Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 58(c)-(d)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/26
Strategic objective A.1.
Review, adopt and maintain macroeconomic policies and development strategies that address the needs and efforts of women in poverty
Actions to be taken
58. By Governments:
c. Pursue and implement sound and stable macroeconomic and sectoral policies that are designed and monitored with the full and equal participation of women, encourage broad-based sustained economic growth, address the structural causes of poverty and are geared towards eradicating poverty and reducing gender-based inequality within the overall framework of achieving people-centred sustainable development;
d. Restructure and target the allocation of public expenditures to promote women’s economic opportunities and equal access to productive resources and to address the basic social, educational and health needs of women, particularly those living in poverty;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
With some examination of the macroeconomic policies and the development strategies of the Beijing Declaration, we can see the efforts of the international community, in general, and, granted, to varying degrees, working to improve the lives and conditions for women in poverty, which is the world’s majority poor. The pursuit of sound economic policies within a gender-based or gendered lens is important too.
Because of the lack of consideration of gender will tend to leave women out of the discussion. By leaving women outside of the domain of the conversation, the consequences will be more likely, even as a boilerplate analysis, to leave women’s issues set on neutral or negatively impacted. It happened the structural adjustment programmes. It can happen in other domains as well.
If a nation spends too much on the military, the basis becomes for lack of resources for social services. Similarly, with other economic policies and programs, those which impact the lives of women, typically, in a disproportionately negative way. The sustained economic growth models of the world are the ones in which women’s rights can be respected while, as emphasized in the previous article, the environmental problems can be taken into account too; furthermore, these can help with the overarching problem of the eradication of poverty through the reduction of the cycle of poverty within families of a society.
Those gender-based forms of discrimination, as can be seen, over time, in the discriminatory implementation of rights within a society. Some for the men and not others for the women in societies, e.g., reproductive health rights, rights to education and healthcare, and so on. Many of these can impact the economic viability of an individual woman’s life.
This comes in the aforementioned “overall framework of achieving people-centred sustainable development.” Now, the basis of this can come in a variety of ways. One of the obvious is the targeting and restructuring of the spending of the public dime on the well-being of women in terms of their economic livelihood. It becomes a means of empowerment and, hence, and as many of you know, the phraseology consistently used with the “advancement and empowerment of women.”
This is important as women continue to live in disproportionate levels of poverty compared to the men. This creates problems for their advancement in societies. Some suggestions or recommendations in some documents have been for temporary placement of position quotas in order to achieve the fabled equality desired by many, feared by others, and ambiguously and scantily considered by still others.
But the basic educational and health needs of a society should be the concern of the government; thus, the ability for access to the appropriate productive resources of the society should have some gendered emphasis within women’s rights as the disproportionate recipients of life’s burdens in several contexts. The orientation towards women and those in indigent circumstances can be important for the global move towards greater equality, realization of the human rights of all peoples, and for the respect and right to self-determination of people.
In turn, individuals and groups can not be seen as beasts of burden or tools of the state – whether through work or reproduction – and with the ability to pursue their lives as they deem fit and define for themselves.
It is about the best of the conservative tradition for freedom within constraint within group valuations of the right and reliance on tests wisdom while also on the best of the liberal counterbalance with the emphasis on the individual’s right to deviate from the group and pursue creative and intellectual endeavours – to discover the newer areas of wisdom that will, in time, become part of the conservative fold, as we develop this mutual interplay between the innovative spirit of humankind and the traditional yearning for a yesteryear.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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