Poverty has a woman’s face – radical change is required

How much has changed in the course of a century? 100 years after Clara Zetkin, the pioneering socialist, convinced the world community to declare 8th March as International Women’s Day, we are still shamefully failing some of the most dispossessed and disenfranchised people in our societies: women.

What priorities continue to allow half a million women each year – one every minute – to die from complications in pregnancy and childbirth? For every 100 such deaths, 99 are in the developing world, and - within that - 66 in the Commonwealth. Cutbacks in primary health have meant that poor women’s access to maternal services has become even more limited. Others of our statistics are equally stark: two-thirds of our Commonwealth children out of primary school are girls; and two-thirds of our citizens living on less than one dollar a day are women, as are two-thirds of those in the Commonwealth carrying the HIV virus.

Millions of women and girls do not receive the dividends of development which are enjoyed by men and boys. We can measure this fact when we look at the status of the Millennium Development Goals, and particularly the fifth Goal, on maternal health.

This is why we need to support global voices calling for a radical change to the existing policy frameworks that have failed women.

If we in the Commonwealth call for women’s political involvement, then we must meet our own targets of 30% female representation in parliaments and in local government. Thus far, only 6 of our 54 members achieve this.

And if we truly believe in gender equality, we must ensure that women’s concerns are reflected in every aspect of our societies: in governance, in education, in health, in employment, in food and agricultural security, and more.

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Source:Commonwealth Secretariat