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

2023-07-28

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2023/07/23

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

  1. By Governments:

g . Seek to develop a more comprehensive knowledge of work and employment through, inter alia, efforts to measure and better understand the type, extent and distribution of unremunerated work, particularly work in caring for dependants and unremunerated work done for family farms or businesses, and encourage the sharing and dissemination of information on studies and experience in this field, including the development of methods for assessing its value in quantitative terms, for possible reflection in accounts that may be produced separately from, but consistent with, core national accounts;

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The core of the human rights documents is the realization of the universality of humanity, equality of the sexes, and the contingency of the current moment in the scars of the past: political, policy based, ethical, and cultural. You could envision each moment as a fulcrum for decisions for positive change or not. 

This paragraph of the Beijing Declaration is robust, rather large, compared to some of the others, but in a similar tone and styling. The premise is the development of a framework for providing for the needs of women who have been dealing with kids or other family, or doing similarly demanding unremunerated – unpaid – work. 

It is an important, and duly situated premise throughout the, text, the Beijing Declaration, about the amount – the sheer tonnage – of work done by women in the cover of night, beyond pay or anything resembling it. It’s been said matriarchy ruled home life forever and patriarchy in the public sphere. This seems true. Yet, the patriarchal systems were valued on a common utility operator and count, money. While, the systems in the home, they were not, namely dishes, changing diapers, doing laundry, gardening, cleaning the home, caring for the elderly and the sick in the family – even the community, und so wieter.

I work, now, after a bit of a hiatus from writing these articles on women’s rights documents and stipulations of women’s equality in important documents at a farm. The fact of a farm being mentioned is more directly relevant to me. Many women work in this industry, and hard, because the industry is tough.

In poorer sectors of the global South compared to many Risen Asiatic nations and Western countries, the fact of farm work is a fact of life, and a compilation of data on the unpaid work would be helpful, even if qualitative reports, to provide an idea of progress towards greater gender equality. Then even with a basic knowledge of the status of hours spent per day, biweekly, or annually, national accounts might be able to take this into account. This type of unremunerated work could be paid.

As a hypothetical, not necessarily stipulated within 165(g), however, if we look at the context, I could see a quantification of unremunerated household chores put into national accounts, and then a stipend sent to individuals in the home who may not be working outside of the home – or many who often do now. Raising children is a chore, therefore work, so, it could be something remunerated by the nation-state with the interest of all in the creation of productive, healthy citizens.

This work shouldn’t be something merely taken for granted.

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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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