By Kanya D'Almeida and Ines Alberdi
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 22 2010 (IPS)

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) launched an ambitious new initiative to improve the safety and wellbeing of women in five major cities Monday – New Delhi, India; Cairo, Egypt; Quito, Ecuador; Kigali, Rwanda; and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.

Ines Alberdi Credit: Courtesy of UNIFEM

These programmes were implemented after proposals from grassroots organisations for a comprehensive campaign on safety in cities, a landscape that has become a virtual war zone for millions of women.

Inspired by the programme’s successes in Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil, Chile and Colombia, UNIFEM and UN Habitat began to mull the idea of going global. With solid regional bases already in place, UNIFEM has decided to work closely with local governments and municipalities to alter the urban landscape, making it safer for women and girls to navigate.

The populations of the five chosen cities have increased exponentially in the last five decades. Cairo and New Delhi, for example, have swelled from 2.4 and 1.4 million to 17 and 19 million inhabitants respectively. This unprecedented growth has been coupled with an intense proliferation of urban slums, making the Safe Cities initiative a timely and urgent endeavour.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What are the specific challenges faced by women in urban spaces? A: One of the main problems is that violence against women is seen in two ways: there are the ‘strong’ cases but also the ‘everyday’ cases such as sexual harassment in the streets, on public transportation, on the way to work and school, in the parks and in the overcrowded neighbourhoods. Not only women’s physically safety but also their dignity is at risk. Too often men are able to demoralise women by treating them as sexual objects.

This project works with municipalities and local authorities, from the most important cases of rape and sexual abuse, to the most ‘common’ and ‘less important’ abuses.

Q: Why do you think these issues have been overlooked thus far? A: All of our research shows that the municipalities are keener to fight hard crime by looking only at the most extreme cases – theft and murders. But abuse of women has gone on for years, for centuries. It has become regular, some would even say it has become a way of life. Most people are okay waiting until a woman has been stabbed or killed before taking the problem seriously, but that needs to end.

Q: How did you choose these five cities? A: We’ve done a lot of research on trends and statistics and finally decided to focus on big cities, especially in the most poor and marginalised areas of these cities. The sheer concentration of population has two aspects – firstly more people means women are more vulnerable; and secondly, one programme in a densely packed area can have an impact on many more people.

In Kigali, for instance, our research led us to two particularly big neighbourhoods, very poor and very populated – the Kicukiro and Nyarugenge districts. In Port Moresby, we are not focusing on neighborhoods but the market place, where more women interact and are more vulnerable to violence and aggression.

Q: What strategies do you plan to implement that are unique to Safe Cities? A: Well, we will start by communicating with local authorities and putting the most basic measures in place – such as better street lighting, or moving bus stops to safer, more crowded areas. The most urgent need is to make the streets safe, so we plan to promote access to emergency phone lines.

Another thing is to ask the authorities to pass laws against violence in public spaces. In line with this, we are working with the police and the military forces to train them to deal with situations, to respond more effectively to complaints and to respond with compassion to the women when they complain.

There is also a huge problem with the judicial system – we need to change how women are dealt with in the courts, how quickly they receive recompense for complaints. The judiciary has to be trained to deal more effectively with abused women.

Q: Will programmes be implemented in the schools so that young boys can also be a part of this initiative? A: Communication and public dissemination is very important and in this regard we might involve the schools, but this is not one of the main aspects of the programme – we can’t do everything.

But other programmes are working closely with men and boys – [U.N. Secretary-General] Ban Ki Moon has set a very good example of this by launching his campaign “UNiTE to end Violence Against Women”. One of the objectives of this campaign is to engage men and boys in the struggle against violence. He has also put together a group of well-known male leaders in sports and politics to stand with him in the campaign. [Brazilian] President Lula and [Spanish Prime Minister] Zapatero are two such people.

Q: What are some of the target goals for this programme? A: It is difficult, almost impossible, to measure the impact of violence against women in quantitative terms. We have been doing some quantitative and some qualitative surveys using focus groups to see what percentage of women have been involved in rape or assault in the street, or how many are afraid of being alone in public places – but we will not know the true impact until much later.

We are taking evaluation of the programme very seriously, because we understand this initiative to be a process by which we learn and can then replicate the results in other places.

