The Millennium Goal 3 : Promote Gender Equality And Empower Women

Women’s struggle for equality will remain relevant in the future as a global issue because every country today still struggles to obtain successful women’s equality. Women today are determined to fight for their rights, rights that are detrimental to the success of society. The struggle for women’s equality is something that has plagued women for centuries. Societies throughout history have been ruled by the iron fist of men, in royal families, the working class, and even within the households. This is something that is most common in todays underdeveloped countries, women are treated as being less than men and therefore do not deserve the same rights. This however is something that women have recognized as a problem and are unwavering in their fight to establish equal rights, whether it be in the United States or even Africa, the cry for equality is the same.

Although the issue of women’s rights has attracted international recognition and support, women still face many inequalities and barriers. Gender-based violence and economic discrimination are problems in many parts of the world.

In many regions of Africa it is still common to practice female genital mutilation and other forms of violence against women in patriarchal societies and through the IAW many women and girls have been saved from such mutilation. Other programs include the provision of contraceptives for women, in particular those in poorer undeveloped nations. Pre and post natal care as well as other programs which foster the development and growth of women in leadership roles and avenues for women to create and develop businesses. These programs and campaigns have fostered the growth of so many women whether tangibly through their successes or intangibly through their improved self confidence and belief to know they can do better and should expect better despite their past. It has empowered women to overcome boundaries decades ago were impenetrable. As with any other process of change, they too have encountered challenges. Some of these are the same obstacles they try to overcome; gender biases and discrimination. Others include effecting a change in the mindset of individuals and in gaining support for their cause in male dominated countries and cultures where it is the status quo for women to 'know their place' and stay at home and 'raise' the kids. They also face economic and political challenges from governments and corporations who still believe the best senior executives should be males as opposed to promotions based on

There is a combined effect of gender and racial discrimination and the advancement of women in achieving equality with their male counterparts. This has attracted much attention during the implementation like the Beijing Platform for Action. There have also been various movements practiced worldwide so as to promote the balance, like the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, that took place in Durban South Africa. Gender discrimination can combine with other forces to limit women and present various obstacles to their development.

As the sole United States Delegate to the 2014 G(irls)20 Summit in Sydney, Australia, I worked with over twenty four other women to write a communique focused on how to economically empower women and girls internationally. The communique was then presented to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Australia and other leaders. For the past eight years, I have also participated as well as staffed numerous Model United Nations Conferences

Our world in this day and age is changing. We are not as unaware as we were before. Whether that on social issues like gay marriage, abortion, or gun control. Or issues such as changes in our communities. We are seeing that our world is rapidly changing, one main issue is rights being denied to people. These rights are usually called unalienable rights, these are the rights we are born with. Women all around the world are being denied these rights. Yes, I know, feminism is the social, economic, and political equality between men and women. But, we will be focusing on women today. Today, women around the world are facing major inequalities, whether that is the wage gap to being allowed new opportunities. We are finally realizing this is a problem. But, it’s not just women in the 1st world who have these problems, its women in 3rd world countries who need feminism the most.

Gender inequality has been a crucial issue throughout the years all around the world for the past few decades. Women are mistreated and often oppressed by patriarchal societies. Women’s rights are often dismissed and it is believed that women are not capable of being independent which has highly affects women population.

The United Nations Millennium Declaration states that the main focus should be on gender equality and empowerment of women in order to fight poverty, hunger and with that, help development that is sustainable. (O’Brien & Williams 2013,212) Taking gender into the account while observing global economy shows that men and women are impacted in various ways considering trade, production and financial flows. (O’Brien & Williams 2013,212)

2) Feminism brought this issue to light. As a result, more and more countries are using various methods to slowly increase the percentage of women. One of the more popular methods is to use a quota. A "quota" is a mandatory or voluntary number or percentage of women needed to be placed or hired. (www.lop.parl.gc.ca) Since the adoption of constitutional quotas, the country of Rwanda has been first in female representation since 2003. Women make up about 48.8% to 63.8% of the representation in their governments lower house. (www.lop.parl.gc.ca) Because of the large amount of representation in office, women have more of their issues brought forward and dealt with. For example, in Latin America, the use of quotas has led to improvements on divorce, domestic violence legislation, and child care. (Smith, 2005)

A successful gender equality coalition would have the following characteristics: a shared vision with explicit gender equality goals and involve civilian organizations like NGOs and women’s organizations. History changing political and social movements begin at the grassroots level. The vision has be that gender equality and women’s empowerment aren’t just cogs in the development but the core of

It is common belief that there is little need to attempt to empower women because the battle for equality has been won. However, while there have been major advances in the status of women, this is not to say that equality has been achieved. For instance, in no country do women on average earn more than men. According to Heather Widdows, “this disparity can be seen in the section of the Human Development Reports that use the Gender Empowerment Measure, which explicitly shows gender inequality. While for the most part this follows the level of development, with high development correlating with a high gender-empowerment measure, there are several anomalies” ( Global Ethics 252). For instance, Japan, Cyprus, Ethiopia, and Singapore are some of the countries with high human development, but less than 30% of all professional and technical workers in

It is pointed out in the Peet-Hardwick article that, the world is an extremely unequal place, even more so than we thought it was. Aside from the equality differences between the countries, there are inequalities between different genders, classes, ethnicities inside the countries. Gender inequality is one of the main concerns for development, and nowadays, new development indexes are being developed related to gender, the HDI is covering gender equality with GDI, which compares “human development achievements between women and men” (HDR report).

This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for gender equality. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible.

This world has seen many great women leaders in politics, business and society, the likes of Angela Merkel of Germany, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Sonia Gandhi of India, to Wangari Maathai of Kenya to name just a few (Lewis 2015). The leadership of these women in their respective fields is seen as an integral part of the universal goals of equality, development and peace of our world and societies. Global policies and programs developed through the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action 1995, and the Millennium Summit 2000 have committed to eliminate gender inequality and discrimination against women so as to promote more women like them into leadership roles. This is vital because it is only when women become part of the decision making process they can further their interests, develop their capabilities and have the freedom of choice to improve their conditions (Mohamed 3). This empowerment of women according to the World Economic forum is the solution to the many world issues we have today.

In the current world, one of the familiar category of discrimination is based on gender. It is known fact from 1965 that, in any field or place women never get appreciated for their work in equality with men. Badawi and Sumaia Mohamed El Zein, authors of the Ahfad journal women and change, has claimed that from many decades the people around the world has spent their effort in inspecting women’s status and their rights to develop their skills and levels to decision making few among there were “ the declaration of the International Women’s Year (1975) by the United Nations, the decades (1967-1985) announced for the advancement of women, the Forward-Looking Strategies for Women of Nairobi Conference (1985) and later the Beijing Platform of Action (1995)” (18). It has been followed as a tradition that women are inferior by manual work, ethical or social, and psychological strength than men. Women have never shared equal rights or wage as men without having to exert extra or twice as the effort put by men. However, in the current environment this is a disputation from the 1966, still there exist the destructive imbalance between men and women.