Half Of Humankind
I hate to go on and on repeating the old saying that women are not a “special interest group” but are half of humankind. The results of the UN-organized four World Conferences on Women, Equality, Development and Peace, from 1976-1995 had confirmed this is the approach we should take. I am disappointed that in recent discussions with delegates and non-governmental organization representatives who attended this year’s Commission on the Status of Women on the subject of new proposal for strengthening gender equality architecture. They see gender equality and advancement of women as “specific group” issue. As part of UN reform, delegates proposed a set-up of a “special entity” in the UN Secretariat for promotion of action on gender equality and advancement of women. For me, this kind of proposal is the equivalent to creating of a larger “ghetto” to deal with crossed-cutting issue which should be “mainstreamed and integrated” with other political, economic and social development activities. Taking this “Special Group” approach is against the Beijing Platform for Action that was approved by the General Assembly in 1995. Just to get more funds to support gender-specific bureaucratic entity is short- sighted and waste of limited financial resource in the long run. Recent UN evaluation study of “national machinery” for women’s advancement found that “special unit” set up for women’s advancement in government bureaucratic structure is not an effective way to achieve the goal of gender equality. The UN should take lessons from these past mistakes and decentralize the gender equality issues instead of centralized them. Coordination of varies gender structures in the UN system can be done at an already-existed Executive Board for Coordination and its High-level Committee on Programme and Management. A lot of work also need to be done through Human Resource Action Plan of the UN Secretariat to increase the number of women through recruitment and promotion of women at senior political and administrative level to achieve the 50/50 target, set up over a decade ago. For years now, there has been no achievement beyond 36/37 per cent for
women in the Professional and higher categories of staff in the UN. Secretariat. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said at this year March 8 Commemoration of International Women’s Day that he was convinced that in women, the world has at its disposal the most significant, and yet largely untapped potential for development and peace. With the help of Deputy-Secretary General Asha-Rose Migiro, he could provide leadership to take immediate action, speed up the drive for “gender parity” in the UN, and for “mainstreaming gender equality” in activities of organs and bodies of the United Nations System.
Buying and Selling Sex in 2008
The Governor Spitzer of NY recent resignation from office because of “getting caught in buying sex from a prostitute” has brought the issue of “buying and selling sex” to a global discussion again. This time, there is a bit of a difference, though. Discussions in Internet and other media are more balanced — from the buyer and seller’s perspectives. Stephen Dubner, author of the best selling book “Freakonomics” gave us a call girl’s view of the Spittzer Affair. He, himself, is interested in the economics of prostitution. I recommend that he should also make a study on the economics of “traditional” marriages, which I consider to be another form of “prostitution” (bride price, groom price, dowry system, marriage go-between price etc). If there is an exchange of money, land, cattle, or any other material goods for sex, I call it “prostitution”. I agree with George Carlin’s comment that sex is the only thing that is legal to give but illegal to sell and we should go to the root of the problem instead of swimming on the surface. If we legalize “marriage”, we should also legalize “prostitution” because both are dealing with the buying and selling of sex. And also why should “virtue” be given to what we buy or sell? Sweden and New Zealand are two countries that are ahead in reforming laws to decriminalize prostitution. The law should also protect the rights of sex-workers and wives in traditional marriage, provide health care for prevention and cure of sexually transmitted diseases, make it a legal offense for pimps that profit from sex-industries, and punish parents that sell children to the “traditional” marriage markets. Criminalization of prostitution has not proved successful in stopping prostitution. The focus should be on prohibition of exploiting girl and boy children in sex-trade industry, prostitution or “traditional” marriage arrangement.
Filed under Gender Issues | Comment (0)Sufficient Financing For Gender Equality
The importance of sufficient financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment cannot be overstated. During the last ten years, 50 countries have launched the gender-responsive budgeting. But changes in budget policies and allocation are slow, with very little measurable impact. This week, representatives of member governments of the United Nations come together in New York to participate in the 52nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The discussions focus on
financing for gender equality and empowerment of women. They identified that a big obstacle to achieving gender-targeted financing is the lack of a political will by political leaders, the majority of which are men. “Men just turn off when they hear the term gender equality believing it meant women fighting only for their representation not equally representation of both men and women” says one delegate. Most politicians are not gender-sensitive; they sometimes claimed that they could not include gender in their projects because women and men must be treated equally and that gender inequality is not an obstacle to development. The false assumption that men and women act the same way as economic agent and benefit equally from the provision of public goods has produced the “neutral” character of Government budget. This false belief is another obstacle to gender-sensitive budgeting. Without being able to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights, and without access to adequate sexual and reproductive health services, women stand little chance of having the same opportunities as the men. Investment in reproductive health is key to a sustainable social and economic development, and to the protection and promotion of human rights. What gender-sensitive financing really aimed at are the reform of a country’s public sector finance and the fairer distribution of wealth. It is important, therefore, for governments to examine all policies from tax laws to general budgets through a “gender –lens” in order to ensure that the gender perspective is mainstreamed across budget procedure, law drafting and other major project from the very beginning. This will require the Ministry of Finance of each country to develop a national system of “gender-budgeting” in order to establish coherence between economic and social policies to achieve a long-term objective of gender equality, democracy, and sustainable development.