WOMEN-RIGHTS: UN Still Lags Far Behind in Gender Mainstreaming

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 2001 (IPS) - When a meeting of the world’s only 10 women heads of state took place at the United Nations last September, the gathering was hailed as an extraordinary event.

Madeleine Albright, then US Secretary of State, one of the invitees, remarked that if such a gathering had ever taken place back in 1900, Britain’s Queen Victoria would perhaps have been talking to herself.

“Having only 10 women leaders in the world today is utterly inadequate,” Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand told a press conference immediately after the meeting.

The meeting took place against the backdrop of the Millennium Summit which was attended by more than 150 world leaders, of which only 10 were women – from Latvia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Bermuda, Finland, Panama, Netherland Antilles, Ireland and San Marino.

On Wednesday, the New York-based Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) re-published the predominantly all-male group photo taken at the Millennium Summit. The caption, which read: “Where are the women?” also posed the question: “Does your government look like this?”

WEDO said the United Nations, which is expected to be a trailblazer in the field of gender mainstreaming, was no better than the 189 governments represented in the world body.

At the highest levels of the UN system, there has not been a single woman as Secretary-General. The seven men who have held office so far are: Trygve Lie of Norway, Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden, U. Thant of Burma, Kurt Waldheim of Austria, Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt and Kofi Annan of Ghana.

Since the creation of the United Nations in 1946, there was been only one woman Deputy Secretary-General, namely Louise Frechette of Canada. She holds a post that was created in 1997 as part of the reform of the UN system.

At the political level, there have been only two women out of the 55 Presidents elected to the General Assembly: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India in 1953 and Angie Brooks of Liberia in 1969.

WEDO also said that women’s representation at the highest levels of global decision-making has not significantly changed in the five years since the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

“Women continue to be in the minority in the UN system,” it noted. The rate of progress in the representation of women at the senior and policy making levels though slow has improved from 25 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 1999.

As of November 1999, women represented only 39 percent of professional staff reflecting geographical appointments: an increase from 34 percent in 1995.

Women also comprise 48 percent of the junior professionals but only 21 percent of the senior management in 1999. WEDO said that of the 21 Under-Secretaries-General, only two were women in 1999.

According to WEDO, the good news is that women heads of specialised agencies appoint more women in their staff than do men who head such agencies.

At the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) – which until December was headed by Nafis Sadik of Pakistan and is now headed by another woman Thoraya Obaid of Saudi Arabia – about 50 percent of the staff and 60 percent of senior managers are women.

At the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – whose Executive Director is Carol Bellamy of the United States – women make up 48 percent of staff and 39 percent of senior managers.

At least three other UN funds and programmes have relatively high representation of women: at UNAIDS, the joint programme fighting the AIDS epidemic, about 50 percent of senior managers are women.

At the UN Development Programme (UNDP), women constitute 38 percent of the staff and 21 percent of senior managers. At the Paris-based UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 39 percent of staff and 20 percent of senior managers are women.

In a report released last year, Secretary-General Kofi Annan admits that the United Nations’ ultimate goal of gender equality will not be reached until the year 2012.

In the Secretariat, at least two offices have met the goal of gender equality: the Office of Human Resource Management and the Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Management. The Department of Public Information, which reached 51.2 percent, had slipped to 49.8 percent in 1999.

Annan says that the principle of gender equality, affirmed in Article 8 of the UN charter, is a core value of the Organisation.

“It applies to any decision affecting the conditions of service of all staff and the environment in which they work. The full and equal participation of women and men at all levels in the workplace is pivotal to the successful implementation of the Organisation’s mandates,” he notes.

Besides Frechette, Bellamy and Obaid, some of the senior women officials in the UN system include Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, head of the World Health Organisation (WHO); Mary Robinson of Ireland, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Catherine Bertini of the United States, head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome; Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore, head of the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM); Rafiah Saleem of Malaysia, head of Human Resources Management; Sharon Capeling-Alakija of Canada, head of the UN Volunteers (UNV) programme and Patricia Lewis of the United Kingdom, head of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) in Geneva.

Additionally, Angela King of Jamaica is Assistant Secretary- General and Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Gender Issues and the Advancement of Women.

Last year, Annan also appointed two women to head UN regional commissions: Danuta Hubener of Poland, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) and Mervat Tallawy of Egypt, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).