Empowering Women = Economic Development

On November 16, 2007, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro stated, “When women are empowered, all of society benefits.” In speaking at the International Women Leaders Global Security Summit in New York that day, she elaborated upon the importance of empowering women to build healthier, better educated, more peaceful and more prosperous societies.

The international community has acknowledged the fact that achieving gender equality and empowering women is not only a goal in itself. It is also a condition for advancing development, peace, and security. As set forth by the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), gender equality is one of the main objectives to be achieved by 2015. Nevertheless, as the Deputy Secretary-General claims, “Study after study has shown us that, when women are fully empowered and engaged, all of society benefits. Only in this way can we successfully take on the enormous challenges confronting our world -- from conflict resolution and peace building to fighting AIDS and reaching all the other Millennium Development Goals.” Therefore, it seems that there is much more to do in order accomplish these MDGs. Though the goals sound extraordinary on paper, making real world progress is complicated and complex; financial support as wells societal changes must be coordinated to achieve such goals.

As of October 2000, the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 which discussed women, peace, and security. This particular resolution was ‘a landmark on many fronts’ according to Migiro because it established the increasing, disproportionate and unconscionable tolls that modern conflict has taken on women and girls. Ultimately, there have been global goals and commitments focused on empowering women, but implementing them fully have been the greatest adversity. In her speech, Deputy Secretary-General Migiro commented that, “We [member states] in the United Nations system need to work better with Governments to establish truly joint programs, driven by national priorities. We need to work better as a team, so as to give countries access to a common entry point. And we need to appoint more women in leadership positions, at headquarters and in our peace operations around the world.” Recent studies have shown that in almost all countries, women continue to be underrepresented in decision-making positions. Furthermore, women’s work continues to be undervalued, underpaid, or not paid at all. Out of more than 100 million children who are not in school, the majority are girls. Out of more than 800 million adults who cannot read, the majority are women. Accordingly, violence against women and girls continues unabated in every continent, country and culture. Thus, Migiro prescribes specific changes required to alleviate the current situation:

• Ensuring that men take on a greater role in household and family care
• Challenging traditions and customs, stereotypes and harmful practices, that stand in the way of women and girls
• Ensuring that women have access to education and health care, property and land;
• Investing in infrastructure to make it easier for women and girls to go about the daily business of obtaining safe drinking water and food
• Integrating gender issues into the follow-up to United Nations resolutions and decisions including the work of recently established bodies such as the Peace Building Commission and the Human Rights Council.

Overall, there is a dire need for governments, international organizations, civil societies and private sectors to work together in partnership to ensure that these objectives instituted by the MDGs are fulfilled. However, it is because of illegitimate practices, as in those described in a fellow international relations colleague’s blog (IYE.ART), that hinder such efforts. In is essential that a true international effort be enacted to not only achieve global gendered equality, but more importantly, economic development; the key of which can solve the world’s problems.

Environmentally Friendly Energy Resources? No Thanks, Coal is Preferred

Current discourse about environmental sustainability and global warming is at an all time high. With all those hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, lurking on every street corner and movies, which wasn’t really a movie at all but a rather elongated PowerPoint presentation, like Al Gore’s and Inconvenient Truth hitting the big screen, more and more people are becoming aware of the potential environmental problems we face in the near future. Even the seventh goal of the United Nations’ MDGs is focused on environmental sustainability while promoting economic growth. However, according to a recent Associated Press article entitled, “World's coal dependency hits environment,” the international effort to integrate alternative energy resources is far from becoming a reality. In fact, dependency on coal is expected to drastically increase by 60 percent by 2030 to 6.9 billion tons a year. How then, can the UN increase environmental sustainability when the world continues to destroy the environment by consuming fossil fuels?

