Towards a Planet of Gender Equality

Engine of Global Economic Growth

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moo once said, “We cannot fulfill 100 percent of the world’s potential by excluding 50 percent of the world’s people.”

The past 20 years have seen great progress in women’s empowerment and equality in all nations. Results of a UN survey show that gender equality enhances the life quality of women and girls and is at the same time beneficial to the development of family, community, and nation. Accomplishment of women’s equality will enable more children to go to school and bolster cultural diversity; equal employment opportunities for women can add a new engine of global economic growth.

“New technology constantly redefines how the world is ruled. Electronic commerce is a vital opportunity for women’s empowerment because it gives full play to their creativity. Alibaba is China’s biggest electronic group. Among its online retailers, almost half are women. Consumer comments come mostly from women, who also account for 50 percent or more of total online purchasers,” Julia Broussard, country programme manager of the UN Women China Office, said. “Jack Ma, founder and chairman of Alibaba Group, once joked that women are the secret weapon behind the corporation’s speedy development.”

President of the Korean Women’s Development Institute Lee Myung-sun said, “Countries that maintain a high employment rate of women, such as Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, all enjoy a high per capita GDP. Female managers have proactive influence on the overall operation of companies.” A survey of 170 Korean corporations between 2009 and 2013 showed that those that had more senior female executives also had a greater success rate, manifest in higher profits and turnover.

Jiang Yongping, professor of the Women Studies Institute of China, has headed three surveys on Chinese women’s social status. The results of all three showed that high-quality sustainable development actually depends on women’s participation and contributions. Her advice is to promote the quality of women’s employment to ensure that they achieve self-development through participation.

Improve Women’s Status in Social Structure

The majority of rural women have had little or no education. They consequently occupy inferior status in the social structure. Representatives held an in-depth discussion on how to change the life situations of rural women.

Lina Deng, founder-member of the Marie Claire Female Happiness Fund, told the story of Li Min, an embroideress from Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province. Her daily life formerly consisted of working the farmland, raising pigs and looking after her family. Her husband’s complaints about her inability to earn an income and the lack of communication with outside world gave her an intense feeling of inferiority.

Then, two years ago, Li Min joined a training course in embroidery skills in the village, run by the Marie Claire Female Happiness Fund. Three months later, three excellent works she had completed earned her RMB 2,100 – a considerable sum in a village where the annual per capita income is RMB 3,000. Before long Li Min received orders for her works. During the months it took her to fulfill this new task, her husband helped her with the pigs and housework. Contributing to the household income brought Li Min tremendous self-esteem and happiness.

Gao Xiaoxian, chair of Shaanxi Research Association for Women and Family, has had 20 years’ experience of grass-roots women’s work, and has been instrumental in enabling rural women’s participation in grass-roots governance. She and her group carried out several projects in rural communities on women’s participation in local politics. They discovered a backbone of proactive women whose political participation awareness they enhanced through training.

Over a 20-year period, Gao Xiaoxian and her team conducted nearly 100 programs in 15 counties and more than 40 administrative villages in four provinces, including Shaanxi, Ningxia, Jiangxi, and Sichuan. In 1986, 20 female village officials were elected in Heyang County, equivalent to 5.7 percent of the county’s total village cadres, while the ratio in Shaanxi Province was 0.6 percent, and that nationally just one percent.

Owing to China’s accelerated urbanization, rural women often suffer the detriment of undermined land rights, which exacerbates their already economically disadvantaged situation. Professor Li Huiying of the Central Party School explored successful approaches to protecting rural women’s land rights.

She found that in traditional rural society, nurturing sons to look after elders predominates, because sons, rather than daughters, carry on the family name and so inherit the family property. The traditional village regulations and rules whereby girls do not enjoy the same land distribution rights effectively deprives them of their ability to live independently, and of a stable source of income. This patriarchal system results in large numbers of abandoned girl infants and a disproportionate number of males who, upon reaching marriageable age, have great difficulty in finding wives.

The team made a breakthrough in encouraging unmarried men to move in with their future wives’ families, so that daughters have good reasons to expect equal rights to farmlands, and the couple can equally shoulder the responsibility of caring for both their aged parents after marriage. Men and women thus become win-win partners rather than adversaries.

Women’s Empowerment towards an Equitable and Harmonious World

Agi Veres, country director of the UNDP Representative Office in China, said in her speech that of the 17 UN Post-2015 Agenda goals, women’s empowerment and development was the crucial target through which all nations may achieve future development.

The trend of promoting gender equality has set off an upsurge, as Julia Broussard, country programme manager of the UN Women China Office, observed in her speech; however, there is still a long way to go. She said, “It is forecast that 81 years will be needed to achieve an equitable world, more than 75 years to realize employment gender equality, and almost 50-plus years to bring about women’s equal political participation. The way ahead is long, and will need much time, so we must hasten achievement of gender equality. UN Women calls on men to participate in the cause of women’s empowerment and gender equality.”

This year witnessed “Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” jointly signed by 193 countries at the Sustainable Development Summit 2015 at the UN Headquarters wherein gender equality became the fifth objective of the Post-2015 Agenda. This was the first time in the history of the UN that the international community made a collective promise to solve the problem of gender inequality, one that the leaders of more than 80 countries and representatives of more than 110 nations together witnessed.

Henny Ngu, gender specialist at the Bureau of Policy of UNDP Headquarters, said that the future world should be more inclusive, sustainable, and energetic. Other than changing the lives of women, gender equality can also enhance family happiness and national development. Ensuring global gender equality and women’s empowerment is of profound historical significance.