Why does women’s day still matter?
Women's Rights in Review: 25 years after Beijing is a report that calls for greater parity and justice and looks at how the landmark gender equality plan, the Beijing Platform for Action, is being implemented all over the world. The report finds faltering progress and notes that hard-won advances are being reversed by rampant inequality, climate change, conflict and exclusionary politics in the present world. The review highlights a lack of effective action to boost women's representation in key decision-making platforms and warns that the Platform will never be realised if all women and girls are not acknowledged and prioritised. This in turn speaks of inclusion, in a more fulfilling way so as not to keep certain sections of women outside the ambit of the discourse.
According to the Review, over the past 20 years, progress on women's access to paid work has ground to a halt as the women continue to shoulder the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work – less than two thirds between the ages of 25-54 are in the labour force. As of the present times, nearly one-in-five women have faced violence from an intimate partner in the past years, fueled by new technology, such as through cyber-harassment, for which policy solutions are largely absent. Some 32 million girls are still not in school; men still control three-quarters of parliamentary seats; and women are largely excluded from peace processes.
All these things basically make it clear that International Women's Day is as relevant in 2020 as it has been some hundred years back.
Compiled by Law Desk (UN.ORG).
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