Gender+Equality

=Gender Equality=

Last modified : 13th April 2009

Gender equality is the aim of achieving equality of both genders. Gender inequality, also known as gender bias or gender disparity, is one of the most prevalent discrimination in the world. Due to the deep-seated traditional stereotypes held by many people, capable women have difficulties to unleash their potential. The main unfairness against women includes deprived rights of education, labor and active political participation. Other discriminations take account of gender-biased violence, and reproductive health inequities such as lacking rights of save and legal abortion. The United Nations Population funds claims that gender equality is "first and foremost, a human right” (UNFPA, 2006) Maintaining gender equality is one goal of United Nations Millennium Project to end global poverty by 2015. “Societies where women are not afforded equal rights as men can never achieve development in a sustainable manner” (End Poverty 2015, 2008) Indeed, gender equality is a integral to promote long term economic prosperity. 

First of all, women who work outside home on average, far less than men and this situation is more notable in less developed countries. **(Source 1) ** Even though the number of women workforce has increased, the working conditions have hardly seen any improvements. As the women have to take over majority of the housework responsibility, unpaid household chores occupies the most of their time. In addition, they are often characterized to be having part-time, seasonal informal jobs and thus are deficient in insurance and credits. Some highly educated women tend to seize more advanced position, yet still most of females remain in low-status and less-valued jobs. They often encounter great obstacles to elevate their status. However, as United Nations once reported, women disempowerment is one of the major factors that cripple nation's desirable development.(UN, 2006) In particular, eradicating gender impartiality is indispensible to alleviate poverty pervasive in LEDCs and to spur economic development in the countries. Thus, it is vital to increase women involvement in local, national, and global affairs. The government-backed legislatives and social policies provided by the international organizations will be the key to increase the support of women workforce. They should invest in several programs that will bring women labor as much as possible, ensure thier condition, and guarantee satisfactory and unbiased payment.  Women usually have the liability to shape their lives and those of their family, yet they often lack rights to be heard, even in their own residences. One statistics claim that only one third of women participate equally when there is main household discussions. In political fields, women tend to be strong advocates of children and families as well as other peacekeeping issues, but are usually under-represented in governments and politics. The number of women in national parliaments continues to increase, but no country in the world has yet reached gender parity. **(Source 2) **  On a local level, they can give immediate impact on community well-being as well as the promotion of family care. In larger scope, they are able to exert influence on bringing several global issues to agenda to be solved in a peaceful way. Raising female position will enhance fruitful development of culture as well. In order to encourage women’s active political participation, legislation and quotas are required in addition to the provision of equal access to education. ** __(Source 1)__ ** __Source from: United Nations, 2005. The Millennium Development Goals Report, 2005,__ []  **Description **: As seen from the graphs, more than half of regularly paid jobs are dominated by men. Actually, the percentage that male workers take up is almost twice as greater than the one of females. In addition, the majority of employers worldwide are men. While almost four fifth of employers are men, only the reminder – one fifth – of those are women. This is a severe disparity. Male-dominated societies have inclination to marginalize women workforce. This should be prevented beforehand, and that is why a number of organizations including United Nations are endeavoring to broaden women influence on the world. __Source from: United Nations Statistics Division, “World and regional trends”, Millennium Indicator Database, 2005,__ [|http://millenniumindicators.un.org] ** **Description **: From 1990 to 2005, there has been some increase in women parliamentary representations. Regardless of countries which are developed or undeveloped, the increases are all shown to some extent. However, the augment is not significant enough, and the representative percentage is still too far from equity with males. For example, any developing countries have reached 20% of political participation in parliaments. Even in commonwealth states, which are considered to be economically developed ones, the percentage is around 20% which is not too different from developing countries. There is significant gap between men and women in terms of political activity. It will take really long time for female’s participation to reach even half of the ones of males. <span style="font-size: 8.8pt; font-family: Georgia,serif;">
 * __(Source 2)__ ** **<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Gender Inequality in National Parliaments **<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left; display: block;"> **<span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Georgia,serif; text-align: left; display: block;">Share of women in single or lower houses of parliament, 1990 - 2005

The UNICEF news on March 2007 [] On 8 March, the International Women’s day, many dedicated girls who came from Botswana, Jordan, Kenya, Guatemala, Malawi, and Mali gathered at the United Nations headquarters to discuss the ways to improve the lives of marginalized women in developing countries. Primarily due to poverty, social traditions and geographical location, girls are to be considered not deserve to have equal access to education. On UN panel, the girls from those developing countries mentioned above confessed their personal experiences about the difficulty they have encountered to get to speak out in a major panel. Most of them said they are often deprived from right to involve in important political affairs. They advocated the enlargement of programs designated to increase the power of women, especially girls, to realize their rights.
 * What is being done by UN**
 * 12 April 2009 **

I was delighted to hear the ongoing efforts to achieve gender equity in terms of women’s influence in big agendas and panels. It was impressive that women from developing countries, where there would definitely be greater hardship to stand up to be able to speak compared to developed countries, came to the United Nations conference to have a discussion to seek solutions to enhance their current status in society. The conception of equality should be widely spread to the general public so that the issue can be solved more easily with sthe harp awareness. Thus, it is good news that women in developing countries are very aware of the present situation of women and keen to cut out the remnants of male-dominated tradition. After reading this journal, some thoughts came across my mind. One thing is that it would be necessary to specify particular area such as increasing political rights, rather than just having a broad range of “gender equality.” With in that terms, lots of areas can be considered. If having MUN discussions, delegates will face lots of difficulties with too extensive topic. Narrowing down into some major areas and clarifying the objective is something I will have to work on if this topic would be chosen for the debate.

__Role of Education – Nigeria Case study []__ Female education embraces areas of primary, secondary, tertiary, vocational, health education for girls. Due to its strong connection of mitigation of poverty, teaching has been considered as a one of the best tool for countries undergoing development. The news delivers successful implementation of educational program in Northern Nigeria. It talks about the accomplishment of the literacy campaign which designed to close the education gender gap existing in that nation. The ultimate goal of the project is to aid Nigeria to have significant progress towards the Millennium Development Goals regarding universal education and eliminating gender inequalities in education. Even two years before the program was put into practice, there had been no such adult literacy class existing. With the opportunity to learn how to read and write, a lot of women became more potent in their community. For the first time, village women were allowed to participate in the same forum as men. In addition, due to persistent efforts, work during school hours has been banned for girls in the village so that they can more concentrate on studying.
 * 11 April 2009 **

This news was useful as I could see the importance of education. Although the way the program is actually being done is not clarified specifically, I could recognize the results after adopting well-devised measures to improve the situation. This article made me decide to concentrate on the states in developing countries. This Nigeria case study taught me that the significance of gender equality is more required in LEDCs as discrimination against females is one of the principal tackling factors to a fine economic development of one nation. In addition, gender inequality is in fact more pervasive compared to the situation in many of developed nations. Considering the benefits delivered as well as lasting consequences after applying desirable policies and measures suggested by delegates from various nations, the MUN confenrence, if this topic were chosen to be a debating issue, would be a very motivating and interesting. Since empowering women is something that is advantageous for most of coutries, many delegates will be willing to be involved with this matter, which will elicit more lively discussion.

This article rendered me to carry out further research on the ‘United Nations Millennium Development Project.’ I knew briefly or heard about it, yet have not delved into it. I did some background reserach on it to get an idea how UN tried to deal with the issue and what results produced. The following file is fact sheet that includes context of what has been done, what worked, what needs improvemnets and so on.

UN Millennium Project Fact Sheet On Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women