Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 109(b)-(c)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/11
Strategic objective C.4.
Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health
Actions to be taken
109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:
b. Promote gender-sensitive and women-centred health research, treatment and technology and link traditional and indigenous knowledge with modern medicine, making information available to women to enable them to make informed and responsible decisions;
c. Increase the number of women in leadership positions in the health professions, including researchers and scientists, to achieve equality at the earliest possible date;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
When we look at the nature of the world and the situations in which we find the poorest of the poor and the various injustices and imbalances, collectively or globally, we can see some consistencies in them.
One is a negligence to the needs and demands, if known, of women. Interestingly, the information referenced alongside the research, treatment, and the technology is, in fact, the Indigenous knowledge.
This makes sense within the increasing relevance of the Indigenous perspective on a number of issues. There does, indeed, exist means by which to improve health outcomes with a culturally sensitive lens.
While, at the same time, there should be a keen and critical eye to things purported to be medicine and others which amount to non-medicine or ‘quackery’ – that which supposedly works and simply does not work.
But this raises some questions about the research and technology part. Technology simply amounts to some technique invented by human for a people-oriented purpose – something to make food, build a study building, help train the mind, or improve health outcomes over time.
Especially in some of the post-colonial contexts, the efficacy – as in good enough – of some treatments should provide the basic treatment for those ill and distrustful of those who resemble the colonizers of the past.
It is less about maximal health and more about optimal given human factors. Also, some medicines within a traditional setting do, in fact, improve health better than some known medicines based on centuries of people getting ill or dying in the worst form of trial-and-error to find out what herbs, and so on, work or do not.
At the center of all this, it is the sensibility of the rights of women and the ability to make autonomous decisions about their own lives and livelihoods. There are, as with 1995, more and more women entering into leadership positions, especially promising in one of the richest and most powerful nations the world has ever seen – the United States of America.
The urgency of the message here is rather striking within the international lens, recalling, of course, the United Nations as the main source of these forms of statements.
Countries’ representatives and, therefore, Member States signed onto the global work towards the furtherance of equality. But this will not come overnight or easily.
In fact, we will continue to see progress as well as reactionary pushback against international secular progress on the rights of women, whether from outright misogyny to simply sexist apathy/indifference to the plight of others while one’s own problems are more or less solved.
We’re in this together. Our collective wills should be oriented towards the same goals inasmuch as we can within the current context. But this does not mean pushing the interests of men out of the foci here.
In fact, the global data are quite clear. The zero sum thinking is illegitimate as more women in the workforce permits flexibility for men and women while also increasing the size of the national (and, thus, international) economic pie.
Basically, the emphasis on the moral argument here is one linked intimately with the economic argument. There simply is more built with more people able to freely become involved in the productive, and paid, economy.
It is in the interest of societies, communities, families, and men and children to have women empowered. No doubt about it.
–(Updated 2018-11-10 based on further research) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
- Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year reviewin 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
- 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.
- UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
- 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
- 2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.
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