Governments need to take a feminist approach to policy making, resource that agenda, and hold each other accountable.
25 years ago, the Beijing Declaration set an example for gender equality – a historic step towards centering women’s rights as human rights and strengthening the role of civil society as a key partner in giving voice to the lived realities of women and girls the whole world.
As we ponder how best this platform for action can continue to serve as a global framework, activists must grapple with a host of new challenges, from a deepening digital divide and climate crisis to a global pandemic.
Important unfulfilled promises remain, such as resource gaps to fund the women’s rights movement, rights backsliding and attacks on human rights defenders, lack of social protection, and inadequate access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).
As a Pakistani who has followed the recent rise in violent rape in the country, I am also deeply concerned that gender-based violence (GBV) is an ongoing and pervasive threat to women, girls and LGBTQIA+ communities worldwide.
Governments must make stronger commitments to advance gender equality.
Although the Pakistani government launched a National Action Plan on Women’s Economic, Social, Legal and Political Empowerment following the 1995 Beijing Conference, progress has been limited due to discriminatory gender norms and ineffective policies. This is just one example that illustrates the collapse of gender equality efforts that extend far beyond Pakistan’s borders. Globally, we need to do more – and we do indeed have the answer.
Governments need to take a feminist approach to policy making, resource that agenda, and hold each other accountable. This requires comprehensive, systemic and intersectional reforms that aim to integrate a wide range of policy interventions to address gender inequalities. Clear and coordinated goals, tactics and strategies are needed to advance a holistic and sustainable political agenda.
These actions include:
Respond to a multidimensional crisis with a multidimensional, gender-specific plan. It has emerged that COVID-19 is having far-reaching implications for the global economy, health and care. As a result, it requires a multidimensional approach with a gender lens in designing short- to long-term socio-economic responses.
Here is an opportunity to reinvent our political responses – as the Hawaii government has demonstrated by launching its recent feminist recovery plan. The plan aims to fill gaps in care, health, ecology, and economics, and offers recommendations to address gender pay equity, gender-based violence, reproductive health, and childcare services through federal welfare programs. The plan has already begun to influence initiatives and laws at the state and county levels, and this bold mandate for gender equality and sustainable economic recovery is commendable.
Meanwhile, the Feminist Alliance for Rights (FAR) has highlighted key feminist policy areas governments need to address to meet the tremendous challenges posed by COVID-19. Any economic plan, whether recovery or long-term, must integrate gender considerations and allocate adequate budget and benefits to support women, girls and LGBTQIA+ communities – and to ensure that longstanding inequalities that COVID-19 is only exacerbating are addressed will .
Design political responses with and for women and girls. The State Commission of Hawaii and FAR did not design their innovative framework in isolation, but in close collaboration with activists and feminist movements. It is all the more important that the voices of women and girls are included in the decision-making spaces and processes where answers are formed.
Women’s participation is required at all levels, from national crisis teams to local, community-led responses.
Take steps to ensure accountability. From the global to the regional and national levels, accountability is essential. Information and communication technologies and public forums are important means by which civil society and the media can ensure that governments deliver on their promises. Mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) are another means of assessing human rights obligations at the country level. In all efforts, gender-specific, gender-disaggregated data and analysis are needed for meaningful policy, monitoring, and evaluation.
redirect resources. Funding remains a key challenge, but what about the vast wealth benefiting global elites and corporations? It is time for a new fiscal framework and for governments to use resources from corporate tax bailouts, military spending and illicit financial flows to develop public infrastructure, social services, a feminist care economy and women’s rights initiatives.
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A chance to rethink the future
Despite the perennial political barriers and systemic social hurdles, women leaders such as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, India’s Health Minister Kerala KK Shailaja and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose sensitive and strategic plans have effectively managed the COVID-19 crisis, give me hope.
There has also been a wave of women’s and youth movements challenging patriarchy, racism and systemic inequalities. Women’s rights organizations and young feminist leaders – especially black and queer organizers – have been at the forefront of Black Lives Matter, climate justice, peacebuilding, #MeToo and other movements – amplifying marginalized and silenced voices and pushing boundaries.
As local activists and grassroots organizations in Hawaii engage the State Commission to ensure the recovery plan is implemented and reaches the hardest-hit communities, the Women’s Rights Caucus, a global coalition of over 200 feminist organizations and networks, is campaigning for equality Genders a United Nations.
Let’s use this anniversary to build on the work done since the Beijing conference to achieve greater political engagement, collective agenda-setting and mobilization – all to tackle deep-rooted structural inequalities. Next year’s Generation Equality Forum (GEF) will provide an important platform to promote accountability; use of financial obligations; create space for radical collaboration; and building innovative partnerships for the next five years.
While the world is still spinning, it’s time for our leaders to reflect on their commitments and refocus on what matters.
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