Commission on the Status of Women: 'The poison of patriarchy is back'
New York, US (PANA) - As the new session of the Commission on the Status of Women opens, meeting at UN Headquarters in New York from 10 to 21 March, senior United Nations officials on Monday lamented the slow progress in closing gender gaps.
The 69th session of this annual event, organised by the UN to denounce the violence and discrimination suffered by women around the world, coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which set ambitious goals for gender equality.
"We have always known that this will not happen overnight, or even over many years," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the UN General Assembly.
"But three decades later, that promise seems further away than we ever imagined," he acknowledged.
According to General Assembly President Philemon Yang, at the current rate, it will take 137 years to lift all women out of extreme poverty and 68 years to end child marriage.
"These realities are unacceptable and should alarm us all," Yang said at the session's opening ceremony.
The President of the General Assembly, however, welcomed the progress he considered "significant" recorded over the decades, UN News reported.
More countries have laws to promote gender equality, punish violence against women and combat discrimination.
On the political front, Mr Yang noted that while full parity remains elusive, there are now many more women parliamentarians.
In 30 years, their proportion has increased from 11 to 20% worldwide. More girls are also in school than in 1995.
These advances, although positive, are insufficient.
Worse still, according to the UN Secretary-General, "the hard-won progress is being reversed".
He cited in particular the threat to reproductive rights and the abandonment of many initiatives in favour of gender equality around the world.
In Afghanistan, he noted, women have once again been deprived of their basic rights and are now forbidden from making their voices heard in public.
At the same time, the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is normalising misogyny and “revenge porn”.
“Up to 95% of deepfakes online are non-consensual pornographic images and 90% depict women,” he said.
For Mr. Guterres, what is at work is neither more nor less than a counter-revolution.
"The patriarchal poison is back," he said.
A comeback characterised according to the head of the UN by salary disparities, with a 20% gap between men and women, and by the violence suffered by a third of women in the world, particularly in times of conflict, where they are often subjected to systematic sexual abuse, as is currently the case in Haiti and Sudan.
Mr. Guterres recalled that women are still deprived of fundamental rights in many countries, such as the right not to be raped by their husbands, to own property, to obtain citizenship on an equal basis with men or to access credit without having to obtain permission from their husbands.
According to Mr Guterres, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in violence against women and a decline in their participation in the labor market.
The debt crisis, worsening climate disasters, increasing conflicts around the world and the lack of a gender perspective in national legislation are all structural obstacles that hit women harder than men.
The Secretary-General called for the reinvigoration of the Commission on the Status of Women to promote the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.
This is one of the components, he recalled, of the Compact for the Future signed last September by world governments, which committed to helping mobilize $300 million for women's organisations affected by conflict and crisis situations.
“In these perilous times for women’s rights, we must come together around the Beijing Declaration,” Mr. Guterres urged, “to make the promise of rights, equality and empowerment a reality for every woman and girl, everywhere”.
To accelerate these transformations, UN Women, the UN agency for gender equality and the empowerment of women, has undertaken a rigorous review of Member States' reports on the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
On this basis, the agency has identified six priority areas for action, starting with the need to harness technology to advance equality.
"The digital divide is now the frontier of inequality," said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous, who participated in the opening of this 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
Ms. Bahous called for closing the current gap for the 259 million women who still lack access to the internet, in order to achieve equal access to digital skills, digital financial services and job markets.
Furthermore, the Executive Director stressed the need to invest in the economic empowerment of women, nearly one in ten of whom today live in extreme poverty.
She also called for strengthening the enforcement of laws against violence against women and access to services for survivors.
“Investing in violence prevention not only builds safer communities, it also creates the foundations for equality and well-being for all,” Bahous said.
Recalling that three-quarters of parliamentary seats in the world are held by men, the head of UN Women also called for greater parity in political representation.
“Democracies are stronger when women are at the heart of decision-making,” she said.
Similarly, when women have an equal voice in peace processes, peace lasts longer, said Ms. Bahous, recalling that women represent less than 10% of peace negotiators worldwide.
In the face of the climate crisis, she stressed the importance of investing in green jobs for women, in order to create 24 million jobs by 2030, fueling both the global economy and environmental sustainability.
“A new wave of courageous, youth-led activism is rising around the world,” she said enthusiastically.
-0- PANA MA 11March2025
