Report to the Millennium Project Planning Committee Meeting
July 2005
State of the Future 2005. Update on Women Issues
DRAFT Questionnaire for Women Foresight Study
1
State of the Future 2005
Update on Women Issues
The Millennium Project
Contribution of the Brazilian Node
Rosa Alegria –Updated May 25, 2005
2
State of the Future 2005
Women Issues
A - Events
1. World Women Movement in the 5th World Social Forum – Porto
Alegre, Brazil
The biggest edition of the World Social Forum ever finished on January
31 2005 by reading the numbers of the 5th WSF and the definitions of
the International Council for 2006 and 2007. More than 200,000 people
took part in the Forum opening march in Porto Alegre. It has been
defined that in 2006 the World Social Forum will be descentralized and it
will happen in many different places in the world and in 2007 it will take
place in Africa. During the 5th WSF the World Women March launched
the World Women Charter for Humankind, based on equality, freedom,
solidarity, justice and peace. The World Women Charter will travel
around the world in 53 countries and it starts March 8, 2005 in São
Paulo, Brazil and will last through October 17 ending its journey in
Burkina Faso, one of the poorest countries in the world. The World
Women Charter is available in http://www.sof.org.br/
2. The 10th Summit of Latin American and Caribbean Women will
be in São Paulo – October 8 thru 11, 2005
These summits have been happening since the early 80´s, since then
global networks have been created and regional political alliances have
been set up. This summit was first held in Colombia in 1981 and the last
one was hosted in 2002 in Costa Rica, Central America.
B - The Tsunami Effect
The Indian Ocean tsunami may have made no distinction between men
and women in the grim death toll it reaped with its waves but it has
produced some very gender-specific after-shocks, ranging from women’s
traditional role in caring for the sick to increased cases of rape and
abuse, a United Nations agency reported today.
The burden on women may have increased due to the high number of
people injured or who become ill as epidemics develop, FAO said, noting
that due to the household division of labour, women traditionally take
care of the sick. They also have the responsibility to fetch water and
may now need to increase the amount of time dedicated to collecting
both drinking water and freshwater for agriculture crops.
3
More than 150,000 women are currently pregnant in the affected
areas,of whom 50,000 are due to give birth during the next three
months, theagency noted. Their chances of delivering in safe and clean
conditions have been jeopardized by the damage to health facilities and
loss of basic delivery care supplies and UNFPA has appealed for $28
million to adequately help women and youth in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and
the Maldives, the three hardest hit countries.
www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=13039&Cr=tsunami&Cr1=
C –Study: Women's Empowerment:
Measuring the Global Gender Gap
The World Economic Forum has undertaken this new study to facilitate
the work of governments, aid agencies and NGOs by providing a
benchmarking tool to assess the size of the gender gap, ranking
countries according to the level of advancement of their female
population.
The Gender Gap Report quantifies the size of the gender gap in 58
countries, including all 30 OECD countries and 28 other emerging
markets. The study measures the extent to which women have achieved
full equality with men in five critical areas:

economic participation
Globalization has dramatically changed the conditions under which
the struggle gor gender equality must be carried out, especially in
developing countries. One of the important tools of gender
mainstreamimg, aimed principally at poverty reduction, has been the
concept of “gender budgeting”, i.e. focusing attention in the process
of budget formulation within a given country in order to assess
whether a particular fiscal measure will increase or decrease gender
equality, or leave it unchanged.

economic opportunity
Women have made slow and uneven progress in obtaining a share of
managerial positions,which according to ILO, ranged between 2040% in 48 out of 63 countries. A study in the United States has found
49% of high-achieving women to be childless as compared with only
19% of their male colleagues

political empowerment
The Inter-Parliamentary Union reports a world average of only 15,6%
in combined houses of parliament. The statistics by region offer few
surprises, ranging from 6,8% in the Arab States to 18,6% in the
4
Americas, and 39,7% in the Nordic States. While women are poorly
represented in the lower levels of government, they are rarer still in
the upper echelons of decision-making.

educational attainment
Although the ECOSOC statistics show that girls actually outnumber
boys in tertiary level education in a very few countries – most notably
in some of the Middle East and former Soviet bloc countries – an
obvious gender gap in education tends to appear early in most
countries, and, on average, grows more severe with each year of
education. A study by the USAID has found that countless women in
the developing world are further removed from the information age
because of their lower levels of education and deeply ingrained
negative attitudes towards other forms of achievement.

health and well-being
According to the WHO, 585,000 women die every year, over 1,600
every day, from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. The
Planned Parenthood federation of America quotes estimates that of
the annual 46 million abortions worldwide, some 20 million are
performed unsafely, resulting in the deaths of 80,000 women from
complications, accounting for at least 13% of global maternal
mortality, and causing a wide range of long-term health problems.
The complete study in PDF format
www.weforum.org/pdf/Global_Competitiveness_Reports/Reports/gender_ga
p.pdf
D - Status of Women:
How can the changing status of women
help improve the human condition?
Millennium Development Goals Premise: Women disproportionately
suffer the burden of poverty, are the primary agents of child welfare, are
the victims of widespread and persistent discrimination in all areas of life,
and put their lives at risk every time they become pregnant. They are
increasingly susceptible to HIV/AIDS and other major diseases, play an
indispensable role in the management of natural resources, and have the
right to gain as much as men from the benefits brought by globalisation.
www.mdgender.net/goals/
5
Latin America: gender-sensitive legislation and policy-making
supported by UNIFEM
Studies examining national and international legislation affecting women's
economic, social and cultural rights and their application in all five Andean
countries were completed and will help raise awareness on the issue
throughout the region. In Latin America , street vendors came together to
exchange ideas, experiences and strategies and to extensively address
economic and social rights. As a result a network of street vendors,
StreetNet, was expanded to a regional network and its operations
strengthened by better defining its structure, goals and strategies to defend
and expand street vendors' rights.
In Brazil, UNIFEM is providing technical and financial support to the
Programme of Affirmative Action of the Ministry of Agrarian Development.
