It’s International Women’s Day on Tuesday,
and campaigners, politicians and businesses around the world are uniting around
the theme “pledge for parity,” to discuss how best to achieve equality between
men and women across the globe.
To mark the day, we’ve asked six women to give us one
idea they think would, if carried out, make the world a better place for women.
Talk
about sex
Mona
Eltahawy—author of Headscarves and Hymens
Talking about sex, sharing our knowledge of sex and
insisting on our rights as women—especially those of us from conservative
backgrounds—would make life better for all girls and women.
Saying, emphatically, “I own my body” makes the fight
against FGM, marital rape, street sexual harassment and attempts by
conservatives and religious zealots around the world against a woman’s right to
a safe and legal abortion, a woman’s right to choose if she has children at
all, revolutionary acts.
Most importantly, “I own my body” means it’s my right
to have sex with whomever (with their consent, obviously), whenever,
inside/outside marriage, with a woman or a man. The statement makes fighting
homophobia a revolutionary act.
The more women talk about sex, unashamedly, the more
we smash taboos and silences which hurt the most vulnerable—girls and women.
Commit
to results
Jodi
Nelson PhD—Senior Vice President, Policy & Practice, International Rescue
Committee
For some 30 million conflict-affected women and girls
around the world, the rhetoric of equal opportunity does not translate into
reality. Women and girls often face a double or even triple threat in conflict
and displacement settings. They are at increased risk of rape, sexual
exploitation, early and forced marriage. More than half of the world’s maternal
deaths occur in conflict-affected and fragile states.
But the news isn’t all bad. The International Rescue
Committee has had the fortune to work with women living in these settings for
decades. We know that there is an enormous amount that can be done to tackle
the issues that perpetuate gender based violence and undermine gender equality.
First, especially during the height of humanitarian crises, women need access
to survivor services including both primary and mental health care. Second,
improving outcomes for women’s education and income is essential to their
wellbeing and must be equally prioritized. Finally, empowerment is critical and
multi-faceted. Our research from Burundi, for example, shows that social and
economic activities combined can increase women’s household decision making
power and, as a result, decrease violence in the home.
While IRC and many of our peer agencies and partners
implement high quality programs to support women in conflict, there remains a
substantial gap between the scale of women’s needs and the current
international response. As a first step to closing this gap, we need to increase
our accountability to women and girls by defining and aligning on common
outcomes related to their health, education, safety, empowerment and economic
well-being. We need to continue to measure all of our progress and invest in
evidence about what works best to achieve these results and at what cost. It is
only with a real commitment to results that we can help women and girls living
in war regain control over their lives and develop solutions for their future.
Equal
Paternity Rights
Jess
Phillips—U.K. Labour Party MP
Equal paternity rights for men would make women’s
lives better. If men were entitled to exactly the same as women when their
babies were born (6 weeks at 90 percent pay and 33 weeks at statutory paternity
rates in the U.K.), eventually we would narrow the gender pay gap.
This should not be instead of mothers’ leave
entitlement but as well as. Each parent should be able to choose a time in the
first three years of their child’s life when they wanted their individual
leave. This would reduce the cost of childcare, giving two parent families 18
months of time off work.
A childcare subsidy specifically for single parent
families to make up the additional nine months they miss out on could even the
playing field. It would stop childcare costs always being seen in terms
of women’s wages (or lack of). It would mean that both men and women took
career breaks and would end the penalties which currently fall on women for
doing this.
This change would mean that in a job interview women
of a certain age would be judged exactly the same as their male counterparts,
who would now also face questions like “do you have any children?.” Both men
and women would be considered a similar risk. The change would teach our
children that caring is both parents’ jobs, as is breadwinning. My husband
would have leapt at the chance to take leave to raise his kids. He is pretty
brilliant, but I don’t think he is that rare.
Financial
empowerment
Vicky
Pryce—Chief Economic Advisor at CEBR
Women need to be financially empowered — this is the only way to achieve
equality. They need free childcare to allow them to work and earn and there
should be quotas for women across the board for senior executive positions and
in politics and society more generally.
No countries that I know have quotas for executive
positions—but most Nordic countries have quotas for boards
(and political positions), though that gets you only partly there. There is
still a huge amount to do to increase the number of female chief executives in
those countries, which remains low. But women are encouraged to return to the
workplace through very generous parental leave and seriously subsidised
childcare. Norway has board targets for listed companies (40 percent) and
Iceland and Finland have similar targets. Sweden has a big childcare subsidy.
In my view you need both—quotas in
senior management positions to change culture and free or at least affordable
childcare that in the end pays for itself through the taxes paid by women at
work and the higher earnings they have—as well as
being less of a drain on public finances.
Teach
feminism in schools
Ms
Afropolitan—African feminist blogger
Feminism should be taught in schools, that is, it
should be included in history, social sciences, sports etc. Teaching girls
about girls and women's history, as well as teaching them about their rights—to
control their bodies, finances, choices etc. would make the world a far more
progressive, interesting, and just place.
The reason this is especially important is because
girls and boys who are taught to see themselves as equal are able to build more
progressive societies in which citizens thrive to the greatest possible extent.
Feminism being taught in schools would aid the realisation of girls' and
women's rights.
It’s
my body
Catherine
Murphy—Policy Advisor, Amnesty International
Amnesty International is campaigning to stop the
control and criminalization of sexuality and reproduction.
It is unacceptable that in the twenty-first century
governments still seek control of women’s decisions, condoning child marriage
and marital rape or outlawing sex outside marriage and same-sex sexual
activity.
Roughly a quarter of the world's population live in
countries with laws that either ban abortion entirely or allow it only it when
a woman's life in danger. In El Salvador abortions are banned, and women
jailed, even when the patient’s life depends on it. In Ireland, it is only
allowed if a woman is at risk of dying, meaning women who seek abortions are
treated like criminals, stigmatized and forced to travel abroad.
We want governments to protect people’s right to make
decisions about their bodies and their lives without state control, fear,
coercion or discrimination. Women should be able to tell their governments
“back off, it is my body, and my rights.”
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