A Two-Day Late IWD Post
Last week, across much of the world, private companies, governments, and a range of community organisations celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD).
It’s not my place to make any judgement or assessment of those celebrations, although I sure have read a few of those this year. For me, IWD is an opportunity to reflect on, and write about, the state of women’s rights and gender equality across the world.
So, here I write.
68th annual Commission on the Status of Women
Next week, the 68th annual Commission on the Status of Women will gather to discuss gender equality and women’s empowerment. Ahead of this, the Commission has released a report in line with the IWD 2024 theme – “Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.”
I encourage you to read through the Commission’s report, you can download it at the in-text link just above. In fact, why not make that a part of your annual IWD routine?
Read it while eating your IWD cupcakes if you so partake.
I’ve read this year’s report and will draw out some of what stuck out to me in this blog post. I’ll do the same each year the annual Commission on the Status of Women meets and produces such a report. Anything not referenced here is from within the report.
Climate change
Let’s start with a worst-case scenario. The worst-case climate scenario to be precise.
Modelling suggests that by the year 2050, soaring temperatures and subsequent climate change impacts might push up to 158.3 million more women and girls into poverty. The impact of climate change and loss of biodiversity on women who already live in poverty is amplified due to their greater reliance on natural resources for food, water, and fuel.
Want to make IWD matter? This one is simple. Take real action on climate change.
On the topic of climate change. Did you know that most climate-related finance (71% in 2020) provided by developing countries is in the form of a loan, rather than a grant? Despite contributing the least to the climate crisis, the burden of loan repayments attributed to funding to deal with the impacts of climate change sits squarely with the developing countries in which these impacts are the most severe.
Other Global Factors
However, it’s not just climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation that have (and likely will) disproportionally deepen the poverty being experienced by women. Poverty and inequality have been exasperated in recent years by:
COVID-19
Geopolitical tensions
War
Unsustainable levels of foreign debt
Cost of living crisis
Poverty
Currently, 10.3% of all women live in poverty. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of ‘No Poverty’, progress needs to be made at 26 (yes, twenty-six) times the pace that it is now.
The reality of poverty is well beyond not having access to income or wealth. Poverty is the “result of a blatant systemic failure leading to a vicious cycle of exclusion and discrimination that violates the civil, cultural, economic, environmental, political and social rights of both present and future generations”.
The poverty experienced by 1 in 10 women is strongly driven by a lack of access to land, health care and family planning, education, and the labour market. It seems accurate to say that this is the case in both Australia and where the majority of women in poverty are located, sub-Saharan Africa.
Want to make IWD matter? Support reforms to the housing market. Promote affordable access to healthcare for women. Support increasing and maintaining women’s participation in education and employment.
Unpaid Care and Domestic Work
2.8 hours per day.
19.6 hours per week.
1019 hours per year.
That is the average amount of additional hours that women spend performing unpaid care and domestic work than men do.
Yes, this work sustains economies and societies, but it is often undervalued and unrecognised. This imbalance is one of the main factors contributing to higher poverty rates among women. Coupled with existing conditions of poverty, the reliance on women completing unpaid care and domestic work is even more challenging due to a lack of access to infrastructure such as water, sanitation and electricity.
Want IWD to matter? Play your role in countering (ideologically and physically) the gendered stereotypes around unpaid care and domestic work.
Intimate Partner Violence
The impacts of intimate partner violence on women go far beyond the alarming risk of death and physical harm that we see on our screens.
Not only does poverty increase risk factors associated with intimate partner violence, but being subjected to violence creates additional impediments to accessing employment and education, and can therefore result in a loss of earnings and learning opportunities. It can also increase the risk of economic hardship due to out-of-pocket health expenditures.
The lack of equal access to the labour market that results from being subjugated to intimate partner violence subsequently results in lower superannuation amounts, and a higher likelihood of experiencing further violence, poverty, and homelessness in older age.
Want IWD to matter? Take meaningful action against domestic and intimate partner violence.
Aggregated Data
We recently saw published the median gender pay gaps of private Australian companies with 100 or more workers. Public access to data like this is an important step towards gender equality. Lacking access to sex-aggregated income and poverty data is a significant roadblock for policymakers and advocates, and only 42 per cent of countries with recent official statistics on income poverty can disaggregate this data by sex.
Want IWD to matter? Support ongoing access to sex-aggregated income data, and realise the importance of data collection and publishing in promoting gender equality.
Report Recommendations
The report goes on to discuss ways to strengthen financing and institutions towards ending women’s and girls’ poverty, and how to best foster new development strategies towards sustainable economies and societies.
Pages 16 to 18 provide a range of recommendations to Governments and stakeholders. I won’t repeat them all here, except to highlight the following:
“…Governments and other stakeholders should: Fulfil existing commitments and obligations under the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and its follow-up processes related to financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, including: to recommit to adopting and strengthening sound policies and enforceable legislation and transformative actions for the promotion of gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment at all levels; to ensure women’s equal rights, access and opportunities for participation and leadership in the economy; and to eliminate gender-based violence and discrimination in all its forms;”