As a result, regulations were issued for the implementation of quotas by
2003. These include that 30% of decision-making positions within the
Ministry are filled by women, 30% of staff receive capacity-building in
gender and management, and 30% of rural credit is directed to women
workers in agrarian reform settlements. Other significant results include
changes in policy execution regulations that allow access of women rural
settlers to land ownership, training, technical assistance and social security
rights and the inclusion of gender analysis in all programmes of the Ministry
of Agrarian Development. These efforts are the first steps in a larger
process expected to firmly establish gender-sensitive policies as an integral
part of the work of the institution.
In Latin America and the Caribbean over 100 legal and policy experts
from throughout the region were trained at the Sixth International Course
on Women's Human Rights in the application of international laws to protect
and promote women's economic and social rights in their local contexts.
Replication of the workshop at the sub-regional level in Andean countries
has generated a strong demand for additional training and awareness
raising on the issue.
Gender Equality and Women´s Empowerment
UNFPA State of World Population 2004
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2004/english/ch5/index.htm
The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was
held in Cairo from 5 to 13 September 1994. The Conference was convened
under the auspices of the United Nations and was organized by a secretariat
composed of the Population Division of the UN Department for Economic
and Social Information and Policy Analysis and UNFPA.
The ICPD Programme of Action included, for the first time in a major
international population policy document, a full and detailed chapter
(Chapter IV) on women’s empowerment and gender equality. In part, it
stated that: “. . . improving the status of women also enhances their
6
decision-making capacity at all levels in all spheres of life, especially in the
area of sexuality and reproduction”.
In India, the collaborative actions identified to promote gender equality are:





Development of a gender policy analysis framework;
Support for a comprehensive gender-disaggregated database;
Support to promote gender equality;
Assistance in developing gender-sensitive state plans;
Promotion of inter-agency action research on gender.
In 2003, the Office of India’s Registrar-General and Census Commissioner,
the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and UNFPA drew attention to the
problem of sex-selective abortion and female infanticide, and the resulting
decline in the number of girls relative to boys, publishing a booklet entitled,
Missing: Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India.
http://www.population2005.org/purpose.htm
POPULATION 2005 advocates and promotes the earliest possible
implementation of the Program of Action approved by the International
Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), which met in Cairo in
1994. POPULATION 2005 will organize meetings or roundtables, when
appropriate, to focus public attention on future implementation of the ICPD
Program of Action
C – Gender-based updates on the 15 challenges
Challenge 1. Women and Sustainable Development
Women and sustainable development issues are an essential component of
Agenda 21 and other international agreements. Agenda 21 includes Chapter
24: "Global Action for Women Towards Sustainable and Equitable
Development", outlining strategies to achieve the necessary full and equal
participation of women in order to bring about sustainable development. In
the 92 Rio Earth Summit, women were considered a "major group" whose
involvement is necessary to achieve sustainable development
Since the early 1980s considerable attention has been devoted to the
relationship between women and the environment, and extensive efforts
have been made to identify the effects of the international environmental
crisis on women. Momentum was gathered at the workshop of nongovernmental organizations, which ran parallel to the first World Conference
on Women in Nairobi (1985), where it was not only recognized that the
themes of "women and development" and the "environment" are interlinked
but also must be incorporated into policy planning.
7
These efforts culminated with the finalization of the Women's Action Agenda
21, elaborated in the run-up of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCEDA), whereby the important relationship between
women and the environment was stressed.
As the world's food producers, women and men have a stake in the
preservation of the environment and in environmentally sustainable
development. Land and water resources form the basis of all farming
systems, and their preservation is crucial to sustained and improved food
production.Water is present at many levels in the life of rural women: they
collect water and manage its use in the household; they farm irrigated and
rain-fed crops; they know where the water can be found, how to store it,
when it is scarce and whether it is safe for their family's use.
The same is true with land. Women farmers tend to use and perfect
traditional cropping methods developed over time to protect precious
natural resources. This makes them key players in the conservation of soil
fertility.
Women employ methods such as fallowing (leaving fields uncultivated for at
least a season), crop rotation (planting a field with different successive
crops), intercropping (planting several different crops in a field at one time),
mulching (spreading organic material on the soil around plants to avoid
water evaporation) and a variety of techniques that promote soil
conservation, fertility and enrichment. Planners are now recognizing the
value of learning from women's local knowledge to protect and sustain the
environment.
But poverty is a leading cause of environmental degradation in the
developing world. Women farmers trying to eke out an existence on
marginal lands, with little education and no access to agricultural resources,
are often driven to adapting less labour-intensive crops and practices that
may harm the environment. Soil erosion, polluted water and declining yields
result.
Furthermore, as women rarely own land they cultivate there is little
incentive for them to make environmentally sound decisions, while their
lack of access to credit hampers them from buying technologies and inputs
that would be less damaging to natural resources. These negative factors
set up a cycle of declining productivity, increasing environmental
degradation and food insecurity for the future.
Source: FAO http://www.fao.org/Gender/en/env-e.htm
Challenge 2. Women and Water
In most communities, water supplies are limited and water-use decisions
involve difficult choices. Resource economists often recommend that water
prices be raised for all uses (industry, agriculture and domestic), arguing
that higher prices will encourage more efficient use of water in all sectors.
However, the implications for the poor can be negative and lead to
increased hardship since they often do not have sufficient financial
8
resources to pay higher prices. While subsidization of water prices has
sometimes been suggested as a means of ensuring that water is available
for all, the poorest households do not usually have easy access to piped
services or irrigation.
As domestic water managers, women are expected to play a significant role
in several capacities: as selectors of water source, as carriers of water, as
caretakers of water needs of infants and children, etc. This multi-facetted
role of women, particularly in rural settings, has been a cause of significant
concern by national governments that are promoting participation of women
in water resource very often. South Africa offers a positive example. The
country passed its Water Services Act in 1997 and a National Water Act in
1998, which aimed to redress the gender and racial inequalities and
discrimination of the past.
