UN Secretary-General warns, Gender equality will take 300 years

• Progress towards gender equality is “disappearing before our eyes”.
• UN Women is the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• High rates of maternal mortality, girls being forced into early marriage.

Progress towards gender equality is “disappearing before our eyes,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said Monday at the Commission on the Status of Women.

Speaking to a key UN women’s rights group ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, Guterres stated that gender equality is “300 years away,” according to the most recent UN Women estimates. UN Women is the UN organisation dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

High rates of maternal mortality, girls being forced into early marriage, and girls being kidnapped and assaulted for attending school were cited by Guterres as evidence that the goal of gender equality “is growing more distant.”

Guterres did not mention Iran in his speech, despite the fact that the country was kicked off the 45-member commission in December following protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s so-called “morality police.”

“Women’s rights are being abused, threatened, and violated around the world,” Guterres said, naming a few countries in particular, including Afghanistan, where he said “women and girls have been erased from public life.”

On Monday, young Afghan women gathered outside Kabul University to protest the ruling Taliban’s ban on female education, which a new UN report claims is a “crime against humanity.”

The report, which was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday, also noted an increase in forced and child marriages, a ban on women entering other public spaces such as parks and gyms, and other restrictions limiting women’s ability to work and travel independently in Afghanistan.

According to Guterres, the deputy secretary-general and executive director of UN Women recently visited Afghanistan and told Taliban officials that “we will never give up fighting for” women and girls.

“Crisis and conflict affect women and girls first and worst,” Guterres said, citing the conflict in Ukraine as an example. Following Russia’s invasion, the UN called for an investigation into reports of rape and sexual violence against Ukrainian women and children.

Guterres also stated that “women’s sexual and reproductive rights are being rolled back in many places,” though he did not specify where.

The United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, leaving abortion rights to individual states. A ban on abortions due to foetal defects went into effect in Poland the previous year, effectively ending almost all abortions in the country.

Guterres called for “collective” and “urgent” action to achieve gender equality, ranging from increasing education, income, and employment for women and girls, particularly in developing countries in the Global South, to encouraging women and girls to participate in science and technology.

“Centuries of patriarchy, discrimination and harmful stereotypes have created a huge gender gap in science and technology,” Guterres said. “Let’s be clear: global frameworks are not working for the world’s women and girls. They need to change.”

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