The most disturbing issues of discrimination against women
Nbsp; YARMUN 2018 THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL EXPERT REPORT Women discrimination problem, gender inequality as one the main modern world law contradictions
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Women’s Rights and International Law.. 2
How discrimination works?. 4
Participation and leadership. 4
Women's economic rights. 5
Peace and conflict 6
Funding for women’s rights organisations. 6
The most disturbing issues of discrimination against women. 7
Gender inequality affects men too. 8
Psychological and emotional pressure. 8
Discrimination as a zero-sum game. 9
Gender equality: harmony of the sexes. 11
References. 12
Women’s Rights and International Law
Women have been fighting for equal rights for generations, for the right to vote, the right to control their bodies and the right to equality in the workplace. And these battles have been hard fought, but it still has a long way to go. Equality in the workplace — women in a range of fields from domestic work to the entertainment industry can tell you — it’s still just a dream.
Over the past 60 years, the international community has made many agreements to promote and defend women’s rights, contributing to the creation of national laws and influencing the social norms that we all live by. But sometimes these agreements are not in themselves a guarantee of positive change and there are many political pressures that threaten to roll back progress. Nevertheless, they provide a powerful framework for action to realise the rights of all women and girls.
In 1945, the signers of the United Nations (U.N.) Charter reaffirmed their faith in “fundamental human rights”[1] and included “the equal rights of men and women” in this category. It was a unique period in history for human rights in general and for women’s rights in particular. The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, created just two years after the Charter was signed, promised international commitment to women’s rights. It convened world conferences to promote strategies for raising women’s status and to develop international treaties on women’s rights. It drafted three such treaties between 1952 and 1962: the Convention on the Political Rights of Women; the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriages; and the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women.
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In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly united the principles of these Conventions in one comprehensive, nonbinding Declaration on the Elimi- nation of Discrimination Against Women. The Declaration was then ex- panded and redrafted as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (“Convention”)[2]. A comprehensive bill of rights for women, the Convention has the potential to provide an im- portant international legal mechanism for enforcing women’s rights in countries that have ratified it.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), agreed in 1979, comprehensively defines gender discrimination and provides the foundation for achieving gender equality in many areas of life. Countries that have ratified the convention are legally bound by its provisions and must regularly report on the measures they take. The binding nature of CEDAW gives women’s movements the right to demand its implementation and legitimises their proposals.
Disappointingly, CEDAW did not include violence against women and girls (VAWG) but the UN has made important moves to remedy this by passing the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women in 1993[3] and the CEDAW committee has made several, authoritative, “general recommendations” on VAWG.
Two decades after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) was adopted in 1995 at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women, it still provides a visionary grounding for international debate on women’s rights. The BPfA called for strong and specific commitments by governments and other
institutions to take action in 12 areas, including health, VAWG, economics, the environment, and decision-making. Progress and challenges on their implementation are discussed each year at CSW.
UN Security Council Resolution 1325, agreed in 2000, recognises women’s role in peace building and the impact of armed conflict on women. It promotes women’s participation and representation at all levels of decision-making, the protection of women and girls, and the integration of a gender perspective in post-conflict processes and UN activities. 1325 and seven later resolutions together make up the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and provide vital support for women’s rights organisations working on the ground.
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In 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by UN members. Encompassing 17 goals on economic, social, and environmental issues, they apply to all countries. Gender equality is promoted through goal 5, which aims to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’ and is mainstreamed into many of the other goals. SDG 5 sets specific objectives on legal frameworks to end discrimination; VAWG; harmful practices such as child marriage and FGM; unpaid care and domestic work; participation and leadership in public life; sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights; and, economic rights.
How discrimination works?
In no country in the world do women enjoy the same rights or opportunities as men. Every day women and girls face discrimination, poverty and violence just because they are female. There are some facts about discrimination in our world.
Violence against women and girls.