Source: FAO SD Dimensions – Sustainable Development Department
Gender & Development
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/SUSTDEV/dim_pe1/pe1_040901_en.htm
Challenge 3. Women - Population and Resources
The poverty group deserving more particular attention is poor rural women,
who are the most significant suppliers of family labour and efficient
managers of household food security.
Women play a major role in
agricultural and livestock development. In order to succeed, projects
intending to increase agricultural productivity must ensure that the distinct
needs, labour constraints, knowledge and decision-making roles of women
and of men are analysed and addressed. Improvement in the socioeconomic status, health and education of women has an immediate and
lasting impact on the well-being of the entire family.
The World Bank recognizes the importance of integrating gender into all
aspects of rural development as a cross-cutting issue. Women represent the
majority of the rural poor (up to 70%) and play a major role in the survival
strategies and the economy of poor rural households.
“Agricultural and rural development that is equitable, effective and
sustainable cannot be pursued without an explicit recognition of the
tremendous contribution of rural women to food and agricultural production
and their crucial role in determining and guaranteeing food security and
well-being for the entire household." FAO Plan of Action for Women in
Development
Investing in human capital is one of the most effective means of reducing
poverty and encouraging sustainable development. One study on
agricultural productivity showed that four years of primary education
increased farmers' productivity by up to 10 percent. Yet women in
developing countries usually receive less education than men.
9
World Bank study concluded that if women received the same amount of
education as men, farm yields would rise by between 7 and 22 percent.
Increasing women's primary schooling alone could increase agricultural
output by 24 percent. Yet, in precisely those regions where hunger and
malnutrition are most widepread, girls' access to education remains
severely limited. In South Asia, the level of school attendance by girls
amounts to only 60 percent of that of boys, while in Africa the figures
stands at 68 percent.
Gender Issues in Land Administration and Land Reform
There are Legal and customary limitations to womens' ownership of land.
Rights to land must be both legally and socially recognized to be useable
and enforceable. She discussed privatization and individualization of land –
and underscored the caveat that when communal land rights are
individualized and formalized, it renders women's right to land less secure.
Sources:
 IFAD – International Fund for Agricultural Development
http://www.ifad.org/gender/approach/gender/index.htm
 World Bank
http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/ardext.nsf/11ByDocName/NewsEvents
EventsGenderIssuesinLandAdministrationandLandReform
 FAO - http://www.fao.org/Gender/en/educ-e.htm
Challenge 4. Democratization
Despite elected parliaments, most nations will not be real democracies until
women get their due place in the political system, says UNIFEM.
Ensuring political representation by women will also reduce corruption in
public life. The lack of political voice by women is a key reason why
governments have not kept their promises in the past 15 years to bridge
the gulf between men and women in education, work and political power,
said the report.
Only Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have kept these promises
made in international conferences and documents in the past years.
Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands and South Africa are close to reaching
these goals, said an UNIFEM survey.
According to a World Bank study, women decision-makers in government
are more concerned about the public good than their male counterparts.
This has been proven in Thailand, where women-headed village
development panels make much better use of the annual 100,000 baht
(about 2,500 U.S. dollars) government grant for each hamlet, said Supatra
Masdit, minister to the Thai Prime Minister's Office.
10
The latest Inter-Parliamentary Union reports a world average of only 15,9%
in combined houses of parliament. The statistics by region offer few
surprises, ranging from 6,8% in the Arab States to 18,6% in the Americas,
and 39,7% in the Nordic States. Whike women are poorly represented in
the lower levels of government, they are rarer still in upper echelons of
decision-making. The absence of women from structures of governance
inevitably means that national, regional and local priorities – i.e. how
resources are allocated – are typically defined without meaningful input
from women, whose life experience gives them a different awareness of the
community´s needs, concerns and interests from that of men.
Sources
No real democracy without women www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/inequal/unifem.htm
World Economic forum: measuring the global gender gap
Challenge 5. Global Long Term Perspectives
The Fourth World Conference on Women, held at Beijing in 1995, the
largest meeting of women ever held, gathered representatives from all over
the world to plan their own future and the future of women in the world. It
specified that in order to achieve the goal of equality between women and
men in all spheres of development "it is essential to design, implement and
monitor, with the full participation of women, effective, efficient and
mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes".
Challenge 6. Women and Information Technology
Although progress over women in ICT occupations continues to be slow,
there are many encouraging signs of a closing gender gap in the use of ICT
products . It remains unclear how much these developments might impact
positively on the position of women in ICT. What is clear, however, is that
there is a serious lack of ‘joined up policy’ in most countries with respect to
gender and ICT, whereby government support to bring women into ICT
specialist work sits alongside wider digital inclusion efforts which are
‘gender blind’. The evidence collected by SIGIS (Gender and the
Information Society) indicates that gender gaps in digital inclusion will not
disappear without intervention, and that gender blindness in digital inclusion
strategies may even exacerbate the exclusion of specific groups (of men or
women). If governments are serious about gender inclusion in the
information society then a thorough gender awareness must permeate all
digital inclusion strategies, be they education, work or community based.
In the Plan of Action of the World Summit on the Information Society held
in Switzerland, 2003 one of the follow-up items is: “ Gender-specific
indicators on ICT use and needs should be developed, and measurable
performance indicators should be identified to assess the impact of funded
ICT projects on the lives of women and girls.”
11
Since October 2000, the World Bank has been looking into the ways ICT can
be used to overcome gender inequalities. In June 2004 the Bank promoted
a seminar called World Bank's Programs on Information and Communication
Technologies (ICTs) and Gender Equality
During the e-discussion "Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) and Gender Equality" promoted by the World Bank during May/June,
2004. several important issues were raised:
1.There was a continuing debate over the five weeks about whether poor women
(and men) in rural areas needed ICTs.
2.Language was considered to be a critical barrier.
3.The definition of what is included in ICTs was discussed at length.
4.It was generally agreed that there is no single appropriate approach to
capacity building.