There is a growing process, a learning curve, to the Safe Cities programme.

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By Miren Gutierrez and Ines Alberdi
ROME, Nov 15 2009 (IPS)

CEDAW or the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979.

Security Council debates protection of civilians - and women - in armed conflict. Credit: U.N.

In the second of a two-part interview IPS talks to Inés Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM, about the countries holding out, including the U.S., and the new agency for women that the General Assembly has decided to create.

IPS: The U.S. is the only developed nation that has not ratified CEDAW (although it has signed it); now it’s a priority of the Barack Obama administration… INÉS ALBERDI: It is very encouraging to see that the U.S. government is expressing receptiveness to ratifying the treaty; CEDAW now has almost universal ratification, which is a sign of a global consensus. It would be truly exciting if the U.S. could ratify the Convention in this anniversary year, but whenever this happens it will send a wonderful message on the importance of advancing women’s rights.

IPS: States ratifying the Convention are required to weave gender equality into their legislation, repeal all discriminatory provisions in their laws, and enact new provisions to guard against discrimination against women. But in many cases there is a gap between legislation and real action. IA: CEDAW creates not only obligations for legal reform, but also more broadly for the full range of measures that are actually required for women to enjoy their human rights. So to meet the CEDAW requirements there is a need to integrate gender equality into laws and policies, the operation of legal and institutional structures, the allocation of budget resources, the attitudes of judicial and police authorities and so on as well as to change media and cultural stereotypes about women.

IPS: The U.N. member states that have not signed the convention are either Islamic (Iran, Somalia, Sudan) or small island nations (Nauru, Palau, Tonga)… what is the problem there? IA: As I mentioned, CEDAW has almost universal ratification so it is not one of the international human rights treaties that’s experiencing a ratification challenge. And there certainly is global consensus on the importance of achieving gender equality – as evidenced by the inclusion of gender equality as one of the eight Millennium Development Goals and the reaffirmation of the centrality of gender equality to achieving these goals in the 2005 World Summit. The precise challenges faced by the few remaining states that have not ratified CEDAW are likely different in each case – but this is something they themselves would be best suited to answer.

IPS: It seems women are increasingly being recognised and honoured. An example is the five women who won Nobel Prizes this year: Elinor Ostrom, Herta Müller, Carol W. Greider, Elizabeth H. Blackburn and Ada E. Yonath (in comparison, only 40 women in total have been awarded it between 1901 and 2009). In the field of literature, apart from the Nobel Prize, another woman, Hilary Mantel, won the Man Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious … Do you see this as a sign of the gap between men and women narrowing? IA: I think high profile awards like these are perhaps not the best measure. Women have long been recognised for outstanding achievement – 5 years ago, in 1992, for example Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous women’s rights leader from Guatemala, won the Nobel Prize as did noted human rights champion Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma the year before that.

What is important is the huge expansion of opportunities for women to pursue the education and experience that will enable them to get to the top – we see this in literature and art and sport as well as science, economics and politics. And I think this is true in many, many places, not just the West.

That said, it is also true that the attrition rate of women in scientific careers is also expanding, as women still have the major responsibility for care-giving in both families and communities.

Women can’t spend the 80 hour work weeks needed to compete and still take care of children or elderly family members. As women enter the workforce in greater and greater numbers, there is no comparable expansion in the care-giving responsibilities assumed by men – with the result that women are both the family breadwinner and the family caregiver.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief. This is the second of a two-part interview.

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By Miren Gutierrez and Ines Alberdi
ROME, Nov 14 2009 (IPS)

The fight for women’s rights came about hand in hand with the struggle for democracy, civil rights and national liberation in different countries and periods, says Inés Alberdi, executive director of UNIFEM.

Inés Alberdi: "CEDAW is the means by which governments (can) advance gender equality" Credit: U.N.

On the eve of its 30th anniversary, Alberdi spells out the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) for IPS. The first of a two-part interview.

IPS: How would you explain CEDAW to someone who has not heard about it? INÉS ALBERDI: Across the globe, women confront manifold violations of their human rights – when they cannot articipate in the decisions that affect their lives or claim fair political representation, when they face discrimination in employment, when they are denied entitlement to land and property, or when they suffer violence within their own home.

