Poverty has a woman’s face – radical change is required
4 Mar 2011
Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma's statement for International Women's Day 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 w 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.
The Commonwealth has long put women high on its agenda. That is where they will be again in June 2010 in Bridgetown, Barbados, when our Women’s Affairs Ministers will be joined by senior officials, experts and women’s activists. The theme of that meeting is that women are crucial and pivotal agents of transformation in economic recovery.
For the first time, Finance Ministers and Women’s Affairs Ministers will sit together at the same table, and ask themselves how our public finances can be put to this end. The meeting will also see the launch of a new project which will ask why Ministers of Women’s Affairs have limited influence in cabinet decision-making, and which will share the best practice of national strategies which can place women at the centre of national life.
With its own work among its 54 member governments to empower women, the Commonwealth is fully committed. The Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality, 2005-2015, is well under way, with programmes on Gender and Democracy; Gender and Human Rights; Gender and Economic Empowerment; and Gender and HIV/AIDS. We constantly ask ourselves how we can do better; and we join hands with activists across the globe in renewing our Commonwealth determination, individually and collectively, to count women in.
Source:Commonwealth Secretariat
