That’s the title of this terrific post by Patricia Daniel at openDemocracy. Below is a short excerpt:
… The [Commission on the Status of Women, a.k.a. CSW] is a United Nations body, consisting of forty-five members appointed on a four-year term, which reviews the world’s progress towards the elimination of discrimination against women. The fact that this annual event is now in its fifty-first session is sufficient indication that the UN’s goal here has not yet been achieved.
The Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (Cedaw) was adopted by the UN in 1979 and has been ratified by 182 member-states. Countries that have ratified or acceded to the convention are legally bound to put its provisions into practice and to report regularly on implementation, receiving comments from the Cedaw committee on what further national action should be taken.
So what’s going on?
There are multiple sources and statistics to demonstrate the scale of the problems still to be addressed. The United Nations Development Programme annually publishes a Gender and Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) for 175 countries. In Britain, the Equal Opportunities Commission provides annual reports on gender equality.
The World Economic Forum, at its own annual Davos conference in 2007, launched its own gender report based on a new tool that focuses on the relative size of the gender gap rather than levels of women’s empowerment and access. …
Read the entire post here. OpenDemocracy also has a blog specifically dedicated to the CSW: WomenUNlimited.
