Women's Issues - An Overall Picture

A group of volunteers here have formed a group to lobby for Women's Issues specially in the developing countries. As part of this effort we intend to do a thorough research on status of women - across various aspects. Going further we plan to network with other groups to lobby for women's rights. This is the second blog in this series. First Blog is here.
Feel free to comment and join us.

===Posting on behalf of Sandhya====

Even before I started my research on women’s issues with focus on empowerment I realized it is a very wide in scope & it is very difficult to identify all the issues involved. However, this is an initial attempt to provide a brief outline, and the issues covered below are based on online resources/links.

Global State– Poverty – Around 1.2 billion people in less developed countries, majority of whom are women and children are living in extreme poverty. Poverty has a devastating effect on entire population but with a disproportionate impact on women and girls. It effect all aspects of live including education, nutrition, water and sanitation, employment, income and consumption, and most importantly health including reproductive health and increasing risk of AIDS.

Education of women has proved to be the most influential factor in improving child health and reducing infant mortality, and an extra year of schooling for girls reduces fertility rates by 5-10 percent(More on this later blogs). However, globally nearly 600 million women are illiterate compared to 320 million men.

Health of women is a major concern as 35% of pregnant women in developing countries (45 million) each year, receive no prenatal care. Every minute a woman dies in childbirth, which means more than 500, 000 deaths per year.

Violence against women often disregarded worldwide & categorized as personal issue causes more deaths and disability for women between ages 15 & 44 than cancer, traffic accidents and war. One out of three women in the world has been beaten, coerced into sex or abused in some other way, and most often by a man she knows, including her husband or other male relatives. UNFPA Global Survey indicates that 97 of 147 responding countries worldwide had established laws punishing gender-based violence, however only 24 countries actually enforcing them.

Economic empowerment of women has many obstacles including persistent gender discrimination in hiring and promotion related to pregnancy in the workplace, as well as the lack of national legislation ensuring women’s rights to own land & other property.
Political power is still sphere of men and traditional gender roles limit women’s choices in education & career, and compel women to assume the burden for household responsibilities, and share of women in parliament still doesn’t reach the level of 30% in most countries of the world. Only 14 countries have met the Beijing Platform for Action target of 30% of seats in national parliament held by women.

Environment and women’s interrelationship needs to be focused. While being responsible for household resources, women often lack secure access to land & other productive natural resources. Even So, Women are most affected by environmental degradation; soil erosions, water shortages, & crop failures; Deforestation & contamination increase the time women must look for fuel and clean water; while other responsibilities for house do not diminish toxins in the air & passed on to infants through the breast milk. National laws, local law and customs often effectively deny women the right to secure title or inherit land.

Media lacks gender sensitivity and degrading, violent and negative images of women in media had increased in different forms since the adoption of Beijing platform.

====Posting on behalf of Sandhya====

In the next blogs on this topic we will look at some of the issues in detail and particularly the status of women in India.