CEDAW is the means by which governments around the world have undertaken legal human rights obligations to combat these violations, and advance gender equality. It is the core international agreement on women’s human rights.

Ratified by 186 U.N. member states, CEDAW encompasses a global consensus on the changes that need to take place. Under CEDAW, states are required to eliminate the many different forms of gender-based discrimination women confront, not only by making sure that there are no existing laws that directly discriminate against women, but also by ensuring that all necessary arrangements are put in place that will allow women to experience equality.

IPS: It probably means a lot to a whole generation of women who fought for women’s rights. Could you mention some of the challenges faced at the time it was adopted? IA: This varied of course from country to country. In my own country, Spain, the struggle for women’s rights was part of the broader struggle for democratisation in the country.

Under the dictatorship, women had almost no rights, we couldn’t vote, or work outside the house without our husband’s permission for example. Reproductive rights were extremely limited, as they were in the vast majority of countries. This was very similar in countries in Latin America, where women’s rights movements emerged in the context of democratisation movements.

In the U.S., this movement came out of, and in connection with the civil rights movement, and later it was very much identified with the struggle for reproductive rights, while in many other places the women’s movement was linked to a movement for national liberation.

IPS: Do you think the time has come for the U.N. member states to fulfil the promises made since the first International Women’s Year in 1975, the adoption of the CEDAW, as well as the U.N. World Conferences in Nairobi (1985) and Beijing (1995)? The 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women in 2010 will undertake a 15-year review and appraisal of the Beijing Platform for Action. What do you expect from it? IA: At the 15 year review of implementation of the Beijing Platform of Action, women’s rights groups and gender equality advocates will have an opportunity to celebrate the progress that has been made, and to seek government agreement on the challenges we must work to address.

We have already seen some of the things that women are identifying as priorities in the regional meetings for Beijing +15 which have happened already in the European and CIS region and will take place in Asia Pacific and Africa starting next week.

At the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) meeting for example, women from Central and Eastern Europe fought hard to get states to recognise the way in which the global financial crisis is affecting their lives – not only through lost jobs and livelihoods but through a tremendous strain on household coping strategies and an ever-growing burden of care-giving work in families to make up for cutbacks in government services and falling household income.

They wanted countries to recognise the plight of women migrant workers, who are being forced to return home to no jobs or go underground, where they are subject to violence and abuse. They also expressed impatience with the fact that despite decades of campaigns to put ending violence against women on the human rights and development agendas, the multiple forms of violence in women’s lives is still a daily reality for many women in all countries.

And they want countries not only to recognise all these things, but to say what they are going to do about them – so they can be held accountable for their promises.

In Africa too, where women have been hard hit by the economic crisis, women’s groups have identified decent work opportunities and greater social protection as their number one concerns, followed by protection from gender-based violence, not only in conflict but also when conflicts end.

It is important to recognise too that by raising these issues, they can take them into other important arenas, including the Security Council.

For example, with the passage of the Resolutions 1888 and 1889- which followed Security Council Resolution (SCR) 1325 from nine years ago, and SCR 1820 from 2008 – the Council strongly signalled its intention to advance accountability to women and girls in armed conflict, strengthen women’s protection from sexual violence and address their exclusion from peace building in post-conflict contexts.

Or for instance, advance women’s human rights in arenas like the International Criminal Court, which has recognised rape as a war crime and crime against humanity.

*Miren Gutierrez is IPS Editor in Chief. This is the first of a two-part interview.

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By Ines Alberdi and - -
NEW YORK, Nov 13 2008 (IPS)

Today’s multiple global crises–of food, fuel and finance– make clear that the conventional development paradigm is no longer viable. The promotion of market liberalisation and fiscal austerity as the instruments for stimulating economic growth and with it, sustainable development must be revisited, writes Ines Alberdi, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). International agreements, starting with the 2000 Millennium Declaration, and including the outcome of the 2008 High Level Event on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), have endorsed economic policies that move beyond economic growth to embrace more equitable and sustainable development. The Monterrey Consensus referred to financing gender-sensitive, people-centred development as essential for responding to challenges of globalisation. In addition, a growing body of evidence shows that investing in gender equality has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth and that increasing women’s economic options is central to achieving the MDGs. As world leaders meet in Doha -from November 29 to December 2- it is urgent that they find ways to advance the Monterrey agenda. It is now widely recognised that women’s empowerment and gender equality are key drivers of policies to build food security, reduce poverty, safeguard the environment and enhance development effectiveness. Women are also important agents of economic development and we need policies that both recognise this and actively support ­and finance–gender equality.

