I am also trying to make it through most of the reports by the Commission on the Status of Women before I move on to other relevant material. The one I am working my way through now addresses many issues, including financing gender equality and the empowerment of women, assisting Palestinian women, the need to release women/children taken as hostages or imprisoned during periods of conflict, female genital mutilation... and that is all of the content I have made it through so far. Reading through these reports will be very helpful because each one has the same general intent (to empower women), but with different focuses and through different initiatives. They lay out all of their agreed conclusions, actions that need to be taken, specifically point out obstacles that need to be overcome, and assert calls-to-action to encourage the involvement of governments, NGOs, and individuals. It is also a great way to find new references, because they refer back to every relevant past report. Below I will list a few pertinent quotes I picked out:
United Nations. (2008). Commission on the status of women: report on the fifty-second session (Supplement No. 7). Retrieved from UN Women website: http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N08/290/62/PDF/N0829062.pdf?OpenElement
"The Commission notes the growing body of evidence demonstrating that investing in women and girls has a multiplier effect on productivity, efficiency and sustained economic growth and that increasing women's economic empowerment is central to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and to the eradication of poverty, and recognizes that adequate resources need to be allocated at all levels, mechanisms and capacities need to be strengthened and gender-responsive policies need to be enhanced to fully utilize the multiplier effect." (p.2-3)
"The Commission is concerned that insufficient political commitment and budgetary resources pose obstacles to promoting gender equality on women's empowerment and continue to undermine the effectiveness and sustainability of both national mechanisms for the advancement of women and women's organizations in advocating for, implementing, supporting and monitoring the effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly." (p.3)
"Strengthen education, health, and social services and effectively utilize resources to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women and ensure women's and girls' rights to education at all levels and the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health, as well as quality, affordable and universally accessible health care and services, in particular primary health care." (7-8).
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteI just want to start out by saying that I greatly admire your project, and I'm happy that you are starting to get more funding. When I saw now that you are going through the report from "Commission on the Status of Women" I figured out a way that I might be able to help your project along. A friend of mine who still works for the Swedish Federation for LGBT Rights Attended the first couple of days of that commission this year. The one that is still active. She might very well be a person you could interview over skype or email, and she most definitely has connections to people who also attend, but are more specialized on the issue you are working on. Let me know if you want me to make the introduction between you two.
Jessica,
ReplyDeleteby all means, take Van up on his offer. I was delighted to see it, and to see that you're doing a thorough job with the UN Commission document. (Those UN publications tend to be dry as dust, but you're picking out valuable passages.) In your case, working on the budget side is probably at least as important as working on the annotated bibliography, if not more so right now, but keep plowing through the UN stuff whenever you have available time and, especially, continue to note those references they list that may be useful to you and follow up on them as you can.
This is a project that requires your working several angles at once. The money is important, and as you get each new commitment be sure and let the other sources that haven't committed know that things are going well. Have you applied for the actual grants available? Need help with that from Mark and me? -- sometimes they require faculty statements of support.
ReplyDeleteAnd keep reading. The more you know, the faster you'll be able to make sense of new sources. It should just build and build.