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38. Since 1975, significant knowledge and information have been generated about the status of women and the conditions in which they live. Throughout their entire life cycle, women’s daily existence and long-term aspirations are restricted by discriminatory attitudes, unjust social and economic structures, and a lack of resources in most countries that prevent their full and equal participation. In a number of countries, the practice of prenatal sex selection, higher rates of mortality among very young girls and lower rates of school enrolment for girls as compared with boys suggest that son preference is curtailing the access of girl children to food, education and health care and even life itself. Discrimination against women begins at the earliest stages of life and must therefore be addressed from then onwards.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The continued change in the way people relate to one another based on the alteration in not only their physical landscape and technological playgrounds but also informationally – how they think about and view the world. There does seem to be the issue of the ways in which the idea off “status of women,” as noted in Paragraph 38 of the Beijing Declaration, simply did not exist; women had no status, so no status of women to speak about in a meaningful way.
The entire life cycle for women, globally and historically as a rule of thumb, has been, for the most part, on in which their “daily existence and long-term aspirations are restricted by discriminatory attitudes, unjust social and economic structures, and a lack of resources in most countries that prevent their full and equal participation.” The daily existence can be servile to the men in the home intended only to care for the literal hearth and home – and be the bearer of children as the other major identity.
The long-term aspirations are the more identified ones, where the possibilities for education and work, as per the concerns of Second Wave Feminism, remain restricted even by purported divine mandate in several countries. It amounts to the behavioral, social, and even legal outgrowth of the view of women as lacking agency. Why give a person choice if they cannot think well-enough for themselves? Those are the outcroppings of the discriminatory attitudes.
Then there are the real social and economic structures, such as many aspects of the pay gap – even upon further analysis, representing the discrimination against women as real, but not as severe, and needing to be handled in an ethical and just manner – move for equity in the light of equal qualifications, skill, and effort. The attitudes of women, socially, is to be in the home and not in the workplace. Typically, the poorer the country and less developed the nation, then the more these attitudes crop up, which tells the story. Include women in the economic and social life of the country, the entire nation-state flourishes, e.g., more taxpayers, more rights respected and actualized, and so on.
The ability to make choices in a global system bound by the currency that determines the degrees of freedom means the economic status of an individual woman opens or closes particular doors in this international monetary setup. If women lack the basic resources, then they remain bound to the men in their lives, because of economic privation; within this framework of fewer degrees of freedom, women become less free, even in purportedly equal and free societies.
Indeed, the other discriminations can be seen in the sex selection practices of the society. We find the disproportionate number of women restricted in the ability to exist, not only in professional and educational life but also, in starting life. Societies who want boys to carry forward the name, including secular authoritarian corporate capitalist countries such as China, will choose boys over girls, especially in the context of only one child per family. This creates ripple effects decades down the line with the asymmetry in the population patterns.
Girls have a higher mortality rate compared to the boys and have “lower rates of school enrolment” with the “son preference” as a cross-cultural phenomenon for much of the world’s population. The West, in its fragility of national self and tendencies towards narcissism in a narrow perspective, may not wholly appreciate the number of countries in which son preference is so strongly the norm – potentially, at least, more than half of the world’s cultural populations.
The girls also will get worse provisions in terms of education, food, and health care. All important in the health and wealth of the consideration of inequality. Men and boys languish in some regards but the idea is the comparison and statistical difference in the poor outcomes and negative facets of life, for women compared to men throughout the lifespan.
Any dealing with these issues will require a comprehensive management of not only the discrimination in the pipeline for women but also in the treatment of women throughout their lives in many of the aforementioned ways.
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- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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Photo by Tanja Heffner on Unsplash