Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 68
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/04
Strategic objective A.4.
Develop gender-based methodologies and conduct research to address the feminization of poverty
Actions to be taken
68. By national and international statistical organizations:
- Collect gender and age-disaggregated data on poverty and all aspects of economic activity and develop qualitative and quantitative statistical indicators to facilitate the assessment of economic performance from a gender perspective;
- Devise suitable statistical means to recognize and make visible the full extent of the work of women and all their contributions to the national economy, including their contribution in the unremunerated and domestic sectors, and examine the relationship of women’s unremunerated work to the incidence of and their vulnerability to poverty.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Beijing Declaration here discusses the need to collect relevant information about gender and poverty. This connects to the prior sections dealing with the development of gender-sensitive methodologies or tools of research. The importance of these is the lack of their inclusion as a consideration before.
Now, we can see the increased inclusion of gender into the conversation like this and other documents are advanced forward in time. The collection of the data relevant to economic activity is important in a number respects. One of them is the tracking of progress or regress. Another is the possibility to analyze the data at a later point in time.
This includes the two broad categories of information analysis: qualitative and quantitative. The statistical indicators necessary to provide refinements in the solutions. Thus, the economic performance metrics with a gender perspective, may, as an example, give a basis for measuring the improvement in the productivity of a nation with more people included within the workforce.
Non-trivial and important, especially as more women become more educated and enter in larger numbers into the economy. The next paragraph deals with the statistical demarcation or line-drawing of the areas in which women are working, underrepresented, and even unexpectedly carrying portions of the national economy.
Interestingly, one of the fun parts of this could, potentially, extend into the known statistics about the ways in which women are disproportionately dealing with the housecare/homecare and childcare work compared to men while continuing to take on more advanced education and more of the work of the advanced industrial economies.
It is known, in general terms, how much more women are doing in those areas while maintaining an increased performance in the professional world as well. It is interesting and important work and the listing, in statistical terms, of the areas of the economy, formal and informal, women are contributing is crucial.
There is a need to examine the ways in which women’s unpaid work in the underground or informal economy is creating the basis for the levels of poverty felt and experienced by women. Indeed, we can see this in the phenomena identified by the prior article with the “feminization of poverty,” which, as the Beijing Declaration is from 1995, implies that women’s widespread poverty and systems leading to the disproportionate levels of women’s poverty has been known for at least a quarter of a century. Something to pause and reflect on.
This also ties into the disproportionate vulnerability women to experiencing poverty. The collection of data for further information analysis and then the inclusion of this as a feedback mechanism to improve the material conditions of women is important for the furter implementation of women’s rights.
It is important as the degree of freedom of choice in a society is intimately linked to the material or economic conditions of an individual woman. It is something with which women can self-empower and are, in statistical terms, more probable to contribute to the family and, thus, improve the material conditions of the locale – the community – and the state – the society.
–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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