AC/UNU Millennium Project
Updating the Global Challenges Facing Humanity
11. Status of Women
How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?

This is the short description of the challenge as appears in the print version of the 2006 State of the Future report. The more complete version of this challenge along with actions to address it, graphs, and indicators to measure change is available on the CD-ROM included with the report.
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General Description

“Gender-based violence is perhaps the most widespread and socially tolerated of human rights violations,” according to UNFPA’s State of World Population 2005 report. WHO reports that after diseases and hunger, violence against women is the greatest cause of death among women. In addition, WHO notes that one in five women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime and that, depending on the country, 10–69% of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives. Amnesty International estimates this figure to be about 33% worldwide. UNIFEM also says one in three women will suffer some form of violence in her lifetime. Some 80% of the world’s refugees are women and children. Two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people age 15 and older are female. About 80% of the 600,000–800,000 individuals trafficked per year are female, making it the “largest slave trade in history” and one of the fastest-growing areas of organized crime. Some 2 million children, mostly girls, are believed to be sex slaves in the multi-billion-dollar sex industry.

Improving the political and economic status of women is one of the most cost-effective ways to address the other 14 Global Challenges in this chapter. Progress has been accomplished in girls’ access to education, women’s membership in parliaments, their participation in the cash economy, the use of condoms, and their access to medical facilities. Women accounted for 16.6% of parliamentary membership around the world in 2005, compared with 15.9% in 2004. Girls’ secondary schools enrollments are now about 90% of boys’ enrollments. Women earn on average two-thirds to three-fourths as much as men for the same work.

Increasing women’s education and participation in the cash economy translates into improved health, nutrition, and education for children, as well as lower infant mortality and birth rates. Since there are more women than men in universities in many countries that limit women’s professional work, the “female brain drain” could become an issue in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Japan. Women can cut through cultural hierarchies via Internet access to S&T and financial information denied them in the past. The potential impact of gender perspectives on preventive diplomacy or peace-building remains seriously under-researched, but field workers agree that women find common ground for peaceful resolutions more easily than men do.

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Approaches to address this challenge

Challenge 11 will be addressed seriously when gender parity in school enrollment, literacy, and access to capital is achieved, when laws that discriminate against women are eliminated, and when there are essentially equal numbers of women in national parliaments and cabinets. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women should be implemented, as should the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 passed in 2000, by creating national action plans as well as a UN system-wide implementation plan with clearly defined goals and indicators, all of which require better statistics on women. Establishing truth and reconciliation commissions on violence against women in armed conflict would help end impunity. It should be a requirement that 30% of the board of companies with state participation consist of at least 30% of each sex.

Gender-based Gini co-efficient and other gender parity indexes should be encouraged, as should women’s education for political responsibilities, fostering solidarity instead of competition, guaranteeing the legal rights of women such as access to credit, land, technology, training, health care, and child care, and establishment of women’s political and economic networking organizations. This is of particular importance to rural, migrant, refugee, internally displaced, and disabled women. Such an effort includes educating men to fully respect women and directly working with the media, which too often perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes. Although discussions about the changing role of women are increasing, it may be necessary to explore sanctions against governments that do not guarantee women’s rights.

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Regional Considerations

Africa: Liberia elected a woman president. Rwanda has the world’s largest percent of women in parliament (49%); sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has 16.6%, the same as the world average. In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by her intimate partner. In sub-Saharan Africa, one in six women is likely to die as a consequence of pregnancy, compared with 1 in 2,800 in industrial countries. Worldwide, 77% of all HIV-positive women are African. The dropout rate for adolescent girls in Africa is very high. Uganda eliminated school fees to help close the educational gender gap.

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Asia and Oceania: Intimate partner violence in Thailand is the leading cause of death for women and girls between the ages of 15 and 24. At least 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia due to the abortion of female fetuses, female infanticide, and deliberate neglect and starvation of baby girls. China funds pension plans for parents with daughters to counter male-only child preferences. Some 40% of Internet users in China are women. Arab women are the majority of students in many universities in the Middle East, but only account for 7.7% of the parliaments in Arab countries. Migration may be necessary for advanced professional employment for many women.

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Europe: Norway requires that the boards of all companies registered at its stock market consist of at least 40% of each sex. About 57% of EU women work. Women head 85% of the single-parent families and average 15% less pay for equal work than men. Women’s salaries in Russia are 36% less than men’s. Since men are not taking more family responsibilities, women want improved public and private infrastructures allowing mothers to continue their professional carriers, yet they worry about reduced quality time for family life. About 700,000 East European women are sex slaves in Western Europe. The EC-funded European Institute for Gender Equality Gender Equality opens in 2007.

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Latin America: While women in Latin America and the Caribbean have seen enormous progress in the protection of their human rights over the past few years, unsafe abortion is a serious public health problem and continues to be one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the region. Abortion remains illegal on nearly all grounds in most countries. Governments need to change laws about rape, sexual harassment, and equal pay for women. One of the greatest challenges to the region is changing male “machismo” attitudes.

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North America: The U.S. performs particularly well on women’s educational attainment and only slightly less so on economic participation and political empowerment. However, it ranks poorly on maternity leave and related maternity benefits and childcare. Canada is ranked seventh in the world by the World Economic Forum’s Women’s Empowerment measurements while the U.S. is seventeenth. Single-mother households are raising a third of the children living in poverty in the U.S., which still has not ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

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Graph: Women in National Parliaments (percentage)
women in parliament
Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union

If you want to suggest a better graphic representation for this challenge, please indicate the source(s) of data:

Additional Comments
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Thank you for your participation. The results will be sent to you in the 2007 State of the Future in August 2007.



Survey conducted by the Millennium Project of the ACUNU