Source: United Nations General Assembly and Security Council
The Commission on the Status of Women entered its second week today with an interactive dialogue on inclusive development, shared prosperity and decent work. Speakers emphasized the urgency of turning gender equality commitments into concrete, actionable policies to ensure women have equal opportunities to improve their employment prospects and livelihoods.
The Commission’s two-week annual session focuses on accelerating the implementation of the Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 conference on women in Beijing, where world leaders pledged to achieve gender equality and uphold women’s rights. Discussions also focus on contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Women Friendly Tax Administration
Diane Elson, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex, England, said that systemic barriers to women’s enjoyment of decent work include discrimination in hiring, misogyny, sexual harassment, violence in the workplace and lack of investment to reduce and redistribute unpaid work. “Unfortunately, some of these barriers are actually intensifying in some countries, where there are now attempts to wipe from the record the gains that women and ethnic minorities and other minorities have made,” she said. However, there are many things that can be done. While inclusive development policies tend to garner wide support, there are many forms of inclusion that are impoverishing and exploitative. It is therefore important to focus on “rights at work as well as the right to work, and to understand that economic growth does not necessarily create more jobs,” she stressed. To that end, it is critical to improve women friendly tax administration systems for filing taxes. “We need the elimination of tax breaks that do not increase investment and productivity and serve only to reduce tax payments for well off people and businesses,” she said.
Access to Technology Training Key to Empowering Women
Corina Rodriguez, researcher at the National Council of Research and the Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Public Policy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, said that artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalization presents many opportunities to reduce gender disparities but also creates challenges and presents risks. Technology might lead to a displacement of the working population to get cheaper labour, particularly in certain sectors where women are overrepresented, and those perhaps where the qualifications are lower. Technology creates new employment opportunity in design, in goods and services, technological services, logistics, customer care — opportunities that women can seize. “But it depends, of course, on whether they’re able to first access training in these careers,” she said. “Women are under much more time pressure, because in addition to work, they have to very often care for other members of the family,” she said. It is essential to ensure that women do not “fall into the work trap” and take on additional hours without additional pay while also having to balance numerous other responsibilities.
Lekha S. Chakraborty, Professor at National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in New Delhi, India, called on Governments to “move beyond the paradigm” of the gross domestic product (GDP). “The fiscal policy space is shrinking,” she went on to underscore, noting that funds to women’s programmes have been substantially cut in the post-pandemic landscape. However, it still remains true that the “smartest and fastest” way to increase GDP is to have women involved in economic growth through employment and empowerment. “There are challenges with the care economy infrastructure,” she emphasized, spotlighting a sector of the economy where women are overrepresented. In the post-pandemic paradigm “conscious public policy decisions are crucial”, she added. Gender-responsive budgeting should not be confined solely to “what is specifically targeting women”. She discussed the connection between gender bonds and fiscal policy, stating that in countries with high fiscal deficits, internal bond financing could be tied to gender equality outcomes. However, she cautioned against linking bond financing to external funding, as it is subject to external factors, which carry inherent risks. She emphasized that there are innovative approaches to addressing this issue. “Public financial management reforms for climate change are currently under way without being tied to a job guarantee,” she added.
Gender Mainstreaming
Barbara Ky, director of gender at the West African Economic and Monetary Union, discussed how the Union is working to translate gender perspective and gender equality commitments into practical public policies that can be implemented by Governments and thereby enhance women’s employment prospects and livelihoods. The Union has developed guidelines, digital tools and information technology procedures that are carried out by the sectoral ministry in each of the Union’s member country. Public policy is based on goals that will integrate a gender perspective. “This requires mainstreaming the gender perspective and integrating it into every stage of planning, programming, budgeting and implementation,” she said. At the highest level all documents prepared by Government ministries should include a gender-related aspect “so that public policy is truly permeated by an awareness of these issues and gender has to be taken into account from the initiative of the process,” she said. For example, to address the issue of women’s unpaid employment, the hours that women spend bringing water to the household, compared with men, has been assessed. Planning programmes need to be aware of women’s contributions.
Women Spend 4.5 Hours Daily on Unpaid Care Work
Marija Babovic, a professor affiliated with the University of Belgrade, shared her perspective on the sustained negative impact that unpaid work has on women’s employment, income and economic security. These negative impacts are increasing as more women work in unpaid care and in unprotected domestic work. She noted that while in developed countries many women have entered the formal labour market since the 1970s, women and girls still provide more than three fourths of the unpaid care work around the world. For example, women spend 4 hours and 25 minutes each day on these activities while men spend 1 hour and 23 minutes each day on the same type of activities. More than 600 million women are working outside the paid labour force because of their care responsibilities, compared with 41 million men. “Unpaid work lowers women access to the labour market and paid work and is a factor in their higher financial poverty and time poverty,” she said. The paid care economy accounts for 11.5 per cent of the global economy, including jobs in such areas as childcare, disability care, aged care and paid domestic work. However, “across the world, paid care work remains characterized by a lack of rights, benefits or protections, low wages or non-compensation,” she said, adding that some women are subject to physical, mental and even sexual harassment.
The discussion was moderated by Anita Kemi DaSilva-Ibru, founder of the Women at Risk International Foundation (WARIF), a leading non-profit organization that addresses the prevalence of sexual violence in Nigeria and Africa.
The Commission also held a second interactive dialogue this afternoon on poverty eradication, social protection, and social services.
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* The 12th meeting was not covered.