International agreements, starting with the 2000 Millennium Declaration, and including the outcome of the 2008 High Level Event on the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), have endorsed economic policies that move beyond economic growth to embrace more equitable and sustainable development. The Monterrey Consensus referred to financing gender-sensitive, people-centred development as essential for responding to challenges of globalisation. In addition, a growing body of evidence shows that investing in gender equality has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth and that increasing women’s economic options is central to achieving the MDGs.

Over the past year, during the review of implementation of the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development, UN member states have underlined the need to address the quality of development and importance of tackling inequalities, including gender inequality. The Secretary-General’s Report states that “there is a widespread view that there needs to be a better understanding of the role of women in development, moving beyond their roles as caregivers and labourers. Macroeconomic policies should be more coherent with other policies to achieve gender equality; for example, policies should take into account gender dimensions of tax issues, business cycles, employment and the unpaid ‘care economy’.”

The initial draft outcome document for the Financing for Development conference in Doha, which starts at the end of the month, recognised these links, identifying gender equality as a key development challenge, along with climate change and the food and energy crises. It also included specific references to the importance of gender-responsive public financial management, the consideration of gender issues in economic policies, and the need to remove gender biases in labour and financial markets as well as in the ownership of assets and property rights.

It is critical that the final outcome document retains these references, which highlight the structural links between macroeconomic policies and gender equality. Links between gender equality and development should also be made within the specific sections of the financing for development agenda, including domestic resource mobilisation, trade and investment, and official development assistance (ODA). Finally, it is important to promote the tools to make these links, including gender-responsive budgeting and gender specific indicators to monitor and assess the mobilisation and allocation of domestic and external resources and their impact on gender equality.

Mobilizing domestic resources is essential for sustaining productive investment and increasing human capacities. Policies to achieve this include targeted public investments, fiscal and monetary instruments to moderate economic downturns, and policies to promote decent work. All of these serve to expand opportunities for women, and reduce the risks to which they are often subject, including job and income loss and limited access to public goods and services.

Among the trade-offs of tight fiscal policy are stagnant employment opportunities and reduced spending on public services and social protection. These measures serve to oblige women to take on additional care-giving responsibilities, limiting their options for paid employment and entrepreneurial activities. Economic policies need to expand women’s options across the labour market, and improve their access to finance and productive assets. Particular efforts are needed to reach the large numbers of women in informal work, including cross-border trade, and improve options for small farmers, the majority of whom in many countries are women.

Tax policies also need to be revisited. Corporate taxes are widely underutilised in many countries, owing to the adoption of tax holidays to attract foreign investment, although these have proven irrelevant to investment decisions in many cases, especially in Africa. Instead, many poor countries have sought to broaden their tax base through indirect taxes, such as sales tax and user fees, which fall heavily on the poor and women as consumers of basic goods and services.

In terms of external resources, it is no longer possible to assume as the Monterrey Consensus does, that trade and investment liberalisation will increase foreign direct investment, leading to economic growth and social development. In practice, foreign investment has been concentrated in a relatively small number of countries. Trade liberalisation has resulted in few gains, and has seriously jeopardised food security in many developing countries, especially in Africa, where women are the primary producers as well as providers of food security.

At the close of the 52nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March 2008, governments agreed that achieving gender equality goals requires a reallocation of existing resources and a huge injection of additional and predictable funding, from both internal and external sources. In September, at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, development partners agreed that “gender equality, respect for human rights and environmental sustainability are cornerstones for achieving enduring impact on the lives of poor women, men and children” and the need to increase the capacity of national development actors “to take an active role in dialogue on development’. Work that the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has done on the implementation of the aid effectiveness agenda has shown the need to increase both financial and technical resources for gender equality advocates within government and civil society so that they effectively engage in and monitor national development planning and budgeting processes.