5.There was discussion about the efficacy of ICT-based training
6.It was generally agreed that cultural contexts, while different from one place
to another, are extremely important everywhere and any efforts to introduce
ICTs to rural communities must be made within existing, acceptable cultural
frameworks.
7.ICTs have had a substantial impact on the quality of work environments and
women have been affected both positively and negatively.
8.It was generally agreed that efforts should be made to ensure that gender
issues receive a high profile at WSIS-Tunis.
Sources:



SIGIS Report Strategies of Inclusion: Gender and the Information Socieety
(Aug 2004) www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/sigis/index.php
World Summit of the Information Society – Plan of Action
http://www.itu.int/wsis/docs/geneva/official/poa.html
World Bank's Programs on Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) and Gender Equality
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTGENDER
Challenge 7. Women issues in rich and poor gap
Advancing Knowledge: Equality of rights must be implemented over the
entire life course - to enable girls and boys, women and men to progress
from one stage of life to another and to ensure that discrimination
encountered at one stage is not perpetuated or that gains made at one
stage are not lost at later stages
Women (whether naturally or through acculturation) bear greater
responsibilities at al levels of society for nurture, education, food
production, cooperative sharing volunteering and conflict resolution.
Mainstream economics still treats these services of women as “uneconomic” because they are usually unpaid.
12
Latin America
In Latin America, there are approximately 60 million rural women who work
more than 12 hours per day to ensure the subsistence of their families.
Some statistics show that they generate approximately 48 percent of the
family income in the region.
Sources
World Social Forum 2005
www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_01.php?cd_news=1709&cd_language=2
ILO - International Network on Gender and Sustainable
Energywww.ilo.org/public/english/employment/gems/advance.htm
Women Watch for the UN – Rural women´s acess to land in Latin America
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/asp/user/list.asp?ParentID=10474
Challenge 8. Women in/and Health
"Fifty years after the WHO Constitution was adopted, it is increasingly well
recognized that there are differences in the factors determining health and
the burden of ill-health for women and men. The dynamics of gender in
health are of profound importance in this regard and they have long been
overlooked." WHO Gender Policy, 2002.
The women’s role as health providers is key in Maternal Health,
Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and
other sexual diseases.
Reproductive Health
Within the framework of WHO's definition of health as a state of complete
physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of
disease or infirmity, reproductive health addresses the reproductive
processes, functions and system at all stages of life. Reproductive health,
therefore, implies that people are able to have a responsible, satisfying and
safe sex life and that they have the capability to reproduce and the freedom
to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this are the right of
men and women to be informed of and to have access to safe, effective,
affordable and acceptable methods of fertility regulation of their choice, and
the right of access to appropriate health care services that will enable
women to go safely through pregnancy and childbirth and provide couples
with the best chance of having a healthy infant
HIV
Women are probably more susceptible than men to infection from HIV in
any given heterosexual encounter, due to biological factors –Women may
remain ignorant of the facts of sexuality and HIV/AIDS because they are not
“supposed” to be sexually knowledgeable, while men may remain ignorant
13
because they are “supposed” to be sexually all-knowing. Due to the
importance of HIV/AIDS as a public health problem, and the many gender
issues that surround it, the Department of Gender and Women’s Health of
the WHO has made focusing on gender and HIV a priority
Maternal Health
Obstetric complications are the leading cause of death for women of
reproductive age in developing countries today, and constitute one of the
world’s most urgent and intractable health problems. Reducing maternal
death and illness is recognized as a moral and human rights imperative as
well as a crucial international development priority, including by the ICPD
Programme of Action and the Millennium Development Goals.
Tragically, despite progress in some countries, the global number of deaths
per year—estimated at 529,000, or one every minute—has not changed
significantly since the ICPD, according to recent estimates by WHO, UNICEF
and UNFPA; 99 per cent of these deaths occur in developing countries.
Millions more women survive but suffer from illness and disability related to
pregnancy and childbirth. Although data are hard to come by, the Safe
Motherhood Initiative, a coalition of UN agencies and NGOs, estimates that
30 to 50 morbidities—temporary as well as chronic conditions—occur for
each maternal death
In their responses to the 2003 UNFPA global survey, 144 countries reported
having taken specific measures to reduce maternal deaths and injury; 113
reported multiple measures. The most common were training health care
providers (76 countries); instituting plans, programmes or strategies 68),
improving ante- and post-natal care (66), upgrading data collection and
record keeping (45), and providing information or advocacy (40). But only
some countries have been successful in reducing maternal mortality (most
are middle income; a few are poor). In China, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia,
Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, Mongolia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia, deaths have been
reduced significantly over the past decade. Common to all these countries’
safe motherhood efforts is the presence of skilled birth attendants, a
capable referral system and basic or comprehensive emergency obstetric
services.
Progress in most other countries has been slow, and maternal mortality and
morbidity remain tragically high in several regions, including in most of subSaharan Africa and the poorer parts of South Asia. While some gains in
combating maternal death and illness are expected in the next 10 years,
current interventions will need to be scaled up and more resources directed
towards them if significant inroads are to be made to protect women’s lives
and health.
Sources
WHO – World Health Organization www.who.int/gender/hiv_aids/en/
UNFPA www.unfpa.org/swp/2004/english/ch7/index.htm
14
Challenge 9. Capacity to Decide – a gender perspective
Women in politics
Throughout the world women face obstacles to their participation in politics.
These barriers are to be found in prevailing social and economic regimes, as
well as in existing political structures. In 2004, the rate of female
representation stands at 15 percent globally. Although this figure has
increased in recent years, minimal progress means that the ideal of parity
still remains distant.
Increasing the level of female representation and participation in decisionmaking bodies requires well-developed strategies and information on which
measures have worked successfully in different countries with different
political systems.
Women in the media
“During the last 20 years, , advances in information technology have
facilitated a global communications network that transcends national
boundaries and has an impact on public policy, private attitudes and
behaviour, especially of children and young adults. Everywhere the potential
exists for the media to make a far greater contribution to the advancement
of women.”
