gender equality

Egypt has achieved little regarding the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) third Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of promoting gender equality, said National Council for Women (NCW) Chairman Mervat Al-Tallawi.

President Michelle Bachelet expressed pride in realizing a “lifelong cause” Thursday when she sent a bill to establish a ministry that would champion the country’s women and contribute to diminishing the gender inequality that runs deep and wide across Chilean society.

Leading female figures from the public and private sector were in attendance at La Moneda as the president officially signed a proposal to create the Women and Gender Equality Ministry. The bill has all cabinet ministers’ signatures, and now faces the journey through Congress.

UN Member states have agreed that gender equality and women's rights must be prioritised in future discussions on what should be included in the next set of sustainable development goals.

The meaningful role women should play in parliament is to have an impact in changing the nature of politics and to create more honest government.

In a bid to achieve gender equality and promote womens rights in Indonesia, the country needs to put more women in parliament, which is responsible for legislating laws that are critical to changing the situation of women.

We invite you to read the full article published March 24, 2014

Recent advances made in technology have tremendously changed the way information is being shared in today's societies. However, adapting these advances in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for the benefit of women's and girls empowerment still remain a challenge for many states and actors. On Friday 14 March 2014, UN Women organized a round-table discussion on the role of  ICT for women’s economic empowerment and poverty reduction moderated by Liz Ford, Deputy Editor at the Guardian.

A year ago, Egyptian politician and women's rights activist Mervat Tallawy defied the Muslim Brotherhood to spearhead the adoption of a U.N. blueprint to combat violence against women. Now she's back campaigning against conservatives to ensure that equality for women remains at the top of the U.N. agenda.

Human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights.”

So proclaimed Hillary Clinton, US First Lady at the United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995, in a landmark speech of her career.

Despite Clinton’s words echoing around the world for close on 20 years, one must ask: What has changed?

As many as 556 women contested from various national and regional parties during the 2009 general elections for the 15th Lok Sabha. Out of them 134 contested from the national parties, 27 state parties, 188 from registered parties (unrecognized) and 207 independents. 

When it came to parties in specific, BJP fielded 44 women contestants while INC fielded 43 women. Out of these, 23 women contestants from INC and 13 women contestants from BJP won the Elections.