On Zero Discrimination Day, which is commemorated every year on 1 March, UNAIDS is calling for an end to discrimination against women and girls and for equal rights, opportunities and treatment. Membership Lead Louie shares her thoughts…
Via Zero Discrimination Day UNAIDS is highlighting areas where change is urgently needed: equal participation in political life; human rights and laws that empower; economic justice—equal pay for equal work; ending gender-based violence; provide health care without stigma or barriers; equal and free access to primary and secondary education; and climate justice.
Globally, at least one in three women and girls have experienced violence in their lives, with adolescent girls experiencing higher rates of intimate partner violence than adult women overall.
Although some countries have made progress towards greater gender equality, discrimination against women and girls still exists everywhere. We know that without equal opportunities early on, without access to education, inequality will persist. Yet, nearly one in three adolescent girls aged between 10 and 19 years from the poorest households globally has never been to school.
For example, only 88 out of 190 countries have laws regarding equal pay for work of equal value for men and women. Intersecting with other forms of discrimination, on income, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, these rights violations disproportionately harm women and girls.
For this transformation, we need women in roles of leadership, at the community level as well as nationally, regionally and globally. Representation of women’s interests is central to changing structural inequalities. Yet, in 2020, less than a quarter of parliamentarians were women.
However in the UK as of June 2020 there are 220 women in the House of Commons, the highest ever. But the fact is only a total of 552 women have been elected as Members of the House of Commons between 1918 and 2019.
Latest figures from the FTSE 100: the percentage of women on boards has increased from 32% to 34.5%, with 324 women holding 355 directorships. The percentage of female non-executive directors (NEDs) is at an all-time high of 40.8%, and the percentage of female executives has risen slightly to 13.2% as of September 2020.
We’ve come a long way since New Zealand the first nation to give women the right to vote, but not to stand, in 1893 but there is a long way to go.
In 1918 the Representation of the People Act was passed which allowed women over the age of 30 who met a property qualification to vote. Although 8.5 million women met this criteria, it was only about two-thirds of the total population of women in the UK.
Who can forget Rosa Parkes who was best known for the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and had been working as a Sexual Assault Investigator for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People?
There have been 49 Vice Presidents of the USA, this year when Kamala Harris took office in January the California senator was the first female, first black and first Asian-American US vice-president. Unbelievable really.
Ensuring that women’s rights are protected, ending discrimination against women and girls and removing discriminatory laws will be central to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and ensuing equity and equality for all.
As Soroptimists the SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals) are the forefront of everything we do but this one has to be one of the most important.
How are you going to make a difference this Zero Discrimination Day?