“More women are involved in careers in the communications sector, but few
have attained positions at the decision-making level or serve on governing
boards and bodies that influence media policy. The lack of gender sensitivity
in the media is evidenced by the failure to eliminate the gender-based
stereotyping that can be found in public and private local, national and
international media organizations.”
“In addressing the issue of the mobilization of the media, Governments and
other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a
gender perspective in policies and programmes.”
Issues related to the portrayal of women in the media must also be
considered: the media must represent appropriately the pluralism of images
and discourses generated by society. It is important, then, that media
content respects plurality and the diversity of voices, images, and words in
favour of gender equity and justice. Despite all advancements in the women
condition, they are portrayed as stereotypes in the mass media, largely
represented as objects rather than subjects.
Sources
IDEA – International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance – Women in
Politics www.idea.int/gender/
FWCW Platform for Action – Women and the Media
www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/beijing/platform/media.htm#diagnosis
15
Challenge 10. Women, Peace and Conflict
UNIFEM has initiated an important collaborative effort with the UN
Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), UNICEF and Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), to integrate gender training
into the pre-deployment induction courses for peace keepers and military
observers assigned to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). At the
global level, UNIFEM is a partner in an initiative to develop gender training
modules for peacekeepers, being coordinated by the Pearson Peacekeeping
Centre in Canada. Additionally UNIFEM is collaborating with the Lessons
Learned Division of DPKO, in an effort to develop policy and operational
guidelines to engender peacekeeping operations around the world
What is Gender mainstreaming in peace operations? “mainstreaming a
gender perspective in multidimensional peacekeeping … [means] that
gender issues, such as increased equality and observing gender specific
needs, become a natural element in all parts of the peacekeeping mission.
Gender issues will not be handled by a special department alone but rather
be a part of the work of the existing organization, both in the field and at
the headquarters.”
Women still excluded from peace table despite their pivotal role, says Kofi
Annan “Women remain overwhelmingly excluded from participating in peace
talks and post-conflict reconstruction, and continue to suffer physical and
sexual violence during war” Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a report
on women, peace and security.
Mr. Annan's report, discussed in the Security Council in october 2004, says
gender perspectives are not systematically included in the planning,
implementation, monitoring and reporting of any area of peace and security
work. Even though women can play a crucial role in identifying and
defusing tensions before they turn into open hostilities, too often they are
ignored at the peace table, Mr. Annan says.
"The number of women who participate in formal peace processes remains
small," according to the report. "The leadership of parties to conflict is
male-dominated and men are chosen to participate at the peace table. The
desire to bring peace at any cost may result in a failure to involve women
and consider their needs and concerns."
Source - UN News Centre
http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=12376&Cr=women&Cr1
Challenge 11. Status of Women – Gender Equality
Research from around the world has shown that gender inequality tends to
slow economic growth and make the rise frompoverty more difficult. The
reasons for this link are not hard to understand. Half of the world’s
population is female, hence, the extent to which women and girls benefit
from development policies and programs has a major impact on countries’
overall development success. Research also shows that women and girls
16
tend to work harder than men, are more likely to invest their earnings in
their children, are major producers as well as consumers, and shoulder
critical, life-sustaining responsibilities without which men and boys could not
survive much less enjoy high levels of productivity. Women’s empowerment
is particularly important for determining a country’s demographic trends—
trends that in turn affect its economic success and environmental
sustainability.
For all these reasons, the World Bank views the third Millennium
Development Goal—to promote gender equality and empower women—as a
central component to its overall mission to reduce poverty and stimulate
economic growth. The Bank has an Operational Policy that spells out its
responsibilities in this area, and a strategy to implement this policy.
This website provides information on Bank policy, strategy and
implementation, as well as tools useful for integrating gender issues into
analytical work, development operations and capacity building
Source: World Bank – Gender and Development
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTGENDER/0,,menuPK:336874~pag
ePK:149018~piPK:149093~theSitePK:336868,00.html
Challenge 12. Transnational Crime – Global Sexual
Exploitation
The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation was compiled from media, nongovernmental organization and government reports. It is an initial effort to
collect facts, statistics and known cases on global sexual exploitation.
Information is organized into four categories: Trafficking, Prostitution,
Pornography, and Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and
Violence.
Sources were not contacted to verify information. Close examination will
reveal that there are contradictions in information depending on the sources
of information (ex: how many women are in prostitution in Thailand). All
statistics are reported with no attempt to evaluate which numbers are more
likely to be accurate. In fact, the exact numbers in many cases are not
known and estimates come from different sources which use different
methods to determine what they report.
Trafficking in women and girls
Entertainment girls, hospitality girls, prostitutes, massage girls, it all means
the same thing. They're part of the globalization of the world's economy.
Goods to be shipped across borders, through one airport to another,
sometimes overland. Commodities in a multibillion dollar industry. Only the
17
products are women and children being sold for profit. We're talking here
about international sex trafficking.
There are several categories of trafficking. The first and largest is that of
the transnational sex industry: international prostitution. There is also the
mail-order bride industry. The other main category is that of exporting
workers in exchange for foreign capital to be sent back home. In the case of
women, these are usually domestic workers or nurses. The women all
perform services that are deemed necessary and vital to the host countries,
yet they live in the margins, more often than not, invisible.
An increasing number of women and girls from developing countries are
being trafficked to developed countries, as well as within and between
regions and States, and that men and boys are also victims of trafficking,
including for sexual exploitation. The traffick is that of poor women to richer
men. The flow of poor women from the South to North is the largest,
although now there is also an increase of women from the former Eastern
bloc. The most frequent destinations for the women are Europe, North
America, Japan, Australia, and the Middle East.
The women come from rural areas and city slums. They are either recruited
as tourist workers or are often kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery.
Others are simply sold outright. In some countries there are actual markets
where women are sold in the streets. Actually to call most of them women
is a misnomer, for often they are young girls, ages 10-15. Some have not
even reached the age of menstruation, many have no idea what sex is.
