Robust blueprint to end women poverty

Commission calls for gender responsive economic policies

NEW YORK: The 68th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68) delivered robust commitments by UN member states to strengthen financing and institutions to eradicate women’s and girls’ poverty.

Globally, 10.3% of women live in extreme poverty today, according to a report presented by the UN secretary-general to the commission, and progress towards ending poverty needs to be 26 times faster to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to a UN Women press release.

(UN Women is the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.)

The outcome document recognises that women and girls living in poverty become “shock absorbers” in times of crises and that further efforts are needed to increase resources to address women’s and girls’ poverty.

Acknowledging that the international financial architecture is not fit for a crisisprone world, the commission called for reforms to enable countries to mobilise and invest resources in gender equality.

These measures include debt relief and progressive taxation, and ensuring that public resources are allocated to address the needs and rights of women and girls.

The outcome document also notes that official development assistance must be increased to address women’s and girls’ poverty. The share of total aid with gender equality as a policy objective decreased for the first time in a decade from 45% in 2019 to 43% in 2020, according to the latest data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The press release says that the commission also called for the implementation of genderresponsive economic and social policies, including increased women’s representation, leadership, and participation in economic institutions, enforcing core labour standards to ensure equal pay for work of equal value, and implementing policies to support women-owned businesses.

During the session, the commission also adopted a resolution on HIV-AIDS led by the Southern African Development Community, which calls to increase investment in gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in the HIV-AIDS response.

The two-week session is the largest UN gathering on gender equality. It brought together world leaders, including two heads of state, three vice-presidents, over 100 ministers, and 4,800 representatives of civil society organisations, marking the secondhighest attendance in CSW records.

On the sidelines of the sessions, about 270 side events were organised by UN member states, intergovernmental organisations, and UN entities, and more than 760 parallel events were organised by civil society and youth-led organisations as part of the NGO Forum.

Attention is now turning to next year’s 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women will take place from March 10 to 21, 2025 in New York. –