Paragraphs 57 of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty

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57. The success of policies and measures aimed at supporting or strengthening the promotion of gender equality and the improvement of the status of women should be based on the integration of the gender perspective in general policies relating to all spheres of society as well as the implementation of positive measures with adequate institutional and financial support at all levels.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

The Beijing Declaration’s paragraph 57 is based on a gender equality or the equality of the sexes basis with the look into policies and measures of progress. The look at the gender perspective is important because of the relevance to international movements and work going on, at least, since December 10 1948 with the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There have been substantial but insufficient efforts to further the statements in the UDHR about the rights of women as persons. This has been heralded under the label gender equality or equality of the sexes. The basic premise of the movement is to provide a basis for the equality of women with men through a variety of measures, which can be seen in several documents at the national level and in international documents including the Beijing Declaration.

The purpose is to develop a set of policies and programs, or at least suggestions based on international discourse, for the means by which to attain the fabled gender equality. Indeed, the policies are stated as being meant for “all spheres of society” with the intention that there should be “adequate institutional and financial support at all levels.”

This is interesting. As the basic premise is gender equality, as an ethic based on universal principles found in the fundamental documents of the United Nations with the generations who founded mostly dead, that is, we inherited the work of the dead, in terms of the universals of ethics founded post-WWII.

Now, the principle or ethic then becomes an empirical question about the efficacy of the equality of women. If we work to keep the equality of women as the principle, and then develop policies and programs for the benefit of women, we can observe the effects over the long term. It is something based on rights. Where if one wants to practice their faith, they can do it; if someone does not want to do it, they do not have to, then each should respect the right of the faithful and the irreligious.

I remember working in the Athabasca University Students’ Union as an executive. It was an interesting experience. One time during a convocation, we, the movers and shakers of the university, went to some big dinner, but we had to pray in public to start the evening a public university. Does this violate secular principles? In some ways, it does; if happening at a postsecondary institution near you, I recommend arguing for the secularization of the campus to be fair to all.

Consider: the case of abortion, if one does not want an abortion based on religious and conscience objections, they should not have the abortion forced on them; if someone wants it, they should have access to it. Each can have their rights and responsibilities balanced and respected in this way.

And so with rights, it is all or none, with a balancing based on the application of every one of them. Indeed, we can not the empirical outcomes in the cases of implementing the rights of women, which, as mentioned, is an empirical question as to the benefit of them to society. As it turns out, with more rights implemented, women tend to be better off.

However, not only the women, but also the children and the family, and so the communities, in societies too, the more women’s rights are respected with women as persons, then the more flourishing of the society. It is akin to the long-term investment in combatting one of our greatest crises, which is climate change.

We need to tackle this problem now, and not later. Same with educating the general public on the safety of GMO foods, of vaccinations, and the inefficacy of prayer – very likely, and so on. But it needs supports. Those institutional bulwarks can provide a basis for the public to be able to flourish more than it would otherwise.

If someone disagrees with the empirical evidence in support of the implementation of women’s rights, and if they do not want a worse quality of life, then the objection will either be ethical – disagreement of rights as a source or part of ethics – or true misogyny, potentially. But the most common objection will be undue skepticism or a disagreement with the ethic.

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One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights: