Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 60(e)-(f)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/01
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
60. By national and international non-governmental organizations and women’s groups:
e. In cooperation with Governments, employers, other social partners and relevant parties, contribute to the development of education and training and retraining policies to ensure that women can acquire a wide range of skills to meet new demands;
f. Mobilize to protect women’s right to full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Beijing Declaration runs in a long line of equal rights documents oriented towards the furtherance of equality among the peoples of the world. One of the delineations comes in the form of sex and gender. The forms of gender-based discrimination of much of the world provide some basis for the consideration of the rights and responsibilities of women, and men, and the ways in which women, typically, are disproportionately negatively impacted by the international system and the national legal and cultural systems in control of so much of the lives of women – directly or indirectly.
Paragraph 60, throughout, deals with the actions needing to be taken, if to be taken seriously – if you will, by the NGOs and the INGOs and the women’s groups. The emphasis here is on the “Governments, employers, other social partners and relevant parties,” which means the national and sections of the nation foci. Those able to take collective and cooperative efforts within the nations systems and link to the larger international network to effectuate internal to the state changes.
These can include the creation of education and training programs with gender in mind. Because, often, very often in fact, women can lack the ability to gain training and education in several areas of the world, even though the fundamental right to education exists. It becomes one of the barriers for women to flourish. It can come packaged in the idea of procreation as women’s sole role as enshrined in Mother Mary Magdalene or the Virgin Mary within the Christian faith, which is not a small portion of the world’s population led by a dominant system of men. I do not focus on the followers but on the hierarchs and the dogmatic ideology here – big difference between these two groups.
Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine provided a firm education on the importance of individual conscience of the follower of Christ as opposed to the fundamental individual abrogation of personal moral centring to magic, mystery, and authority of religious leaders. Ironically, for all the modern talk about some facets of religion being the groundstone discovery of the individual, this seems false insofar as the faiths tell the tale of groupthink, hierarchy and social control, and magical thinking to buttress the suppression of the individual; indeed, the individual precedes much of the Abrahamic traditions, sorry. In fact, an identity politics and collectivist orientation is Zionism as well.
No philosophy seems to enshrine the individual in totality, if a complete and comprehensive worldview, because, at some point, these break down into the realization of the embedment of the self with sets of other selves in some dynamic ecosystem of embedment. It can be summarized in an aphorism of Dr. Cornel West, “No such thing as being self made.” That’s, in part, the reason for the need of heartfelt dedication on a number of fronts to help with the educational and other needs of women and girls, because they, usually, are worse off.
This ability of women to be able to garner support can be, not a singular but at least, one means by which women can attain “full and equal access to economic resources.” This includes the ability for women to inherit, and own land and property, to acquire credit, and also have equal access to the “natural resources and appropriate technologies” of the world.
This comes with the facts of the situation rather than the stereotyped rhetoric – women are more emotional, women are weaker – about men needing to do the work of the field and the plough, of the office and the desktop. The recognition of personhood does not denude differences in fact but provides equality in rights and responsibilities via ethics. This leads to profound questions about the historic and current inequalities of women with men, and the means by which to implement said equality.
–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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