Violence against women and girls is a global issue with 1 in 3 women across the world experiencing violence. (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2013)
Statistics show that the abuser is usually someone the woman knows: 38% of all murdered women are killed by their partner. (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2013)[4]
Of all women killed globally in 2012, it is estimated that almost half were killed by a partner or relative compared to less than 6% of men. (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2014[5])
The vast majority of women across the globe have experienced violence on the streets of their cities with 89% of women in Brazil, 86% in Thailand and 79% in India reporting harassment and abuse (Action Aid, 2016). Moreover, only 18 out of 173 countries have specific legislation addressing sexual harassment in public places. (World Bank, 2016[6])
Over 700 million women alive today were married when they were under 18, and of those some 250 million were married before they were 15. (UNICEF, 2014)
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Around 1 in 10 (120 million) girls worldwide have experienced sexual violence at some point in their lives. (UNICEF, 2014)
At least 200 million girls and women alive today living in 30 countries have undergone female genital mutilation. (UNICEF, 2016[7])
A European Union survey showed that 34% of women with a health problem or disability had experienced violence by a partner in their lifetime, compared to 19% per cent of women without a health problem or disability. (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2014[8])
Participation and leadership
Globally, women make up just 23.3% of parliamentarians. (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2017)
In January 2017, there were 10 women serving as Head of State and 9 as Head of Government. (UN Women calculation based on information provided to Permanent Missions to the United Nations)
In June 2016, there were 38 countries in which women make up less than 10% of parliamentarians in single or lower houses, including 4 countries with no women at all in both chambers. (Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women, 2016)
In January 2015, only 17% of government ministers globally were women. (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2015)
In June 2016, only two countries have 50% or more women in parliament in single or lower houses. 46 single or lower houses were composed of more than 30% women, including 14 in Sub-Saharan Africa and 11 in Latin America. Out of these 46 countries, 40 had applied some form of quotas. (Inter-Parliamentary Union and UN Women, 2016[9])
Women's economic rights
Women spend at least twice as much time as men on domestic work, and when all work – paid and unpaid – is considered, women work longer hours than men. (The World's Women 2015[10])
International evidence shows that increasing the share of household income controlled by women changes spending in ways that benefit children. (World Bank, 2012[11])
In 2013, the global employment-to-population ratio was 72% for men and 47% for women. (International Labour Organization, 2014[12])
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Worldwide women are paid less than men, in most countries earning on average 60 - 75% of men’s wages. (World Bank Gender Data Portal, 2015[13])
Women bear disproportionate caring responsibility for children, the elderly and the sick, spending twice to ten times more time a day on unpaid care work than men. (World Bank, 2012)
Women are more likely than men to work in informal employment. In South Asia, over 80% of women in non-agricultural jobs are in informal employment, in sub-Saharan Africa, 74%, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, 54%. (UN Women, 2015)
In a study of 173 countries 155 have at least one legal difference restricting women’s economic opportunities. Of those, 100 have laws that restrict the types of jobs that women can do, and in 18 husbands can prevent their wives from accepting jobs. (World Bank, 2015)
Women farmers control less land than men. Less than 20% of landholders are women. (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011[14])
Bringing women’s wages into line with men’s would add $28 trillion to global GDP. (McKinsey Global Institute, 2017[15])
Peace and conflict
Only 4% of signatories in 31 major peace processes between 1992 and 2011 were women: 2.4% of chief mediators, 3.7% of witnesses and 9% of negotiators were women. (UN Women, 2011)
7.4% of countries have had female heads of states over the last 50 years. (World Economic Forum, 2013)
Out of 585 peace agreements from 1990 to 2010, only 92 contained any reference to women (International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 2010[16])
When women are involved the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years is increased by 20 per cent, and 15 years by 35 per cent. (Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, and Securing the Peace: A Global Study on Implementation of Security Council resolution 1325, 2015)
In 2015, 90 per cent of police personnel and 97 per cent of military peacekeepers were men. (UN Security Council, 2015)
Data from 40 countries shows a positive correlation between the proportion of female police and reporting rates of sexual assault. (UN Women, 2012)
Only two per cent of aid to conflict-affected states in 2012 and 2013 targeted gender equality, and only $130 million out of almost $32 billion of total aid went to women’s equality organisations. (Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, and Securing the Peace: A Global Study on Implementation of Security Council resolution 1325, 2015)
Funding for women’s rights organisations
A global survey of 1,119 women’s rights organisation from over 140 countries showed that only 1 in 10 received funding from bilateral donors, national governments and international non-government organisations. Meanwhile only 6.9% received funding from UN Women. (AWID, 2011[17])
The lives of many women, however, represent a sharp contrast from the equal status with men that the Convention has granted them. While the Convention is the most comprehensive treaty ever developed on the rights of women, it has several shortcomings. It fails to specifically delineate women’s rights in important areas; its enforcement mechanisms are among the weakest in international human rights treaties; and reservations entered by many states make it even less effective. Moreover, the human rights community traditionally has relied on a narrow definition of human rights, which has blinded its members to the particular ways in which women’s rights are violated.
