Paragraph 62 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/02
Strategic objective A.3.
Provide women with access to savings and credit mechanisms and institutions
Actions to be taken
62. By Governments:
- Enhance the access of disadvantaged women, including women entrepreneurs, in rural, remote and urban areas to financial services through strengthening links between the formal banks and intermediary lending organizations, including legislative support, training for women and institutional strengthening for intermediary institutions with a view to mobilizing capital for those institutions and increasing the availability of credit;
- Encourage links between financial institutions and non-governmental organizations and support innovative lending practices, including those that integrate credit with women’s services and training and provide credit facilities to rural women.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The 62nd paragraph of the Beijing Declaration focuses on the access of women who are not disadvantaged – so not the Queen of England. They point to the need to include women entrepreneurs in all geographically defined areas with people: “rural, remote and urban areas.” This is important.
It gives an idea of the emphasis – everywhere. Of course, there will be differences depending on the region and area, but, also, the general temperament of the times – the 90s – is not fundamentally but, definitely, different than prior times. Taking into account the responsibility of governments to help improve the access of disadvantaged women including the women entrepreneurs, the basic provision will be financial.
Entrepreneurs work in a monetary capital intensive discipline and professional area. For women working in all arenas of societies, the ability to innovate will require some financial backing. It may not be a new technology but could be a novel form of development for the locale in which they find themselves, e.g., some rural Tanzanian village with the need of modernized communications technology, medical tools, or farming methodologies.
The money links can be built with the “formal banks and intermediary lending organizations” with the potential to train women. This could, in turn, lead to the mobilization of capital and increase the accessibility of said credit for entrepreneurial-oriented women.
Section (b) speaks to some of the other ties related to this industry, outside of the governments, including the non-governmental organizations. These are encouraged. If the women can get some credit in the rural, remote, or urban areas, this can be a strong driver for the advancement and empowerment of women. And the women do not need to be told this; they very likely already know this and the barriers for them.
There is the issue involved in the active work to disempower women. We can see this, starkly, in the post-colonial contexts, where religion – Islamic and Christian mainly – were thrust down the proverbial throats of the Indigenous populations of countries – Indigenous around much of the world. The suffering and pain women and girls have endured as a result of this tied to tribal cultural practices is intriguing and an obvious case-after-case lesson of the impacts of active attempts of ideologies, or interpretations of ideologies, with repression of women as the orientation.
It can be seen in the entitlement of some men to think that they own women: women and girls as property and for the heralding of sons to carry the family name, und so weiter. The idea of integrated credit with women’s services and training is a brilliant idea. It is an important means by which to get women grassroots-level training and skills to self-empower.
Education, truly, is power; power capable of being translated into action within the community. For those with a disinterest in the empowerment of women, this is an area to attack, so the policies directed at the restrictions of the bridges and ladders to help women self-empower or with the implied outcomes of that can give away the targeted political and social ideology.
To those looking at these national or international programs and decrying them as empowering women at the expense of men, think about the position some more, especially in a historical context, the empowerment of property-owning men of wealth has been the norm, through the government, the religious institutions, and the media representations.
Now, we continue to see the dissolution of power concentration for the democratization or universalization of rights and power through government social assistance programs, the liberalization of the religious institutions, and the broader – though miserly – spectrum of the media representations in terms of the total set of narratives shown to the general public. All that is being done, and is being asked, is for equal consideration and representation. That’s it.
It’s the Golden Rule applied in the era of the universalization or democratization of rights beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948 continuing right into the present and some representative aspects – with advanced considerations, in fact – in the Beijing Declaration from 1995. This can be seen as a fuller realization of the Golden Rule to a wider range of humanity.
–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.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 