The war on poverty cannot be won unless much greater efforts are made to give women equality, says the annual UN Population Fund report, published on Wednesday.
The report calls for government action to free women from the poverty and ignorance often forced upon them by cultural confines in many countries, which has an economic as well as a social toll.
”I am here today to say that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history,” said the UNFPA’s executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, at the report’s launch. ”We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls. We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic, and political rights.”
Each year more than 500 000 women die in childbirth, says the report, with most being preventable. Around 76-million women become pregnant unintentionally because they do not have access to contraception.
There are about 19-million abortions every year, many of which are carried out unsafely in backstreet clinics and sometimes lead to disability or death.
About 600-million women are illiterate, compared with 320-million men. Yet educating and empowering women delivers quick benefits, the report says. They earn money for their family, have fewer children and, in turn, educate them.
Educated women tend to be able to protect themselves better against HIV — which affects more women than men in Africa. Studies have also shown that when women control the purse strings, they are likely to spend more of the money on the needs of the family than men do.
More than 1,7-billion women are in their reproductive years (aged 15-49). Giving women access to birth control and the education and status to decide for themselves if and when to have children will control the expanding world population, says the report. Today’s population stands at almost 6,5-billion and, if things continue as they are, will rise to 9,1-billion in 2050.
The low status of women in the family and in society is reflected in the scale of violence against them, says the report. One in three women around the world is likely to suffer physical, sexual or other abuse in her lifetime, usually at the hands of a family member or someone she knows. Half of the sexual assaults in the world are on girls of 15 or younger.
In developing countries, rural women are responsible for 60 to 80% of food production, but many governments will not allow a woman to own land or to sell it without her husband’s permission. A woman who is widowed often falls into destitution, stripped of land and property and unable to earn money or grow food.
The millennium development goals set by the UN aimed to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015. One of those goals — to promote gender equality and empower women — is central to the remaining goals, says the report.
”Many leaders call for free trade to spur economic growth,” said Obaid. ”It is time to call for action to free women of the discrimination, violence and poor health that they face in their daily lives.
”And I can assure you that women all over the world are tired of promises, promises, promises. The time has come; we have the means, we have the commitment. Now we need action.” – Guardian Unlimited Â