The pandemic has exposed what women need. Now it’s time to act

The most significant global gathering to take up the cause of women in 25 years is taking a hard look at the obstacles women face — and how the pandemic has worsened these — but also offers some urgent practical redress.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, and Melinda French Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, held a joint briefing on Tuesday evening ahead of the Generation Equality Forum taking place from June 30 to July 2 in Paris.

This high-level summit was supposed to happen in 2020, to mark 25 years since the milestone Women’s Conference in Beijing, but was delayed for a year because of the coronavirus. 

Participants are assessing how much has been achieved by the six action coalitions established after Beijing, and are setting goals for the next decade.

“We hope that these action coalitions will have put in place the road map for the future, so we can measure progress from here to 2030,” Gates said. “Gender inequality is not a problem we can ignore any longer, especially in the pandemic, which has highlighted where these issues show up for society and what’s holding women back.

Gender inequality is not a problem we can ignore any longer, especially in the pandemic, which has highlighted where these issues show up for society and what’s holding women back.

“The Generation Equality Forum is bringing together government, private sector and civil society partners from all over the world to commit to these really ambitious action plans. We haven’t had a moment like this for women and girls in a quarter of a century, and it could not have come at a more important time. It’s a moment for leaders to come together and be prepared to say what they are willing to do.”

Mlambo-Ngcuka, who has been part of evaluating the progress of the Beijing sustainable development goals set 25 years ago, said: “We are here not so much to reflect on what is wrong but on what we are going to do. Melinda’s foundation is making a significant commitment, and many others are making similar commitments to the women’s agenda. It is important for us, in the UN and on a broader level, to realise that we cannot do this work alone.”

Explaining the name of the forum, Mlambo-Ngcuka said: “Generation Equality is about this generation, from the oldest to the youngest, but centred especially on adolescent girls and the youth who will be the ones to take things forward so that we arrive in a better place in 2030. It has never happened before at the UN that so many stakeholders have come together at the same time, committed to the same issues, have put money on the table and changed laws and policies in their countries.”

Gates and Mlambo-Ngcuka are encouraged by the participation of many African countries. 

“The AU is now firmly at the table, from President Ramaphosa to the leaders of the DRC, Senegal and others,” said Gates. “President Kenyatta has been leading a funding initiative to prevent gender-based violence in Kenya. Leaders in Burkina Faso have been active in the bodily autonomy, sexual and reproductive health rights action coalition and have banded together with eight countries in Francophone West Africa in making regional commitments that will be announced at the forum.”

SA has been a co-leader of the economic justice and rights action coalition, which seeks to prioritise women-led businesses as well as address other obstacles hampering women’s progress.

“What the pandemic has exposed, which we’ve had in the background for a long time, is that women do caregiving work every single day. On average round the world women do seven hours more of unpaid labour a day than men do,” said Gates. “That has increased during the pandemic. Caregiving and gender-based violence are the two things that most hold women back from taking their full position of power and influence in society.”

At the forum, the economic justice and rights action coalition will be making announcements from different governments about changes to be implemented in their caregiving systems. 

We are pushing that in every country we should not have a backlog of cases about women. Justice must be seen to be believed and perpetrators must know that there is a cost when you violate women.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said: “This initiative aims to create 81 million jobs, most of which will go to women. Two thirds of the jobs lost during the pandemic were lost by women. We are also examining laws around the world that constrain women from making their entry into the workplace easily, and we are trying to make sure that the infrastructure for education that makes virtual learning possible, no matter where you are, becomes a reality. We are literally going to ministers of education as well as to communities to make sure we have progress in this area.”

The Gates Foundation has pledged $2.1bn to be spent over the next five years in women’s economic empowerment, family planning and women’s health, and women’s leadership.

Such commitments are encouraging as well as critically needed. A section of the forum is aimed at transforming the way law-enforcement bodies deal with gender-based violence.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said: “About 50 countries have come together and will be announcing the ways in which they will work towards gender-responsive policing. The UN has worked with them over the last month in preparing guidelines aimed at both preventing GBV and prosecuting those who harm and hurt women. We are pushing that in every country we should not have a backlog of cases about women. Justice must be seen to be believed and perpetrators must know that there is a cost when you violate women.”

The Generation Equality Forum ends tomorrow. Visit here for more.