Content area
เอกสารฉบับเต็ม
The United Nations issued the following press release:
As the Commission on the Status of Women concluded its general debate today, representatives of United Nations and affiliated agencies urged countries to boost women's access to education, health care, employment and credit, as a way to narrow the gap between men and women's economic opportunities, to increase their pace of socio-economic development and, ultimately, consolidate gains in poverty eradication.
"It is time for the world to make women a priority," said Safiye Cagar, Director of Information, Executive Board and Resource Mobilization Division, United Nations Population Fund, who stressed that "everything possible" must be done to reduce the feminization of poverty and unleash the full potential of half the human race to advance peace, development and human rights. She was among the nearly 55 delegations taking the floor today who discussed action plans to promote women's advancement, or called on Governments to increase emphasis on the gender dimensions of development.
She recalled that, at the 2005 World Summit, world leaders had agreed to key policy actions to advance women's empowerment, including increased investments in universal education to close the gender gap in schools by 2015, and promoting women's rights to own and inherit property and have access to resources such as land, credit and technology. To accelerate action, those leaders had also agreed to increase the representation of women in Government decision-making. Real investment in women could create ripples that brought about waves of positive change, and such change was urgently needed and long overdue, she said, calling on Governments to stand by their commitments.
In the same vein, Evy Messel, Director of the Bureau for Gender Equality of the International Labour Organization (ILO), said decent work was not only about the quantity of jobs. It was also about quality. The struggle for equal labour market access for women was marked by slow progress, and worldwide only 67 women were economically active for every 100 men. Women were more concentrated in less productive jobs, such as the care economy, the agricultural sector and services characterized by substandard terms and conditions of work. That situation was even worse for young women, particularly young educated women.
Gender issues were integrated into ILO's Decent Work Agenda through the four pillars...