2015 Nov. 3-6:
World Shelter
Conference The Hague
WSF SDG 5 Leader: Elke Traub, elke @ worldsustainabilityfund.nl
Along the history, we can find lots of women that try to fight against practices that were discriminating them only for the reason of being women. And it is true, that thanks to that women, and of course, some men (those in the past and those in the present) we have achieved several important things (more in some countries than in others). But it is also true, that we still have a lot to do.
Gender equality is not a Sustainable Development Goal by chance, it is one of the most important thing in terms of Human Rights because half of the population of the world is being discriminated only because they were born females, and this is something that in our present, in developed countries in particular, could sounds “crazy” because now women have some rights that they had not before. And that is true but, does it means that there is a real equity between women and men, at least in developed countries? Why are women dying every day around the world for this reason then? Why are salaries not the same when both of them are doing the same jobs? And let us talk about something worst, developing countries, why women are not receiving any kind of education? Why are they forced to marriage even when they are only little girls?.
Those are only a few examples, we could continue with the list of injustices against women around the whole world and maybe, we would never finish. For that big reason is why Gender Equality is a main goal for our present society if we want a better world and that is why we need to try to make the world aware of this as a main step too.
According to this, United Nations (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/ ) did a list of targets that we should achieve if we want to solve this issue:
- End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere
- Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
- Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation
- 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 as nationally appropriate
- Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decisionmaking in political, economic and public life
- Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences
- Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
- Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women
- Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels
Achieving this targets is not only about helping women and girls, reaching this means helping to society development because women are half of the potential of the world for society to make progress.
That is why, as a foundation wich pursues the idea of a Sustainable world, fighting for a better tomorrow, this is an issue that matters to us, and therefore we will try to help to accomplish an improvement in this matter.