Infant Prostituiton in Brazil
The concentration of wealth and bi-polarized economic situation in Brazil
results in a situation of marginality which leaves 20 million people indigent
and more than 40 million children and adolescents needy or abandoned.
This situation throws more children into prostitution every day.
“The importance of the empowerment of women and their effective
participation in decision-making and policy-making processes is one of the
critical tools to prevent and eliminate crimes against women and girls.”
From the Resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly – february 10,
2005.
Sources
Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/factbook.htm
Mirkinson, Judith - The Global Trafficking Of Women
http://selenasol.com/selena/struggle/prostitution.html
Challenge 13, Women and Energy
There is increasing recognition within international fora of the linkages
between women and sustainable development and there is growing
18
widespread interest in understanding the issues and formulating appropriate
strategies which relate to women and energy. At the same time there are
also developments in the Energy Sector (for example, Rio+5, World
Bank/NERL Village Power Meeting, Climate Change Convention and the
Commission on Sustainable Development 2001) and in Gender (for
example, recent World Bank meeting, and Beijing+5) which also have
implications for women and energy. A number of multi-lateral lending
agencies have also incorporated gender into their energy activities, for
example, UNDP SEED and ESMAP
Nationally, extending the power grid to rural areas will have the effect of
slowing flight to the cities, reducing inefficient use of biomass energy and
freeing women to engage in income-generation and productive activities.
Sources
Energia – International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy
www.energia.org/resources/reports/novwshop.html#whyawork
Facing the Future – Global Issues www.global-issues.net/In_Depth/energy3.htm
Challenge 14: Women in Science and Technology
It is hard to see how science and technology can be effectively mounted or
expected to succeed without women, however the pressing problems of the
world have been tackled with women on the margins. Whether the issues
are those of population growth or environment, getting knowledge to
women is part of the solution. While we recognize the need for continuing
research for contraceptive options, we also have come to understand the
links between higher female literacy rates and lower fertility rates. UNICEF's
"Strategies to Promote Girls' Education," points out this link between
population and the education of women and the effects on the other social
indicators: links between the education of mothers and healthier families,
and the education of mothers and their commitment to the education of
their children. Education provides the knowledge and skills that contribute
to and benefit from development efforts, especially in areas of health,
nutrition, water and sanitation, and the environment. The links to science
and technology in these areas are obvious.
Women in Biotechnology
Today, women are faced with a rapidly expanding array of reproductive
technologies. Developed by private biotechnology companies and marketed
to fertility clinics, these new options have been presented to women as an
issue of “choice”—supposedly providing them greater control over the
process and outcome of their pregnancies.
The unique role of women in reproduction puts them on the front line of biotechnological experimentation, and as such, women have the potential to
19
play a leading role in determining the direction and scope of these
developments
Women education in S & T
In the overall effort of recent decades to better educate young people in science,
technology and mathematics, girls made rapid progress; the gender gap in science and
math achievement has narrowed significantly. However, studies still reveal
weaknesses in the training of girls. Young women, for example, exhibit less confidence
in their math skills than young men. At higher levels of math achievement, high school
boys still outperform girls. . The need for mentors and networking for girls and women
in science begins at the primary school level and continues through graduate education
and careers in business and industry.
In the business and industry sectors, many women scientists and engineers leave
academic life early in their careers having concluded that industry offers fewer barriers
for their advancement. Corporate leaders agree that the bottom line has become a
strong inducement to recruiting women and underrepresented minority men, given the
continuing needs of a technological workforce.
Sources:
M. Malcom, Shirley - Knowledge, Technology & Development: A Gendered Perspective American Association for the Advancement of ScienceKnowledge, Technology &
Development: A Gendered Perspective www.wigsat.org/malcom.html
WIGSAT Women in Global Science and Technology www.wigsat.org/
Council for Responsible Genetics www.gene-watch.org/programs/women.html
Balancing the equation:Where Are Women & Girls in
Science, Engineering & Technology? - The National Council for Research on Women
www.ncrw.org/research/iqsci.htm
Challenge 15: Global Ethics
In the development of a sustainable society, ethical issues are being more
and more incorporated into global decisions. At the beginning of the third
millennium, a new conscience is emerging claiming solidarity, cooperation, ,
corporative social responsibility, social inclusion, dialogue, said to be
feminine principles that are being incorporated in men and women´s
experiences.
In the realm of the women movement some approaches to ethics have
been developed, including those labeled "feminine," "maternal,". Each of
these approaches to ethics highlights the differences between men's and
women's respective situations in life- biological and social; provides
strategies for dealing with issues that arise in private as well as public life;
Considered together the overall aim of all female approaches to ethics,
20
irrespective of their specific labels, some gender-equal ethics must be
considered.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-ethics/
Some ethical issues:
Abortion for abnormality
Growing support for the rights of disabled people has generated a
discussion about the ethics of the exemption of abortion for abnormality
from the legal time limit that applies to abortion on other grounds. The
argument now commonly made is that in allowing abortion without a time
limit where there is possible abnormality in the fetus, but imposing a time
limit of 24 weeks where there is not, the law perhaps reflects and reinforces
discrimination against disabled people
Sex Selection
Discussions of cloning and stem cell research involve whether we should set
limits on technologies that do not yet exist. However, the debate on
whether sex selection is an ethical practice involves technology that is
already perfected. It is possible, through prenatal genetic screening, to
determine which four-to-eight-cell human embryos are male and female
and to implant into the uterus only those of the desired sex
Suggested ethical issues surrounding sex preselection according to the
ASRM American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM include "the
potential for inherent gender discrimination, inappropriate control over
nonessential characteristics of children, unnecessary medical burdens and
costs for parents, and inappropriate and potentially unfair use of limited
medical resources"
Economic Participation
Gender-related ethical issues must attempt to capture the gap between
man and women in terms of economic participation also.