The most disturbing issues of discrimination against women
Nowadays there are still many difficult problems of discrimination against women’s rights and the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) every month publishes the most disturbing issues.
• 6/27/2018 «Saudi Arabia must immediately free women human rights defenders held in crackdown» - say UN experts.
• 6/22/2018 UN experts to US: “Release migrant children from detention and stop using them to deter irregular migration”.
• 6/20/2018 «New laws needed urgently to tackle online violence against women and girls»- says UN rights expert
• 5/24/2018 UN experts call on India to protect journalist Rana Ayyub from online hate campaign
• 5/16/2018 «Leave no LGBT person behind»
• 4/27/2018 Canada: UN expert urges new measures to target gender-based violence, especially against indigenous women
• 3/26/2018 Brazil: UN experts alarmed by killing of Rio human rights defender who decried military intervention
• 3/21/2018 “Confronting the Two Faces of Racism: Resurgent Hate and Structural Discrimination”
• 3/19/2018 UN experts alarmed by reports of human rights defenders beaten in Iran jail
• 3/06/2018 #MeToo: “A transformative moment, liberating and empowering”
• 12/20/2017 The Bahamas: UN Special Rapporteur calls for fresh steps to tackle violence against women
• 11/30/2017 Libya must end “outrageous” auctions of enslaved people, UN experts insist
• 10/30/2017 Puerto Rico: Human rights concerns mount in absence of adequate emergency response
• 10/6/2017 UN must prioritise women’s protection amid States’ inadequate action, urges Special Rapporteur
• 7/18/2017 UN experts urge Bahrain to investigate reports of torture and ill-treatment of rights defender Ebtisam Alsaeg
• 6/12/2017 States must provide shelters as “survival tool” for women victims of violence - UN expert
• 5/19/2017 Mexico: UN rights experts strongly condemn killing of human rights defender and call for effective measures to tackle impunity
• 5/16/2017 Embrace diversity and protect trans and gender diverse children and adolescents
• 5/9/2017 UN experts call on Nigeria to ensure release of all those still under Boko Haram captivity
• 4/28/2017 Honduras needs progressive reform of abortion law to advance women’s human rights, say UN experts
• 4/12/2017 UN experts mark third anniversary of Nigeria kidnapping with new plea for “forgotten” Chibok girls
• 3/30/2017 UN experts urge UAE to quash the death sentence against a woman migrant domestic worker
• 3/3/2017 Australia places violence against women high on the agenda but indigenous women left behind, says UN expert
• 1/25/2017 Dominican Republic: UN rights experts urge legislators to back President Medina’s stand on abortion[18]
We are at a global turning point for women's rights. In the past three decades, women’s rights have been enshrined through declarations, policies and global frameworks. Yet now more than ever, women’s rights are at threat from rising fundamentalisms, financial crisis, political turmoil and backlash against feminism. The power dynamics that drive inequality between women and men remain
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