China shares experience in gender equality at UN meeting
A Chinese delegation shared the country’s experience in achieving gender equality and empowering women and girls on Tuesday at a UN meeting focused on women’s issues.
The 68th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, or CSW, which runs from Monday through next Friday, is an annual meeting to address the inequalities, violence and discrimination against women.
“Improving mechanisms and continuous investment are the core conditions for achieving gender equality,” said Huang Xiaowei, head of the Chinese delegation and deputy director of the National Working Committee on Children and Women under State Council, sharing China’s experience and progress at a ministerial round table on the priority theme of the CSW.
She said this was “to ensure the fruits of economic and social development benefit a wider range of women more fairly”, while also explaining that the main approaches include developing national and local action plans, establishing a well-coordinated interdepartmental mechanism and increasing diversified inputs that benefit women.
At a CSW side event on closing the gender gap in education, Huang said China “regards educational equity as the basic goal and policy of modernization”.
China has “developed strategies and measures to eliminate gender gaps at all levels of education” and “ensures the equal right to education for girls and women”, she said.
New opportunities
“As the world undergoes significant changes not seen in a century, the global cause for women faces tremendous challenges but also harbors new opportunities.”
Under such context, China calls for building a foundation for woman’s security, she said.
That can be done by “further improving laws and policies, increasing the supply of resources, strengthening public services, eliminating prejudice, discrimination and violence against women, cracking down on violations of women’s rights, and elevating the protection of women’s rights to the will of the country and internalizing it into social behavioral norms”, she said.
“We should enhance education for girls and women, promote women’s employment and entrepreneurship, support women’s economic empowerment, ensure women’s equal participation in high-quality development and national governance, help women overcome livelihood difficulties and developmental gaps, and thus injecting new vitality into sustainable development.”
To address women’s current issues, China also calls for building a bridge for global cooperation, she said. “Strengthen exchanges and cooperation in areas such as poverty reduction, food security, pandemic response and vaccines, and the digital economy.”