Talking gender

AFTER two weeks of negotiations, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) released an outcome document that pushes forward even more strongly the rights of women and girls. The document also promises to put women and girls front and center in the next global development agenda, after the world finishes appraising the success (or failure) of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which will come up for review next year.

While setting out remarkable targets to eradicate poverty, and improve access to education, health and development priorities, it had been pointed out that “gender” was the missing ingredient in an otherwise admirable list of priorities.

But as the world has learned, by turning a “gender blind” eye to development issues, the MDGs were perhaps doomed to fail. Without addressing the issue of gender fairness, gender justice and prioritization of resources, and without the participation or even recognition of the role of women and girls, the MDGs were left with a huge gaping hole at the heart.

One of the MDGs, for instance, called for the reduction of maternal mortality rates, as well as of infant and child mortality rates. But women die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth due to a number of reasons, among them their lack of access to safe assisted births, health facilities and even a lack of contraceptive choices. Without addressing the uneven status of men and women in society, goals aimed at reducing maternal mortality are merely addressing the tail-end of a problem that begins almost from the moment a girl is born into an unfair world.

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GOING into the negotiations, the biggest fear of many participants was that the gains achieved in previous years would be undermined by the “usual suspects” and their newly-found allies among conservative governments.

But overall, says a report in the British broadsheet The Guardian, much of the resulting agreement is calling for the acceleration of progress toward achieving the MDGs and “confirming the need for a stand-alone goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment.”

Certainly, there were attempts to water down or soften language on gender equality and rep roductive rights, with some delegations seemingly allergic to such terms as “diversity” or “forms of families.”

But as The Guardian observes: “There is general agreement that this year’s CSW did produce a strong outcome,” with the document making specific references to uphold women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights; an agreement to eliminate all harmful practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation. “There were also explicit references made to a woman’s right to access abortion services and the development of sex education programs for young people,” the report said. “And the there was strong language around violence against women and girls.”

Stretching to the early hours of the morning, the negotiations were neither easy nor conflict-free. Now it’s up to governments—and women—to make sure these words, fought over line by line, thought by thought, are made flesh and real and truly transformative. –Rina Jimenez-David, Philippine Daily Inquire

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