The head of the U.N. agency promoting equality for women is lamenting that a girl born today will be an 81-year-old grandmother before she has the same chance as a man to be CEO of a company \u2014 and she will have to wait until she’s 50-years-old to have an equal chance to lead a country.<\/p>\n
Twenty years after 189 countries adopted a blueprint to achieve equality for women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said that not a single country has reached gender parity and equality.<\/p>\n
The executive director of UN Women spoke ahead of International Women’s Day on Friday and next week’s meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women. The commission will review the 150-page platform for action to achieve equality that was adopted at the groundbreaking U.N. women’s conference in Beijing in 1995.<\/p>\n
Although there has been progress since Beijing, especially in women’s health and girls’ education, Mlambo-Ngcuka said, there are fewer than 20 female heads of state and government, and the number of women lawmakers has increased from 11 percent to just 22 percent in the last two decades.<\/p>\n
“We just don’t have critical mass to say that post-Beijing women have reached a tipping point in their representation,” she said.<\/p>\n
The Beijing platform called for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender gap in 12 critical areas including health, education, employment, political participation and human rights. For the first time, it recognized that women have the right to control their own sexuality without coercion, and reaffirmed their right to decide whether and when to have children.<\/p>\n
Mlambo-Ngcuka said UN Women is looking for 10 world leaders, 10 CEOs and 10 universities to “break the mode” and become champions of the agency’s “He for She” campaign, which calls on the world’s male leaders, fathers, sons, husbands and brothers to stand up and support equality for women in all areas of life.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The head of the U.N. agency promoting equality for women is lamenting that a girl born today will be an 81-year-old grandmother before she has the same chance as a man to be CEO of a company \u2014 and she … Continue reading