Coal is simply cheap and abundant. It is the fuel of choice in much of the world with a majority of it going towards electrical power plants. Accordingly, the fossil fuel is responsible for the economic booms in China and India and it has seemingly lifted millions of people out of poverty. Of course it is great to see economic development in parts of the world where poverty has been a longstanding issue, but because of the pollutants emitted by the burning of coal, the environment has suffered drastically. Most of the buzz on global warming today is an externality of carbon emissions. An atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, Dan Jaffe, states, “Hands down, coal is by far the dirtiest pollutant.” The growth of coal-burning is also directly related to environmental and health issues including acid rain and asthma. An estimated 2 million people are killed prematurely as a result of air pollution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It would be politically incorrect to point fingers at individual nations with respects to who is responsible for global warming because every nation has made their contributions. Yet, recent trends have shown that some countries are contributing more to the carbon mission than others. In fact, China and India have been on the forefront of polluting the environment. It takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. An AP Environmental Writer, Michael Casey, comments in an article that it takes 5 to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. China’s pollutants have been found in the form of mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon's Willamette River and contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea.

Despite all the environmental concerns, China shows little desire to convert to alternative energy. A prime example would be population of the town of Taiyuan and the surrounding Shanxi Province. This area is China's top coal-producing region and one of its most polluted. Nevertheless, coal has turned poor farmers in this city of 3 million people into Mercedes-driving millionaires. Therefore, it all comes down to the power of money. I guess it’s time to think about what’s more important; a sustainable planet for future generations or wealth and pleasure today?

163 Million Women are Missing in Asia...

It’s too late for sorry. The United Nations’ failing attempts to achieve their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unrealistic as gender inequality continues to exist amidst the rapidly approaching 2015 deadline.

Experts at the 4th Asia Pacific Conference on Reproductive and Sexual Health and Rights have estimated that there are 163 million women ‘missing’ in the Asia-Pacific region.

Therefore, with one of the main objectives of the MDGs being to promote gender equality, the overlying question here is how does the international community expect to empower women when there aren’t any to begin with?

But where have all these girls gone? The answer to this mind-boggling question can be best explained by studies commissioned by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). According to their research, millions of women have gone missing as result of modern gender determination techniques and selective abortions. Countries that have been contributing to the skewed sex ratios at birth (SRB) are the likes of China and India. The two nations have yielded SRBs amounting to just 100 females for every 120 males and 108 males per 100 females, respectively, according to the country’s 2001 census. The deputy executive director for UNFPA stated in a recent press conference, “We place it (skewed SRB) in the context of discrimination against women.” Yet it’s not to say that the countries with the most skewed SRBs have neglected this phenomenon. Renuka Chowdhry, India’s junior minister for women and child development describes the situation as, “When there is no economic recognition to women’s work and no social value attached to this particular gender, when resource sharing remains inequitable, when women are paid less then it becomes easier to do away with this gender.”

However, the most disturbing part of this whole ordeal is that initiatives enacted to mediate the problem have only been addressed as a result of the MDGs in 2000. But, knowledge of this ‘gendercide’ had been presented to the international community two decades ago in 1980.

In the late 1980s, Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Amartya Sen coined the term ‘missing women’ to describe the great numbers of women in the world who are literally not alive due to family neglect and discrimination. He estimated that in 1980, there were 100 million women missing, of which 50 million were accounted for in India alone.

Since Sen’s studies in the late 80s, experts have asserted that women are missing in South Asia not only due to neglect. In many cases, girls are missing because they are murdered at birth, or never allowed to be born. In South Asia, drastic measures are taken to eliminate girl children. These practices are most widely documented in India. An estimated 3 to 5 million female fetuses are aborted in India each year. Furthermore, in one study of a clinic in Bombay, 7999 out of 8000 aborted fetuses were female. However, the discrimination against women is so severe that efforts do not stop there. Many girl children are even killed as soon as they are born. Thus, experts suggest that these practices contribute to the unnaturally high risk of death for young girls.

So then, the only question left to answer is why girls are being discriminated against. After all, biologically, females are stronger and tend to live longer than males. Unfortunately, the answer to this question is hard for people like us – citizens living in a developed country – to fully understand. The logic behind gendercide derives from social implications. Particularly in poverty stricken nations, the female gender is typically seen as less productive in terms of contributing to a family’s household income. By being less desirable, boys are seen as essential because they are physically stronger and can work laborious jobs that flood the labor markets of less developed countries (LDCs).

Therefore, current actions taken up by the international community has come extremely late with respects to the MDGs. Having known about the gendercide since Sen’s studies in the 1980s, progress towards reaching key goals of equality and empowering women is highly improbable especially with the millions already ‘missing’ and the 2015 deadline just beyond the horizon.