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What have been the greatest challenges in implementing the Beijing Platform for Action and advancing women's rights and gender equality in the 15 years since the Beijing Conference?

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annaturley

Moderated by: admin

Monday 15 February 2010 9:03:04 am

Share your perspectives here!

WendiWicks

Thursday 18 February 2010 9:22:32 pm

Kia ora koutou
For disabled women, some of the biggest challenges have been around our ongoing invisibility as part of "all women". It seems ethnicity, sexual orientation and any of the other parts of "all women" get acknowledged, but we, at 1 in 5 of all women, never seem to get recognised.
We get the odd mention in the Beijing Platform, notably in relation to abuse and violence, but it's at a tokenistic level. Somehow we continue to be marginalised and there is an ongoing and immense struggle to have our oppression acknowledged by other women who should be our allies and should be in solidarity with us. That's why we weren't in the platform document in the first place, and it is really rather disgraceful.
We are still the side event who regularly struggle to get accessible information, venues and a fair place to just be in our own right. Somehow, because society is configured in a way that excludes some of us and we need to use extra support to participate, we are seen to be responsible for that, because it somehow causes the oppression of other women. We've been excluded and it's our fault?
So when we look at what have been the greatest challenges in implementing the Beijing platform, we need also to look at what we haven't been able to implement because it wasn't put there in the first place. And that is the proper (=not tokenistic) inclusion and recognition of disabled women. It's actions that start by including us in their genesis. It's doing with us, not for us. It's never talking for us. It's expanding how we think about women. We don't accept that we are a different species, and we think the time to demonstrate this in tangible ways is now.

firstlady

firstlady

Monday 22 February 2010 8:02:02 am

The greatest challenges of implementing Beijing platform resolutions are as follows;
1) Lack of proper evaluation of the culture regarding women at the local levels. The culture regarding women vary from country to country and from culture to culture. It is only when these cultures are evaluated realistically that you can design an implementation plan that will achieve the desired goals
2) Poor implementation plans which do not take into consideration the vulnerable position of women. In Nigeria we have been trying to carry out advocacy with various government departments, the legislature and political parties and local communities. We have found the judiciary the most favourably disposed sector to womens issues. Because of the peculiar local cultures, most women, the youths and the very poor would not claim their rights. We have been working with the judiciary, the Commonwealth human rights network and the international human rights network on an alternative dispute resolution technique which uses the total justice assessment method to bring women's issues to the front burner with or without the women's full cooperation. This method involves the evaluation of the level of access of the women and their families to social justice, economic justice, environmental justice, political justice, legal justice and cultural justice. Based on the outcome of the evaluations we liaise with the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps to write to duty bearers and we monitor the out comes. We usually send copies of our reports to the he judiciary, the Commonwealth human rights network and the international human rights network. This has given us limited success, The Judiciary has given about 30% of Judiciary appointed positions to women which is very commendable.
3) Poor economic capacities and infrastructure: Women need to have their own Economic frame works that take into consideration the need for them to be at home at specific times. Our research shows that family enterprises which receive support services and which enjoy cooperation of the young people in the families help to pull many families from poverty and give a better status to the mothers in the society.

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