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Measuring the Progress of Women
Adding the strong voice of women to the global debate on tracking the trends and impact of globalisation on development, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) Wednesday released in Geneva the first ' Progress of the World's Women 2000' report.
Diane Elson, an economist who was the overall coordinator of the report, says that it should not only be a tool used by academics, policy makers and researchers, but also the media, women's organisations and movements, civil society, universities and schools to build greater public awareness and education on gender equality and women's empowerment.
Antonella Picchio of the University of Modena in Italy who was on the advisory committee, says that the report is valuable for policy makers and for policy development, because it provides, "vision, analysis and also, the indicators and tools for measuring" the progress of women. It also gives a "holistic structure and vision of economic globalisation," adds Picchio.
Indicators to measure what is happening in terms of gender justice and equality for women are important in order to bring change, says Irma Arriadaga of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Chile, who was also part of the team that produced the report which will be published biennially by UNIFEM . "The development of indicators helps to mainstream the gender issues," Arriadaga adds.
Three gender-sensitive indicators, agreed by the United Nations, are used in the report to measure progress in gender equality -- the ratio of girls’ enrolment in secondary schools to that of boys; female share of paid employment in non-agricultural activities; and women's share of seats in the national parliament.
According to the report, , which also was launched at the UN Special Session to review progress made in implementing commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women, only Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway have "simultaneously achieved gender equality in secondary education with levels of girls' enrolment of about 95 percent, plus at least 30 percent female share of seats in parliament and women's share of paid employment in industry and services of around 50 percent".
Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Germany and South Africa have achieved a level of 30 percent or more of women's share of seats in parliament, and in terms of paid employment, women's share in the late 1990s ranged from a high of 54 percent in Ukraine and Latvia, to a low of five percent in Chad. But the report cautions that "the quality of employment has not increased in the same way and may have even deteriorated in some regions".
One of the most pioneering actions noted by the report is the gender-budget initiatives underway in 18 countries in four regions, which monitor the impact of taxation and expenditure on women and men, and hold governments accountable for their budgets. The governments of South Africa, Sri Lanka, Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis and Fiji have gone a step further to begin to produce pilot tools for a gender-sensitive analysis of public expenditure for use by ministries of finance.
South Africa was one of the first countries in the world to have a women's budget initiative organised by NGOs and parliamentarians.
Looking at the progress of women from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, the report focuses on the economic dimensions of gender equality and women's empowerment in the context of globalisation. Although governments have made many commitments to the progress of women during the UN conferences held in the 1990s, the 'Progress of Women' the report highlights that "there are (still) no targets for improving women's economic position or for reducing the 'feminisation' of poverty.
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Solidarity 2000 starting 17th of June!
MS's big summer event Solidarity 2000 will start very soon now, with a week-long variety of debates and arrangements. The activities range from encounters between young people from Balkan, Africa and Central America to big conferences on the planet's social development and environment.
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