CSW65 Delivers Robust Blueprint on Strengthening Women’s Leadership and Participation in Public Life
Posted by Bukola Daike on April 15, 2021 at 12:57 pm
After two weeks deliberation, CSW65 the UN’s largest gathering on women’s rights concluded in march. The gathering ended with the adoption by UN Member States of the Agreed Conclusions, its main outcome document, which recognises the need to significantly accelerate the pace of progress to ensure women’s full participation and leadership at all levels of decision-making in executive, legislative and judicial branches of government and the public sector. It also recognises that temporary special measures, such as quotas, and increased political will are needed as an enabling pathway to this goal.
The Agreed Conclusions acknowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic is deepening pre-existing inequalities that perpetuate multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, as well as racism, stigmatisation and xenophobia. Yet, recent data show that women have been mostly absent from COVID-19 government task forces around the world – women make up only 24 percent of the 225 task force members examined across 137 countries.
The Agreed Conclusions make strong recommendations for concrete measures, which can enable women’s role in decision-making, for instance:
- changing laws and policies that discriminate against women and hinder their equal participation in public life;
- innovative measures to promote women as leaders, executives and managers, in all areas;
- setting targets and timelines to achieve gender balance in all government branches through relevant measures such as quotas, appointments, or training programmes;
- and encouraging political parties to nominate as many women as men candidates and promote equal leadership in their structures.
Click here to read the press release from UN Women.
Click here to read the Agreed Conclusions