As world leaders meet in Doha, it is urgent that they find ways to advance this agenda. It is now widely recognised that women’s empowerment and gender equality are key drivers of policies to build food security, reduce poverty, safeguard the environment and enhance development effectiveness. Women are also important agents of economic development and we need policies that both recognise this and actively support ­and finance–gender equality. ‘Investing in gender equality has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth … Increasing women’s economic options is central to achieving the MDGs’

There is a ‘need to increase financial and technical resources for gender equality advocates within government and civil society so that they effectively engage in and monitor national development planning and budgeting processes’ (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

By Ines Alberdi
ROME, Aug 28 2008 (IPS)

Ines Alberdi has worked for over 25 years on gender issues and in politics.

Ines Alberdi Credit: UNIFEM

"It is crucial to see the women's rights movement in this context of creating more democratic, equitable, and just societies that benefit the population as a whole. And I devoted my professional life to this cause," she says.

Alberdi spoke to IPS Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez about the role of UNIFEM.

IPS: UNIFEM talks about the importance of incorporating gender into national poverty reduction strategies. How is this done?

Ines Alberdi: National poverty reduction strategies are particularly important entry points to ensure that women's needs will be taken into account. It is based on these plans that governments allocate resources and donors contribute to national budgets or to specific sectors. To have a strong gender perspective incorporated at this planning stage is therefore crucial.

Gender advocates and women's machineries must therefore be closely involved in devising national development plans. UNIFEM's work has focused on opening policy spaces, for example in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries. As Kyrgyzstan began formulating its new development strategy, UNIFEM worked with civil society organisations to raise the profile of gender equality measures. These encompass measures to increase women's political participation, perform gender analysis of school curricula, reflect gender differences in pension reform and end violence against women.

Kyrgyzstan has also pioneered a set of gender-responsive development indicators, harmonised to capture both national priorities and international commitments to gender equality, such as those in the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) and the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).

IPS: UNIFEM is working with the private sector in Rwanda, for example, in order to create opportunities for women. Why would private companies cooperate?

IA: The question would rather be: why would companies not care to create opportunities for women? Women represent an enormous potential for the private sector to tap into. Just look at the IT (information technology) sector. In Rwanda we have worked with companies to develop ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) scholarships for girls and young women in learning institutions to enable them in a later stage in their lives to compete in the labour market or run their own businesses.

UNIFEM has very successfully pursued a similar approach with global IT company CISCO systems, initially in Jordan and now also in Morocco where we helped introduce training for women in 12 out of 43 Cisco networking academies. Today, nearly half the 900 students in the E-Quality academies are women – about 60 percent find jobs within the first three months after graduation.

Globally, research has shown that companies benefit from greater corporate representation of women. In analysing the companies that make up the Fortune 500, it was found that companies with the highest representation of women in management positions delivered 35.1 percent more return on equity and 34 percent more total return to shareholders than companies with the lowest representation.

IPS: UNIFEM is training government officials and women's organisations on how to insert gender into budgets. What are the challenges?

IA: UNIFEM has worked in some 40 countries over the past eight years to build the capacity of governments and women's organisations. Gender-responsive budgeting examines how the allocation of public funds benefits women and men equally. It also analyses how women and men are taxed. This analysis must be informed by up-to-date, sex-disaggregated data. By pointing out imbalances in addressing women's needs and rights, gender responsive budgeting helps governments correct inequalities.

Initiatives are currently underway for example in Morocco, Senegal, Mozambique and Ecuador – and the results are impressive. Morocco now produces annual gender reports which accompany the national budgets and spell out how the allocation of public resources through the government's departments will address gender equality priorities.

Trends toward decentralisation have seen local governments emerge as key actors … UNIFEM is responding by providing support to local gender-responsive budget initiatives to strengthen women's representation in local bodies and support their effective participation in budget processes.

Take Cochabamba, Bolivia, for example, where many men have left to seek work abroad, creating a shortage of skills traditionally performed by men. Financed by the municipal government, women now learn how to fill that gap: they learn how to be carpenters and brick layers. And while the women are at work, their children are taken care of in a sports programme catering equally to boys and girls, also paid by the local government. Both initiatives are the result of a new focus on gender-responsive budgeting in Cochabamba.

