| inbluevt | Date: Saturday, 2013/09/14, 0:11 AM | Message # 1 | DMCA |
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The new head of the U.N. agency promoting women's rights says there is "a definite backlash" against equality for women despite some significant progress, pointing to an upsurge in violence against women and the uphill fight to escape poverty and crack the glass ceiling.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, who was South Africa's first female deputy president, said that 18 years after world leaders adopted a blueprint to achieve equality for women at a U.N. conference in Beijing there are still major economic and social barriers and new crimes to confront including trafficking of women and girls and cyber bullying.
"All of those means that we do need to go back to the drawing boards and strengthen the mechanisms and options that we have to engage in the fight to advance women's equality and emancipation," she said in an
interview Wednesday.Mlambo-Ngcuka said the campaign for equality of the sexes has been dominated by women and it needs to be broadened to include boys and men as well as the private sector.
"You need men — you just cannot crack these issues without winning over men," she said. "We need to win the priests, the rabbis, the traditional chiefs" to tackle religious and cultural barriers.
UN Women was created three years ago by the General Assembly to combine four U.N. bodies dealing with the advancement of women under a single umbrella. Its first leader, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet,
stepped down to run for president again.
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Message edited by inbluevt - Saturday, 2013/09/14, 0:14 AM |
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