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Beijing Declaration Platform for Action Chapter IV. Paragraph 165(f)

2022-04-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/02/12

Strategic objective F.1.

Promote women’s economic rights and independence, including access to employment, appropriate working conditions and control over economic resources

Actions to be taken

165. By Governments:

f. Review and amend laws governing the operation of financial institutions to ensure that they provide services to women and men on an equal basis;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

In the review and amendment of the laws, the focus is simply financial institutions available to the, presumably, public and private institutions. In this, we have to examine the legitimacy of egalitarian efforts there.

In some instances, women have been systematically disadvantaged in many countries in the world, financially. This began with financial institutions and can end with financial institutions.

It’s akin to Saudi Arabia disallowing women to drive cars and women protesting through driving and posting videos, of them driving, on the internet for all to see. It changes an unfair and unjust law based on an inherent sense of illegitimate gender inequality. One imposed rather than seen as a truism.

Even in my native Canada, women were not allowed to have a credit card as an unmarried woman at one time. Not a long time ago, either, and to the point of the 1995 Beijing Declaration, banks, financial institutions in other words, could refuse a credit card to a woman if unmarried.

The husband was required to co-sign with the woman. It changed with the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. In other words, women only recently acquired the ability to have credit on equal terms with men.

That’s why statements, such as the above, are important for egalitarian efforts. In the efforts to make services through financial institutions being equal, there, in many cases, can’t simply be a wish or vague hope for a better tomorrow.

There needs to be a direct activism on the ground in a social world, political change through the amassing of social support, and then the creation of policy and law proposals at the different levels of society.

Those incremental changes can lead to national change, which means an entire change in the lives of women unforeseen in previous generations. These are the kinds of financial institutional changes described in even this small part of the Beijing Declaration.

Which leads to easy questions, what financial institutions need reform in your country?

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(Updated 2020-09-27, only use the updated listing, please) Not all nations, organizations, societies, or individuals accept the proposals of the United Nations; one can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights, and the important days and campaigns devoted to the rights of women and girls too:

Documents

Strategic Aims

Celebratory Days

Guidelines and Campaigns

Women and Men Women’s Rights Campaigners (Thanks to Sikivu Hutchinson for help with the list)

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.

From → Chronology, Jacobsen's Bank, The Good Men Project

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