UN Women: The Powerful Potential to Change the Global Development Landscape for Women and Girls
DEVELOPMENTS
Last month, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet — the first and only woman elected to her country’s highest office — addressed the Third Committee of the U.N. General Assembly as the first Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General of U.N. Women (the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women), an entity created to address the dire need for gender equality and women’s empowerment within the United Nations (U.N.) system. In her first formal address to the Member States, Ms. Bachelet described the unique opportunity the U.N. has to strengthen the coherence between policy and operational support for women and girls on the ground, when U.N. Women becomes fully functional on January 1, 2011.
Because gender equality is a crucial component of development, human rights, peace, and security, the nascent stage of this U.N. entity presents an opportune moment for the U.S. to propel its foreign policy activities supporting the political, economic and social advancement of women in the Americas and worldwide. It should do this by immediately forging an effective partnership with the U.N.. U.N. Women, however, will be less effective and efficient without the support of the U.S. government and Congress.
BACKGROUND
U.N. Women represents a giant leap in U.N. system-wide reform, regarding the advancement and integration of women in a global development agenda. Previous U.N. efforts that addressed the well-being of women lacked leadership, coordination, and adequate resources. A cohesive gender entity was first recommended by the UN General Assembly in September 2009, but U.N. Women was not announced until July 2010.
U.N. Women merges four formerly-distinct parts of the U.N. system into one functional entity focusing exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment: Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW, established in 1946), International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW, established in 1976), Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI, established in 1997), and United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, established in 1976). U.N. Women’s start-up budget is $500 million — double the voluntary and regular budget contributions of the four former entities combined.
The creation of U.N. Women reflects a gradual shift in the international community’s prioritization of the status of women on the global development agenda. Investing in the educational, social and economic status of women has proven to lower a country’s poverty rate and benefit its social and economic development through future generations. Yet, when measuring the progress of the Millennium Development Goals, women are lagging behind and are being excluded from development dollars: less than half a cent of every international development dollar goes to programs specifically for girls.
Despite the fact that educating women and girls has a positive impact to transcend generations, resulting in better outcomes for their communities, in 2007 only fifty-four percent of countries had achieved gender parity in primary school. An extra year of secondary schooling increases a girl’s future wages by ten to twenty percent and makes her more likely to marry later, have fewer children, and seek healthcare for herself and children.
Although the U.N. has faced serious challenges in promoting gender equality globally – including inadequate funding- establishing U.N. Women has raised gender equality as a priority that is on par with other development priorities. Bachelet is up to the challenge: during her presidency, social protection and equal opportunity were her main priorities. She was praised for turning the Chilean government from machismo to maternal by legalizing alimony penalties to divorced women, tripling the number of free child care centers for low-income families, allowing breast-feeding at work, opening domestic violence shelters for women and children around the country, and admitting the first women into the Chilean Naval Academy. She placed equal numbers of women and men in top government jobs, including the cabinet.
Bachelet also comes with a unique perspective and experience as a Latin American woman. In Latin America especially, gender parity is lacking: data show that eighteen percent of women require a man’s permission before leaving home to visit family and friends. In more than eighty-five percent of Latin American countries, girls are more likely to die prematurely than boys. This gap in gender equality is directly corresponding to negative economic development. In Guatemala – the most populous country in Central America – more than half its people are living in poverty. As a result, vast disparities exist in education, health, and women’s empowerment, particularly with indigenous and rural populations. Twenty-eight percent of women want to use contraception but cannot, due to limited to health services – this has resulted in the highest fertility rate in Latin America (more than four children to the average woman). Expanding current U.N. programming that reaches the Guatemalan government, nonprofit and private sectors would drastically improve the lives of women on the ground.
The drive for greater international gender equality is increasing in the U.S., as well. With the recent administration, the U.S. government has explicitly linked the well-being of women with national and international security, development and economic stability. President Obama created the post of Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s issues to support the U.S. Department of State’s foreign policy activities related to the political, economic and social advancement of women.
ANALYSIS
U.N. Women has a lot of work to do, but it also has the potential to drastically change the global landscape for women and girls. Improving the lives of women and girls on the ground — ensuring that they are healthy, educated, and safe from violence – improves their lives, the lives of future generations, and their country’s global development. But U.N. Women will need worldwide support from governments, NGOs, and the private sector to be effective and efficient.
Because gender equality is a crucial component of development, human rights, peace, and national and international security, it is in the best regional and international interests of the United States to ensure U.N. Women is a success. While President Bachelet’s leadership has increased the potential power of the new entity, U.N. Women still needs U.S. government and congressional support to be successful – particularly because the start-up $500 million budget falls short of what is needed to achieve system-wide gender mainstreaming and effective gender equality programming.
There are three avenues for Congress to support U.N. Women: U.S. funding and participation in the entity; demonstrated support for global women’s issues in U.S. foreign policy; and oversight and monitoring of the new entity’s efficiency and effectiveness. Congress has the power to make or break women’s empowerment on the global development agenda by authorizing, appropriating or prohibiting U.S. financial contributions to the new entity.
Activists against U.S. support of U.N. Women argue that U.N. gender-related activities may not always align with U.S. foreign policy assistance priorities. Counter-arguments state that U.S. support could fiscally save the government on global development funds related to the empowerment of women.
There are 1.2 billion young people ages 10-19 in the world today, and more than half are adolescent girls living in developing countries. Investing in gender-specific resources in the areas of education, health services, reproductive health, and financial literacy will lead to better educated, safer, healthier, and economically-empowered adolescent girls. This can contribute to a substantially better future not just for the individual girls, but for their families, communities, and our world security. It is in the international community’s best interest – socially, economically, and developmentally — that U.N. Women is overwhelmingly successful and has the full support of the United States.
Leah Meadows works at the United Nations Foundation on the Women and Population Program.
