A NEW report from UN Women launched on Wednesday, showed that gender equality remains the unfinished business of our time – and the private sector is indispensable for closing the gap.
The report was launched on the sidelines of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.
The report, “Unfinished Business: Private Sector and Gender Equality – Transforming Corporate Commitments into Equality for All Women and Girls, shows how closing gender gaps is imperative.
It showed how closing gender gaps is both a moral and legal imperative and good for business and economies.
The report highlighted how laws and regulations were driving advances in pay transparency, diversity, and safe workplaces.
Yet despite these positive actions, the report found that gender equality gains remained too modest, uneven, under-reported, subject to backlash or reversal – and real harm is still happening.
Women make up only 39 per cent of the global workforce, and remained concentrated in lower-paying roles, face persistent wage gaps of 20 per cent, and experience higher rates of workplace sexual harassment.
Kirsi Madi, UN Women Deputy Executive Director said that “we must all act together, now, to close the gap between commitment and actual outcomes.”
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the UN opened its high-level week on Monday with the celebration of the Beijing declaration, marking the 30th Anniversary of the pivotal international conference on women’s empowerment.
Executive Director of gender-equality agency UN Women, Sima Bahous remarked that girls were far more likely to finish school today, than at any other time in history.
The number of women in parliament has almost doubled and nearly 100 discriminatory laws had been reversed around the world in the past five years alone.
“Every step forward proved the same truth: gender equality works,”. Bahous said, adding that” progress has not been fast enough.”
A new report from UN Women released earlier this month found that none of the gender equality Sustainable Development Goals were on track.
Furthermore, 676 million women and girls now lived under the shadow of deadly conflict – the highest recorded since the 1990s. (NAN)
