The United Nations Women has urged governments across the world to pass laws and policies that advance the rights of females to strengthen gender equality.
The UN Women stated this in a statement published on its official website in commemoration of the International Women’s Day.
It maintained that policies are among the best ways to accelerate economic growth and build more prosperous and equitable societies.
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“First and foremost there must be an investment in peace. Beyond this, the investments needed include: laws and policies that advance the rights of women and girls; transformation of social norms that pose barriers to gender equality; guaranteeing women’s access to land, property, health care, education, and decent work; and financing women’s groups networks at all levels.
“This is particularly urgent when war and crisis are eroding the achievements of decades of investments in gender equality,” the statement partly reads.
The UN agency observed that from the Middle East to Haiti, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, women pay the biggest prices for conflicts that are not their making.
“Climate change is accelerating persistent poverty gaps. As competition for scarce resources intensifies, livelihoods are threatened, societies become more polarized, and women bear an increasingly heavy burden:
“1 in every 10 women in the world lives in extreme poverty.
“The number of women and girls living in conflict-affected areas doubled since 2017, now, more than 614 million women and girls live in conflict-affected areas,” it added.
The UN also explained that climate change is set to leave 236 million more women and girls hungry by 2030, twice as many as men (131 million), if governments do not take action.
The statement also reads, “We cannot continue to miss out on the gender-equality dividend. More than 100 million women and girls could be lifted out of poverty if governments prioritized education and family planning, fair and equal wages, and expanded social benefits.
“Almost 300 million jobs could be created by 2035 through investments in care services, such as provision of daycare and elderly care. And closing gender employment gaps could boost gross domestic product per capita by 20 per cent across all regions.
“The current reality is far from this. Programmes dedicated to gender equality represent only 4 per cent of official development assistance.
“An additional USD 360 billion in developing countries is needed per year to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is less than one fifth of the USD 2.2 trillion spent globally on military expenditure in 2022, for example.”