Some other women ethical issues…Youth pregnancy, Domestic Violence,
Sexual Harassment
http://www.devbio.com/article.php?id=177
21
WOMEN FORESIGHT STUDY
Millennium Project’s
Planning Committee
ROUND 1
NEF – Núcleo de Estudos do Futuro
BRAZILIAN NODE
MPPC Meeting
Chicago, July 28 and 29, 2005
Olugbenga Adesida
Ismail Al-Shatti
Mohsen Bahrami
Eduardo Raul Balbi
Eleonora Barbieri-Masini
Peter Bishop
José Luis Cordeiro
George Cowan
Cornelia Daheim
Francisco Dallmeier
James Dator
Nadezhda Gaponenko
Michel Godet
John Gottsman
Miguel A. Gutierrez
Hazel Henderson
Arnoldo José de Hoyos
Zhouying Jin
Bruce Lloyd
Anandhavalli Mahadevan
Pentti Malaska
Kamal Zaki Mahmoud
Shinji Matsumoto
Pavel Novacek
Charles Perrottet
Cristina Puentes-Markides
David Rejeski
Saphia Richou
Stanley G. Rosen
Mihaly Simai
Rusong Wang
Paul Werbos
Norio Yamamoto
Sponsor
Representatives
Julie A. Blair
Michael K. O’Farrell
John Fittipaldi
Oscar Motomura
Michael Stoneking
Robert Vallario
Director
Jerome C. Glenn
Senior Fellow
Theodore J. Gordon
Director of Research
Elizabeth Florescu
Regional Nodes
Beijing, China
Berlin/Essen, Germany
Brussels Area, Belgium
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Cairo, Egypt
Calgary, Canada
Caracas, Venezuela
Helsinki, Finland
London, UK
Moscow, Russia
New Delhi/Madurai, India
Paris, France
Prague, Czech Republic
Rome, Italy
Salmiya, Kuwait
São Paulo, Brazil
Silicon Valley, USA
Tehran, Iran
Tokyo, Japan
Washington, D.C., USA
22
Women Foresight Study
Round 1 Invitation
On behalf of the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University and
its sponsors, we have the honor to invite you to participate on a global Delphi Panel that will, over the
next few months, study future gender issues and their possible evolution and resolution. The central
objective of this study is to seek a broad range of international perspectives on how the changing status of
women can help improve the human condition for the next few decades and actions that might be
considered to reduce or reverse their impacts.
The Millennium Project is a worldwide effort to collect and synthesize judgments about emerging
global challenges that may affect the human condition. Its annual State of the Future and other special
reports are used by decision-makers and educators to add focus to important issues, clarify choices, and
improve the quality of decisions.
This study is being directed by the Project’s Brazilian node in cooperation with several of the other
Project’s nodes. It will involve three rounds of questionnaires, the first of which is attached. In it we seek
to define a set of important gender issues. Several examples are presented and we ask participants, from
their own perspectives and experiences, to add to the list. The composite list will form the basis for the
second round questionnaire in which we will ask for judgments about the relative importance of these
issues globally and nationally, and chances for their resolution. In the third round, we will inquire about
possible solutions for the most important issues, the likelihood of success of these actions and their
potential for backfire.
The results of this research should be of interest and value to planners at all levels. Those who
respond to this questionnaire will receive the results in a complementary next edition of the State of the
Future. No attributions will be made, but respondents will be listed as participants.
This questionnaires involved in this study may be answered by completing the paper version and
sending it to us by email or by completing the on line version which may be found at www.acunu.com. If
you respond by email please send to Rosa Alegria at rosa.alegria@terra.com.br with a copy to Ted
Gordon at tedjgordon@att.net.
Please contact us with any questions and return your responses to arrive by 15 October, 2005. You
will receive the second and third rounds in several months. We look forward to including your views.
Sincerely yours,
Rosa Alegria, Director, Women Foresight Study, AC/UNU Millennium Project
Theodore Gordon, Senior Fellow, AC/UNU Millennium Project
23
Instructions
In this round we are interesting in developing a list of important future gender based
issues. The gender based issues listed below are the ones that impacts differentially on
women or to which women can make a unique contribution. We recognize that many
gender issues have already been identified; our interest here focuses on current gender
issues focused on women status that may grow in importance in the next two decades,
remain unaddressed, or newly emerge. Our focus is global although national issues will
certainly be part of this work. An important issue is one that is lasting and is likely to
affect many people deeply significantly.
The initial set issues presented in this questionnaire were selected as illustrations by the
Millennium Project’s staff. They were derived from a review of the Millennium Project
15 challenges, UN meetings and agendas, and scholarly publications of other
organizations. As you will see you are asked simply to add a few other such issues to the
list. The composite list we form in this way will be the subject of later questionnaire
Questionnaire 1
Here are some gender issues that are not resolved or are on the
horizon; please add others of equal or greater significance.
Consider both those which burden women differentially and those
which women can help alleviate.
1. The challenge of sustainable development
The United Nations’ Agenda 21 considers strategies to achieve the full and equal
participation of women in order to bring about sustainable development. In the 92
Rio Earth Summit, women were considered a "major group" whose involvement is
necessary to achieve sustainable development. But what issues are involved?
1. Women are not adequately included in planning to address efforts to reduce the
environmental crisis.
2. Traditional cropping methods used by rural women are not fully considered in the
design of strategies to protect and sustain the environment.
3. Women rarely own the lands they cultivate and this situation inhibits sustainable
practices
Added suggestions:
24
.
2. The challenge of adequate safe water
As domestic water managers, women are expected to play a significant role in
several capacities: as selectors of water source, as carriers of water, as caretakers
of water needs of infants, children, families, and communities. This multifacetted role of women, particularly in rural settings, but also in urban settings,
has been a cause of significant concern by national governments.
1. Adequate safe water sources are not available to women, as household managers for their
children and families.
2. Women are not empowered in helping local communities to make a sustainable use of
water.
3. Water resource policies and programmes are detrimental to women´s rights and to
sustainable use
Added suggestions:
3. The challenge of population and resources
Women play a major role in the family planning and in the demographic growth.
Women also play a major role in the agricultural development as the most
significant suppliers of family labor and efficient managers of household food
security.
1. In developing countries women usually receive less education than men and family
planning is often not available to women and girls.
