The question is not whether women can lead as capably as men. Instead asks why is women’s leadership invisible? How women lead for the wellbeing of all, in just five stories.
Women and Gender Equality
Gender equality is a fundamental human right as well as a cornerstone of a prosperous, modern economy generating sustainable inclusive growth. However, women around the world continue to be paid less than men. Globally, the gap in earnings between men and women stands at about 20%. On this first International Equal Pay Day, we must acknowledge that equal pay is still far from a reality. UN Women more about the gender pay gap. This first observance is also notable as it comes while the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, which has heightened inequalities at work and at home.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put over 11 million girls at risk of not returning to school, threatening decades of progress toward girls’ education and gender equality.
Women play critical roles when humanitarian crisis occurs. advocates for the urgent need to support women in humanitarian action. Women share their perspectives by video.
, , and partners are launching . The guide aims to help policymakers and practitioners in Ministries of Education address the gender dimensions of COVID-related school closures. It provides recommendations to ensure continuity of learning while schools are closed, and to establish plans for reopening schools in a way that is safe, gender-responsive and child-friendly, and meets the needs of the most marginalised girls.
When boys are valued more highly than girls, pressure to have a son is intense.?The preference for sons over daughters may be so pronounced that couples will go to great lengths to avoid giving birth to a girl or will fail to care for the health and well-being of a daughter they already have
Salwa, 35, has survived child marriage, three abusive husbands, crushing poverty and years of grinding conflict. After the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she also endured starvation. But now, only months after joining a women’s safe space and learning to sew, she is building a new life for herself thanks to a safe space established by and the Yemeni Women’s Union.
Zainab Bangura is the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Nairobi and worries for the health and safety of her staff and the populations they serve in the face COVID-19. As UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict from 2012-17, Zainab talks of the secondary trauma she felt after taking in the pain of countless accounts of rape inflicted on women and girls as a weapon of war in this 5th episode of Awake at Night.
portrays Maya Tutton, who with her sister, started the Our Streets Now campaign against public sexual harassment, the most common form of violence against women and girls.
In Focus: International Youth Day
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, young people across the world are demanding a fairer, more inclusive world for women and girls.
Meet six black women, who are leaders and trailblazers in their countries and communities.
“In the Dinka language, there is a saying: men eat first, then women, then children. But here we, as women, we eat beside the men.” Apande Dut smiles as she says this, sitting with a large group of women under the shade of a mango tree, shelling peanuts while nursing her children. The women are all members of a female-dominant farming group in the town of Rumbek, South Sudan. Up until 2018, both Apande and her fellow community member and friend, Agok, farmed on their own, but their farming knowledge was limited and with such difficult farming conditions, the food grown was never enough. Through sessions led by , the group received agricultural tools, information and trainings on agronomy, as well as business skills that translated into higher production and diversification of their produce.
The -funded Rural Development Programme in the Mountain Zones in Morocco has empowered the women of Azilal by helping scale-up their saffron business and by providing training.
As the coronavirus continues to spread worldwide, in developing countries it’s rural girls who are proving to be the most vulnerable to abuse during economic collapse and lockdown.