Paragraphs 77 and 78 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. B. Education and Training of Women
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/08
77. The mass media are a powerful means of education. As an educational tool the mass media can be an instrument for educators and governmental and non-governmental institutions for the advancement of women and for development. Computerized education and information systems are increasingly becoming an important element in learning and the dissemination of knowledge. Television especially has the greatest impact on young people and, as such, has the ability to shape values, attitudes and perceptions of women and girls in both positive and negative ways. It is therefore essential that educators teach critical judgement and analytical skills.
78. Resources allocated to education, particularly for girls and women, are in many countries insufficient and in some cases have been further diminished, including in the context of adjustment policies and programmes. Such insufficient resource allocations have a long-term adverse effect on human development, particularly on the development of women.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The mass media has a particular import for me. Why? It’s inextricable linkage, at least historically right into the present, with the work of editors, writers, and journalists. We work through the mass media. Increasingly, writers and journalists do a disservice to the public as servants of the powerful and privileges rather than pursuers of truth and justice.
Everyone is mixed. But the tables have begun to tilt, which is the problem or the trouble with it. Insofar as mass media is a democratic tool, it is a powerful means by which to educate the public, to perform a needed duty of which money should not be the motivator.
If we look into the context of the educators, and the governmental and non-governmental institutions, our work, as an international community, should be in alignment with the international rights framework founded on December 10, 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
As the global conversations evolved over time, we, the international community, not always but tended to support the efforts for the advancement and empowerment of women. The newer forms of education with advanced technologies can be a boon for this.
These can help advance the agendas of improving the lives and livelihoods of women and girls around the world. Indeed, even with television and now the widespread audiovisual material spread throughout the internet, the portrayals of men and women can be more flexible, less cardboardy. Something with a new vision.
Another aspect to have a proper education is simply having access to it. Furthermore, the ability to critically analyze and judge information coming at oneself requires a decent educational system and sensibility about how the world works in the first place.
There have been several resource sources devoted to the promotion of women’s equality in one of the most consequential of areas, which is education. In a knowledge economy, it is the key to a better livelihood and set of life prospects for girls as they become women and for women who want to retrain or garner some financial independence – and intellectual acuity for mental independence – from the men in their lives.
This is not to demonize men. But it is to acknowledge a long-held set of assumptions and systems of which women have been subject to, and which many men have not necessarily questioned.
It does not require inflated academic language (as can appear in my own, sorry) because it can be explained in statements amounting truisms to some degree. But the acknowledgement, whether colloquially or in academic jargon, is important to work to implement women’s rights through a systematic restructuring of the systems in place keeping women and girls (and men and boys in some areas) from self-actualizing, in Maslow’s terminology.
The long-term investment in girls and women can improve the economic possibilities of nations, as the strongest predictor of social development, probably, is the advancement and empowerment of women. But the insufficiency of the provision of resources to these issues remains a problem needing rapid dealing with, especially as we move swiftly into uncharted international territories with more people far more independent and educated than at any time in human history.
–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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