UN entity calls for acceleration of women empowerment

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- Unless progress is significantly accelerated, the international community will not be able to keep its promise to realize gender equality by 2030, UN Women, an entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women, has warned.

In 89 countries with available data, women and girls account for 330 million of the poor. This translates to 4 more women living on less than 1.90 U.S. dollars a day for every 100 men, according to a UN Women report released on Wednesday.

More than half of urban women and girls in developing countries live in conditions where they lack at least one of the following: access to clean water, improved sanitation facilities, durable housing, and sufficient living area, according to the report titled "Turning Promises Into Action: Gender Equality in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development."

One in 5 women under the age of 50 experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in the past 12 months, says the report.

It also highlights how, in the lives of women and girls, different dimensions of well-being and deprivation are deeply intertwined: a girl who is born into a poor household and forced into early marriage, for example, is more likely to drop out of school, give birth at an early age, suffer complications during childbirth, and experience violence, than a girl from a higher-income household who marries at a later age.

The report also looks beyond national averages to uncover the yawning gaps between women and girls who, even within the same country, are living worlds apart because of their income status, race/ethnicity, or where they live.

In the United States, poverty rates among black, native American, and Alaskan native women more than double those of white and Asian women. Thirty-eight percent of Hispanic women in the poorest quintile did not complete high school, compared to a national average of 10 percent, according to the report. Enditem