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Gender equality

30th Anniversary Of The Beijing Declaration And Platform For Action

March 9, 2025 Equal Times. , , ,
Thirty years ago, nearly 200 governments and tens of thousands of activists and civil society organisations from around the world gathered in China to hash out a historic global commitment to equal rights and equal opportunities for all women and girls. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) was signed by 189 governments at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, held between 4-15 September 1995. It outlined 12 critical areas for action, covering everything from jobs to the environment and political participation, as well as ending gender-based violence and harassment, and provided governments with concrete steps to ensure the actualisation of these goals.

Supreme Court Case On Trans Health Shows How Gender Essentialism Harms Us All

December 8, 2024 Lewis Raven Wallace, Truthout. , , , ,
When I had my first gender-affirming medical intervention, I was 21 years old. The year was 2005, and at that time, the idea of a trans surgery being covered by health insurers was outlandish. So, I saved up money starting at age 18, and visited psychologists at the free gender clinic in the San Francisco Bay Area where I lived. I told them I had been “living as a man full time” and pretended to fit the clinical definition of gender dysphoria in order to get a letter allowing the surgeon to work on me. (I was genderqueer and nonbinary, had a high voice and feminine features and had virtually never “passed” as a man.)

The Urban Gardens Where Gender And Climate Justice Grow

September 15, 2024 Peter Yeung, Next City. , , ,
Up in the lung-busting altitudes of Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, 71-year-old Maria Achiña and 70-year-old Alegria Irua are busy digging up soil and plucking weeds from their modest allotment of kale, onions, broccoli and cilantro. The green-fingered pair are part of a group of local women who till the land beside the neighborhood’s health clinic, which is free to them under the city’s celebrated participatory urban agriculture project focused on gender, climate and food justice. “It gives us good food to eat and a bit of income to help pay the bills,” says Achiña, who lost both her husband and daughter in recent years. “And besides, us old ladies, we need to fill our time with something.”

More Sanctions On Nicaragua Will Deepen US Migration Crisis

March 13, 2024 Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , , , , , ,
For Barbara Larcom and Jill Clark-Gollub, increased US economic warfare waged against Nicaragua will only translate into a worsening of the already delicate migration problem in the US and affect supply chains in Central American and Caribbean countries that trade with Nicaragua. The two activists from the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition were interviewed by Orinoco Tribune last Wednesday, March 6. Barbara Larcom is the current chair of the Nicaragua Solidarity Coalition, an international alliance of organizations and individuals that support Nicaragua’s sovereignty.

International Women’s Day 2024: Equality At Work And Democracy

March 8, 2024 International Trade Union Confederation. , , ,
Women face systemic inequalities, including unequal labour force participation, the persistent gender pay gap, overrepresentation in informal sectors and workplace harassment. Moreover, populist movements and authoritarian regimes continue to undermine decades of progress towards equality for women, which has included equitable workplace participation, economic and political empowerment and access to education. ITUC General Secretary Luc Triangle said: "The path to a truly inclusive, equitable and democratic society is through the relentless pursuit of gender equality at work.

Women Across Iceland, Including The Prime Minister, Go On Strike

October 31, 2023 Egill Bjarnason, Portside. , , , ,
Schools, shops, banks and Iceland's famous swimming pools shut on Tuesday as women in the volcanic island nation – including the prime minister – went on strike to push for an end to unequal pay and gender-based violence. Icelanders awoke to all-male news teams announcing shutdowns across the country, with public transport delayed, hospitals understaffed and hotel rooms uncleaned. Trade unions, the strike's main organisers, called on women and nonbinary people to refuse paid and unpaid work, including chores. About 90% of the country's workers belong to a union.

Setting Our Sights On The Equality Of Women

March 5, 2023 Patricia Hynes, Portside. , , ,
Boston, Massachusetts - A month ago, I heard on the news that Boston public schools would be closed on February 3 because of the severe Arctic cold and wind chill forecast for that day and the next.  My first thought was: what if the students’ mothers are working single mothers, what if they cannot take off or cannot afford to lose the pay – given inflation of food, energy and rents and the impoverishing impact of Covid? Boston is a severely unequal city with an extremely segregated public school system: 80 percent of children in public school are low income; 90 percent are students of color, mainly Latino and Black; higher income families with children leave for suburbs when their children become of school age, according to the Dorchester Reporter. 

Fight Against Femicides Continues Across Latin America

June 11, 2021 People's Dispatch. , , ,
June 3 marked the sixth anniversary of the formation of the Ni Una Menos or ‘Not One (Woman) Less’ movement in Argentina. Since 2015, every year, the movement organizes massive marches across the country to raise voice against violence against women and non-binary people and demand justice for numerous of its victims. This year, like last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the collective called on the people to mobilize virtually with hashtags and photos.

Women’s Leadership In The Global Recovery From The COVID-19 Pandemic

March 8, 2021 By Siddharth Chatterjee and Smriti Aryal, Inter Press Service. , , ,
Beijing - Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and the theme for this year’s celebration is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” We recognize the tremendous contribution and leadership demonstrated by women and girls around the world in shaping our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a more sustainable future. A global review of the progress achieved towards commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women 25 years ago in Beijing, conducted by UN Women in 2020, reveals that no country has fully delivered on the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. Globally, women currently hold just one-quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board and are absent from some key decision-making spaces, including in peace and climate negotiations. This reality is despite the advances that we can see globally: there are now more girls in school than ever before, fewer women are dying in childbirth, and over the past decade, 131 countries have passed laws to support women’s equality.