IWD: Progress on women’s rights vanishing – UN Secretary-General

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Accra-Ghana, March 09, GNA – Mr António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, has called for action on several fronts, including online education, removal of systemic barriers, and a proactive approach to increase women’s participation and leadership in science and technology.
Mr Guterres made the call in his opening statement in observance of this year’s International Women’s Day (IWD), at the 67th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW67), currently underway at the UN Headquarters in New York from March 6 to March 17, 2023.
He said: “Around the world progress on women’s rights is vanishing before our eyes” and indicated that the latest forecasts had estimated that on the current track it would take another 300 years to reach full gender equality.
According to Mr Guterres “today’s cascading crises, from the war in Ukraine to the climate emergency, affect women and girls first and worst,” and that as part of the global pushback against democracy, women’s rights over their bodies and autonomy over their lives were also being questioned and denied.
He said: “Every ten minutes, one woman or girl is murdered by a family member or intimate partner. And one woman dies every two minutes during pregnancy or childbirth. Most of those deaths are entirely preventable.
“The two statistics make our failure very clear,” hence the need to urgently address the imbalance.
The Day’s theme, “DigitAll: Innovation and technology for gender equality”, is aligned with that of the 67th session of the CSW67, which would focus on “Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”.
The UN Secretary-General explained that focusing on women in science, technology and innovation, was key because it was one area where gender-based stereotypes and historical bias needed to be addressed.
He said data available to the UN, showed that globally, men were 21 percent more likely to be online than women, and that in the tech industry, the ratio was two males to one female, with an even worse ratio of five to one in Artificial Intelligence.
“We should all be alarmed by products and services that bake in gender inequality right from the start, and digitize patriarchy and misogyny. The Silicon Valleys of this world must not become Death Valleys for women’s rights,” he said.
Mr Guterres also warned against the acceptance of medical decisions based on data from men’s bodies, saying that “cannot only harm women; it can be deadly”.
He stated that the discrimination against women in science and technology was as the result of centuries of patriarchy, discrimination and damaging stereotypes, and leaving women to account for just three percent of Nobel Prize winners in scientific categories since 1901.
Also, the few women online, including scientists and journalists were often targeted for sexist hate speech and abuse designed to silence and shame them, he said.
He, therefore, encouraged all stakeholders on the IWD to commit to do better, to reverse the horrific trends and stand up for the lives and rights of women and girls everywhere, saying that was one of his core priorities and a central plank of the work of the United Nations around the world.