OPENING / KEYNOTE SPEECH (10’min)
Your Excellency President of the European Parliament Tajani,
Your Excellency Commissioner Jourova,
Your Excellency Chair of the FEMM Committee, Ms. Blinkevičiūtė (pronounce Blinkewitschute)
Your Excellency Secretary-General Jean,
Dear Ms. Shiva,
Dear Members of the European Parliament and Members of National Parliaments,
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
It’s a great pleasure for me to be here today to celebrate International Women’s Day with you.UN Women very much appreciates the opportunity to be at this event which is so closely aligned with other International Women’s Day celebrations that take place today globally under the topic of “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”. We also want to thank the Parliament for inviting Parliamentarians from all over the world to this crucial debate on women’s economic empowerment.
Every year, we’re reminded of how much progress we’ve made since nationalwomen’s day was first celebrated in New York City in 1909to honor the women striking for better work conditions and since International Women’s Daywas first celebrated in 1911 by over a million peoplein Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.
At its core, International Women’s Dayhas beenan occasion for celebration, but also an occasion to make political demands for rights like: the right to vote, to be elected, to have decent work, to receiveequal payor the simply to live life with dignity.
And we are here today because of the tireless struggles of generations of women, and also, the men who’ve supported the march to equality. More than a century later, many of the demands made by them have been realized and thanks to them, some of you are here today as members of parliament. But, while we celebrate the hard-won achievements and our tireless efforts to hold onto them, we must also recognize the challenges we continue to face in addressing persistent inequality, injustice and insecurity.
Some of the most persistent gender inequalities manifest themselves in economic life. Women perform a staggering 52% of total work in the world. But even though, women work more hours than men, they have little to show for it in terms of income and ownership of assets. There is also a significant gender gap in social protection coverage and women are more likely to live in poverty during old age.
So, it’s not surprising that this year, the theme for International Women’s Day focuses on “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”, which is also the theme of the upcoming 61stsession of the Commission on the Status of Women, which is due to kick off in New York next week.
So, what needs to be done?
In 2015, UN Member States adopted the Sustainable Development Goals.Thesegoalsgive us specific targets that we need to achieve by 2030, and they provide us with guidance on what we need to do to make sure that women achieve substantive equalityin economic, social and political life. We also have the guiding framework of the draft agreed conclusions of the CSW, bolstered by thereport called “Leave No-one Behind” published by the UN Secretary General’sHigh Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment. This Panel, the first of its kind, was established by the UN Secretary-General to provide thought leadership and mobilize concrete actions aimed at closing economic gender gaps that persist around the world. The High-Level Panel had its inaugural meeting during the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in March 2016. Since then, there have been a series of regional consultative meetings, including a technical consultation here in Brussels in December together with the European Commission.
The Panel’s first report provides recommendations for key actions that can be taken by governments, the private sector, the UN system and other stakeholders, as well as policy directives needed to achieve the new targets and indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals.
More precisely, the report of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowermentidentifies “seven drivers” for women’s economic empowerment:
- Tackling adverse norms and promoting positive role models
- Ensuring legal protection and reforming discriminatory laws and regulations
- Recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid work and care work
- Building digital, financial and property assets
- Changing business culture and practices
- Improving public sector practices in employment and procurement
- Strengthening visibility, collective voice and representation
The High Level Panel will publish a Second Report during the upcoming session of the CSW. Among the many consultations that were carried out for the first and second reports, MACROECONOMIC POLICY was identified as another key driver. Globally, there is a need for gender-responsive fiscal policies to ensure gender-responsive public services. UN Women is committed to continue its work on Gender Responsive Budgets and expand this work to support transformative fiscal policy frameworks that address gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is work that we hope to undertake in partnership with others.
So, there is in fact some consensus that has been built and continues to be built on what needs to be done.
As you most certainly know, the SDGs apply to all countries across the world and I think we can all agree that Women’s Economic Empowermentis not only unfinished business in developing countries but across many areas of the world, including the European Union. So if we agree on what needs to be done and who needs to do it, we now need to tackle the “how” – I hope that this will form the basis of our discussions through this workshop – how to internalize the SDGs, how to form more effective partnerships, and how to accelerate the change we want to achieve.
I am here with you today representing UN Women, particularly the Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, a region of great geopolitical significance where UN Women’s engagement is critical to tackle women’s economic dis-empowerment, high work burden and unemployment rates for women, exacerbated by slow economic recovery and entrenchment of gender stereotypes.
UN Women’smandate is universalandwe work on Women’s Economic Empowerment in many ways, and with many partners within and outside the UN system, including with the European Union. Some of the work we do takes the form of advocacy on various economic policies. Some of it takes the form of coordination, particularly within the UN System. And of course, we also work at the programmatic level in many countries around the world, often with governments, CSOs and other international or regional institutions as our partners. Our work at the programmatic level has been multifaceted.
Target 5.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals calls on us all to “eliminate discrimination against all women and girls everywhere” and thus acknowledges that legal frameworks are a key tool to advance gender equality. UN Women works on changes in legislation to level the playing field for women’s economic life. Werecently launched an initiativecalled the “Road Map for Substantive Equality: 2030”.Its purpose is to leverage global partnerships in order to repeal or amend existing discriminatory laws and not only adopt, but also implement legal reforms to advance gender equality and women’s human rights. Today, more than 150 countries still have laws that discriminate against women, including family laws, penal codes and nationality laws, as well as laws relating to inheritance, ownership and control over land and other resources. By 2030, no country should have legislation that discriminates against women.
UN Women supports activities aimed at helping women to participate in economic life on the same level and with the same rights as men, especially the poorest and most economically vulnerable women. Our programmes range from enhancingwomen’s livelihoods through helping them to build value chains to training women forentrepreneurship. We give support towomen’s cooperatives and help women gain access to creditand markets through gender–responsive procurement policies, green technologies and sustainable agriculture technologies.
Another key area of focus for us is the Care Economy. Sustainable Development Goal 5 sets as one of its targets to “Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family (SDG 5.4). We know that the European Union is currently working on a proposal for better work-lifebalance and we can only underline the urgency of this. We need to foster positive mindsets and practical arrangements around workplaces that build and support equality for women and we need to end the work culture that penalizes women and men for taking time off for family or care responsibilities. But we need to do more than practical arrangements in the workplace and change the work culture. The CSW61 draft agreed conclusions also point to the need to build a social infrastructure of care, since women’s unpaid work burden is the greatest impediment to their participation in labor markets on an equal footing with men.
Our work is cut out for us, but we must start now to work in new ways for a better tomorrow. As our Executive Director says: “In this complexity there are simple, big changes that must be made: for men to parent, for women to participate and for girls to be free to grow up equal to boys. Adjustments must happen on all sides if we are to increase the number of people able to engage in decent work, to keep this pool inclusive, and to realize the benefits that will come to all from the equal world envisaged in our Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.”
Members of Parliament have a crucial role to play to make the ambitious Sustainable Development Agenda a reality.
I very much look forward to our discussions throughout this event.
Thank you.
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