: psychosocial programming for survivors of rape and violence against women; increased education opportunities in refugee and IDP camps, as well as for host communities; non-traditional vocational training; increased attention to the problem of gender-based violence; comprehensive reproductive healthcare that includes sexual health and access to contraceptives; granting of citizenship rights and property rights to stateless women, so that they can avail of a broad range of government services and assure the future of their families.