Progress or setbacks. Difficult to measure
Reading the studies by institutions and experts on the development of the situation of women since the UN Conference on Women in Beijing, it is difficult to detect any clear trend. At the public level, in both the legislative and employment fields, women’s rights have progressed in nearly all regions of the world and the same is true in the fields of education and political representation. However, at the private level, injustice in its most brutal form, namely physical violence, remains an issue and has even been on the increase. Moreover, there is the further problem of the reliability of the data.
An election campaign billboard of Pakistan’s slain former opposition leader, assassinated 27 December 2007, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008.
© Reporters/AP
The hundred flowers since Beijing
Already by 1995 in Beijing, a great deal of progress was claimed in areas like women’s participation in the political process. On the stage in Beijing at that time stood symbolic figures such as Benazir Bhutto, at the time Prime Minister of Pakistan, who gave a reading from the Koran that combined a defence of Islamic values with a rejection of fundamentalism. Later, then U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton attacked the delegation of conservative representatives from her own country’s Senate. But the final declaration of the meeting was positive, laying down in international legislation principles that countries were bound to respect. These principles included the right of women to decide freely their own sexuality as well as the classification of rape as a crime, or even (in the case of war or other conflict) as an act of genocide for which the warring parties, even if victorious, could one day be held responsible before a court of law. Another obligation was to facilitate the access to credit for women, with a view to improving their independent financial status.
In all, representatives of 184 nations put their signatures to the final document, although around 50 of them added a number of caveats. The Courier, present in Beijing*, raised the question of whether the pledges given would be respected given these reservations from some of the delegates.
Sub-title Despite everything, major progress
In areas such as politics, the economy and education progress has clearly been made since the Beijing declarations and there are several examples to illustrate this. Literacy has increased sharply almost everywhere in the world. Indeed in three developing countries, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Uruguay, literacy among women is now higher than among men. In four other countries – including Cuba – there is now total gender equality. Elsewhere, women fill 58 per cent of the decision-making positions in the Philippines, ahead of Tanzania with 49 per cent. These two are followed by Barbados (with 43 per cent), another ACP country. The United States ranks fourth**.
In the employment sector, the numbers of women in the workforce have increased continuously in most parts of the globe since 1989, falling only in Eastern and Central Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, where it still remains below the global average of 40 per cent***.
The many facets of continuing injustices
All the same, real progress often suffers setbacks. This is the case with a similar increase in recent years in both the rate of paid employment among women and the rate of unemployment among women. Also, in education, two-thirds of the illiterate continue to be women. This can be at least partly explained by the progress in literacy rates among men.
There are only five countries where men and women are represented equally in the ranks of government: Spain, Iceland, Sweden, Austria and Denmark. However, today, a total of 15 countries have gender parity in their parliaments, with Rwanda leading the world and South Africa also ranking highly. Three ACP countries, Botswana, Tanzania and Eritrea, draw a third of their parliamentary law-makers from women.
But the overall picture is far from perfect and, despite the provisions laid down in national and international legislation stating that discrimination or violence against women are crimes that carry an appropriate punishment, those guilty of such violations often continue to escape justice. Sexual slavery, for example, is on the increase, including in European countries.
Today, the ineffectiveness of the justice system, in certain cases, is in itself criminal. Consider this: one woman in four is the victim of serious violence in the home****. Rape by armed men is widespread and has become a national disaster in both the Congo and Darfur. In Mexico, which has ample police and legal means at its disposal, 305 bodies of raped and murdered women have been found and not a single suspect arrested*****.
Which way is the balance tipping?
The data for assessing serious gender imbalance or discrimination lacks precision and the institutions that use this information often regard it as less than accurate. This is even true of the most well-known data: indicators on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); the Gender-related Development Index (GDI); and the UN Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Now, however, a growing number of studies are seeking to develop indicators that reflect the true gender dimension and can measure change with greater accuracy. A study published by the UNDP in 2007, entitled Gender and Indicators – Overview considers that a start should be made by “measuring the difficulty of measuring.” The gender dimension or women’s emancipation, for example, are realities for which it is difficult to set parameters. Equally, a study on women’s poverty should include so-called “time poverty”, to quantify the unremunerated work of women.
Neither is the data supplied by individual countries always reliable and there are situations where studies and data are spoiled due to negligence during the research process. Then again, a result can be more about the mathematics than a real social switch. For example, a reduction in the number of male students at universities in Jamaica and other countries has the automatic effect of boosting the figures for women. But is the result a mere statistic or a true measure of gender change?
* The Courier, Issue 154, November-December 1995.
** UNDP, 2006 report.
*** 2006 report by the UN Commission on the Status of Women on the economic promotion of women).
**** According to the UNDP 2007 report.
***** French movement for family planning.