2. Women represent up to 70% of the rural poor with legal limitations to ownership of land
Added suggestions:
25
4. The challenge of democratization
Government priorities are mostly defined without input from women whose life
experiences gives them a different awareness of the community´s needs and interest´s
from that of men
1. Women generally have little knowledge about how they can participate in the process of
democratization.
2. Women as policy makers are more concerned about the public good than their male
counterparts, according to a World Bank study. But they represent only 15,9% of the
government bodies.
Added suggestions:
5. The challenge of increasing global long term perspectives
The Fourth World Conference on Women, held at Beijing in 1995, the largest
meeting of women ever held, gathered representatives from all over the world to
plan their own future and the future of women in the world. It specified that in order
to achieve the goal of equality between women and men in all spheres of
development "it is essential to design, implement, and monitor, with the full
participation of women, effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gendersensitive policies and programmes.”
1. The perspective of women is omitted from current long term planning by governments
2. Knowledge by policy makers of this issue is lacking and incentive to act are weak.
Added suggestions
26
6. Challenge of information technology and media
There are many encouraging signs of a closing gender gap in the use of ICT
products but the gap still exists and access to women is limited. Media must
represent appropriately the pluralism of images and discourses generated by society.
It is important, then, that media content respects plurality and the diversity of voices,
images, and words in favor of gender equity and justice. Despite all advancements
in the condition of women, they are portrayed as stereotypes in the mass media,
largely represented as objects rather than subjects.
1. There is still a major “digital divide” between women and men, particularly among the
poor
2. Media perpetuate gender stereotypes
3. Language is a critical barrier in ICT´s empowerment for women
Added Suggestions:
7. The challenge of ethical market economies and the rich and poor gap
Women are the most significant suppliers of family labor and efficient managers of household
food security. They produce and manage over 50% of all the world’s goods and services in the
unpaid sectors. In addition, women (whether naturally or through acculturation) bear greater
responsibility at al levels of society for nurture, education, food production, cooperative sharing
volunteering and conflict resolution. Mainstream economics still treats these services of women
as “un-economic” because they are usually unpaid.
1. Rural poor women have developed survival strategies that could be useful in developing
local economies; yet they are largely untapped.
2. Economic theory ignores many contributions made by women and the cost of replacement of
these goods and services.
3. Women earn lower salaries and do not hold management positions as frequently as men do
27
Added suggestions:
8. Health
The women’s role as health providers is key to maternal and childhood health,
reproductive health, and sexual health and in the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other
sexual diseases.
1. Women in many places do not have adequate information about how to prevent undesired
pregnancies and STD’s.
2. Women have much to offer to the provision of health care but are underrepresented as
doctors. .
3. Women don´t have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable health care services
for safe pregnancy
4. Globally, women are more suceptible then men to infection from HIV
9. The challenge of capacity do decide
According to the Beijing Declararion, "the empowerment and autonomy of women and
the improvement of women's social, economic and political status is essential for the
achievement of both transparent and accountable government and administration and
sustainable development in all areas of life". However, throughout the world women
face obstacles to their participation in decision-making processes. In 2004 the rate of
female representation in politics was only 15,9% globally. The decision making gaps
also exist in social relationships at home, at work and at schools. The Women´s World
Agenda declares that women will move forward with a vision for the future, which will
transform global decision making, global economy and global justice".
1, Women are marginalized in decision making and leadership by a variety of processes that
begin in infancy
2. Female aspects as intuition, can contribute to the decision process.
3. Companies would do significantly better if they had more senior women in upper
management.
28
10. The challenge of peace and conflict
While entire communities suffer the consequences of armed conflict and terrorism,
women and girls are particularly affected because of their status in society and their sex.
In peace talks and post conflict reconstructions women are rarely involved. According
to Secretary-General Kofi Annan, “Women remain over whelming excluded from
participating in peace talks and post-conflict reconstruction, and continue to suffer
physical and sexual violence during war”
1. Women and children suffer needlessly in war (rape, civilian casualties)
2. Violations of human rights, specially systematic rape of women in war situations, are
creating a mass exodus of refugees and displaced persons
Added suggestions
11. The challenge of the status of women
1. Female literacy lags.
2. Girls and women are considered the most disadvantaged sector in literacy status
4. Working conditions make it difficult for women to meet the dual expectations of family
and work roles.
Added Suggestions
29
12. The challenge of transnational crime
Global sexual exploitation is one of the largest industries in the world. Trafficking,
prostitution, pornography, sexual tourism, organized and institutionalized sexual
exploitation, and violence are dramatic obstacles for the improvement of women
condition.
1. Sexual exploitation of women is a global crime not receiving sufficient attention
2. Pornography abounds, spreads, and appears in essentially all media.
3. In many parts of the world, rape and genital mutilations are not considered crimes and go
unpunished
Added suggestions:
13. The challenge of energy
There is a growing widespread interest in understanding the issues and
formulating appropriate strategies which relate to women and energy and
increasing women’s leadership in renewable energy systems.
1. Conservation of energy in domestic applications is up to women but education in such
activities is lacking
2. Use of alternative energy source could be accelerated with greater leadership from women
Added suggestions
30
14. The challenge of science and technology
Over time, S & T has been done disproportionately by men; and compared to men,
women in science have been located in less prestigious positions. Women are still on
the margins of science and technology development and achievements..
1. The number of women scientists and technicians should increase.
2. Women should be involved more intimately in the study of scientific ethical issues.
3. The work culture in engineering jobs is established by men. Women are newcomers, who
have to find a way and be accepted by their colleagues as competent engineers.
Added suggestions:
15. The challenge of global ethics
In the development of a sustainable society, ethical issues are increasingly being
incorporated into global decisions. At the beginning of the third millennium, a new
conscience is emerging that may be called the feminine principle.
1. The feminine principle is not generally recognized as a cohesive force in meeting global
challenges.
2. An ethical issue of great importance that is rarely stated explicitly is the betterment of
women status
31
Added suggestions
Thank you for participating.
32