IPS: How could the Accra Action Agenda (AAA) ensure that the improvement of aid quality contributes to gender equality?

IA: Over a billion women worldwide continue to be trapped in poverty, and where women can't thrive, national development strategies and progress towards the MDGs are in jeopardy. It is very obvious that there can be no aid effectiveness without a focus on gender equality.

To ensure this, three measures are critical: First, gender equality advocates and women's ministries must be much stronger involved in decisions on development; second, gender-responsive budgeting must be applied across all sectors; and third, accountability mechanisms – such as gender-sensitive indicators in performance assessments and the collection of sex-disaggregated data – must be put in place to track progress.

UNIFEM has worked for the past two years with the EC (European Community) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation to ensure that gender equality and women's empowerment are fully incorporated in national development planning, programming, budgeting and monitoring. Country-level data gathered through the EC/U.N. Partnership shows that the Paris Declaration, and the principles on which it is based, have helped to open some spaces to allow gender-equality advocates, civil society and parliamentarians to actively participate in national development planning at different levels.

For these groups to have real impact, however, government and donors must go further and ensure that they are part of the entire development planning, programming, budgeting and monitoring process.

The Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness offers a pivotal opportunity for governments and donors to come together to deepen the dialogue on how they can accelerate achievements in gender equality through enhanced cooperation. It is an opportunity that is not to be missed.

IPS: This year is especially important because it culminates with the Follow-up International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Monterrey Consensus (MC) in Doha (Qatar). What are the main issues UNIFEM is pushing?

IA: Gender equality advocates were disappointed with the MC. As a contribution to international gender equality commitments, the Consensus was not particularly strong.

The initial signs of the review of the MC implementation allow for some optimism that the Doha outcome document will be much stronger and tackle inequalities. The key report by the UN secretary-general's on the process clearly states that macroeconomic policies should take into account tax issues, business cycles, employment and the unpaid so-called 'care economy'.

The initial Doha draft outcome document presented by the co-chairs, the Ambassadors of Egypt and Norway, has positioned gender equality as one of the four new challenges and emerging issues, together with climate change, the commodity prices crisis of food and energy and the poverty eradication challenges facing middle-income countries. It also makes specific references to the importance of gender responsive public financial management, the oft neglected area, the consideration of gender issues in micro- and macro economic policies, and the need to remove gender biases in labour and financial markets as well as in the ownership of assets and property rights.

These are important issues for UNIFEM. It is by now widely recognised that women's empowerment and gender equality are key drivers to build food security, reduce poverty, reduce maternal mortality, safeguard the environment, and enhance the effectiveness of aid. Women are equally important agents of economic development and we need policies that not only recognise this but also actively support it.

IPS: Women make up most of the migrants from countries like the Philippines. Could you quantify women's economic power?

IA: Women constitute half of the world's migrants by now and globally, recorded remittances are estimated to be as high as 240 billion dollars annually, so there you have an enormous economic contribution.

For women to realise their full potential we have to look at macroeconomic policy frameworks – or the lack thereof – that take a gender perspective into account.

Women need also to be afforded equal access to land and natural resources, which is still far too often not the case. And public investments have to take women's needs into account. Safe public transport for example, may facilitate women's access to employment. Where these services are lacking it is more difficult for women to contribute as full economic agents.

It has been estimated that over the past decade, women's work has contributed more to global growth than has China. But don't forget: women also do more than two-thirds of the world's unpaid work – the equivalent of 11 trillion dollars or almost 50 percent of world GDP, according to a global UNDP (U.N. Development Programme) study from 1995. This enormous economic contribution is beyond their paid wage employment.

IPS: In places like Mozambique, you see a high level of economic participation, while women make only 35 percent of Parliament and 13 percent of the government. In Ghana, there is a similar situation. Why is political representation low?

IA: When you look at countries who have made gains in terms of increases in women's political participation, they have generally applied some kind of temporary affirmative action measures or quotas – which is an expression of political will to act on women's empowerment. What we are learning is that both economic empowerment and political participation require breaking through glass ceilings in systems that have traditionally discriminated against women. And they are mutually reinforcing; both are essential for achieving gender equality, but neither is sufficient in and by itself.

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