It is unfortunate that instead of working towards closing the gender equity gap, the decades of progress thus achieved are being rolled back, with women’s fundamental rights and health under threat.
These reversals are being worsened by COVID-19 and other compounding crises, such as increasing incidences of conflict and the climate emergency. They come at a time when the world was just starting to see decades of hard-earned labour and effort bear fruit, with the number of girls in education increasing, maternal mortality rates falling, and child marriages and deaths decreasing.
Gender gaps are pervasive the world over and closing them requires significant progress on issues as broad-ranging as violence against women, access to contraception, and women’s labour-force participation. Gender inequality cuts across all sectors, interlinks with other areas of development, and requires solutions from many actors including those in government, corporations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Women and girls represent half of the world’s population, yet their full potential remains largely untapped. They are too often subject to sexual or physical abuse and exploitation, threatened with harmful traditions and practices, denied the right to education and healthcare, discriminated against in employment, and often deterred from participating in political processes, including voting.
Globally, 143 countries legally guarantee equality between men and women. But in practice, gender inequalities subsist in most parts of the world, especially in Africa, and in many cases are being rolled even further back.
No less than 53 of the 251 SDGs’ indicators make direct reference to gender equality, women and girls. Yet women are not given seats at decision-making tables commensurate with their numbers.
The pervasive leadership gap between women and men can only be closed by addressing systemic barriers to women’s advancement. This is especially important as emerging evidence from the pandemic shows that female-led countries have generally fared better in terms of outcomes during COVID-19 through instilling proactive and coordinated policy responses. For future pandemics, women must not only have equal participation in COVID-19 response and recovery efforts, but also equal decision-making power and leadership opportunities, and policies and programmes must also include a gender lens.
Attitudes towards gender roles deteriorated further amid COVID-19 as outdated social norms and stereotypes continue to hold society back from reaching gender equality. Cost of programmes aimed at providing health services to women, girls and adolescents have been cut due to competing priorities and demands amid the pandemic. Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are too often made ‘optional’ rather than essential services, leading to increases in deaths of and harm to women.
“Health is a right, not a privilege. It requires political will and leadership. But women need to have an equal say in the health systems that impact their health and well-being Women have been disproportionately hit by unemployment yet no remedial measures have been applied by most African countries including Nigeria.
It therefore the opinion of News Echo that more progress should be made on women’s empowerment and health, war should also be waged on the fundamental rights of women and girls.
Helen Clark, PMNCH Board Chair, and former Prime Minister of New Zealand, said. “We need urgent and transformative action to reverse these worrying trends. Women must have both seats and voice at decision-making tables. To achieve the vision of leaving no one behind in development, societies must move beyond lip service to implementation of rights-based and gender sensitive approaches to achieving equality, resilience, and sustainability.”
Summit participants focused on solutions to increase women’s representation and participation in leadership roles and reduce gender gaps across every aspect of society, everywhere. Championing multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral partnerships are key to these challenges, and the only way forward to address a problem as pervasive as gender equality.
Certainly, people, communities and economies will thrive when we raise up our women and girls; when we acknowledge the contributions of women; when we pay women fairly for the work that they do; when we show the value and inherent necessity of women for society,” said H.E. Kersti Kaljulaid, Former President of Estonia, the UN Secretary-General’s Global Advocate for Every Woman Every Child.
