Generation equality: Ensuring Women’s Rights for an Equal Future

Committee: United Nations Women (UN Women)

Agenda 1: Generation equality: Ensuring Women’s Rights for an Equal Future

Name: N.M.B. Poornima Kumari Karunathilaka

Delegate of Cuba

Generation equality includes equal pay, equal sharing of unpaid care and domestic work, ending all forms of sexual harassment and violence, health-care services that meet their needs, equal participation in a political context, and all the decision-making platforms. Gender equality is beneficial for everyone, not just women and girls. People of every gender should have the access to equal rights, shared responsibilities to power, resources, and opportunities. There are four ways that can be used to accelerate the progress of generation equality. Firstly, equal political participation of both men and women needs to be a norm. Secondly, governments need to accelerate laws that protect the rights of women and girls, which means the discriminatory laws should be abandoned. Thirdly, the harmful social and cultural norms and societal perceptions of women have to be addressed because the laws are not enough to protect the rights of women and girls. Finally, it is required to invest in research and evidence to test the progress of women empowerment. The rights and entitlements that are claimed for Women and girls are defined as women’s rights. If people support women’s rights, then they eventually support the fight for equal rights.

Cuban women and girls have given equal constitutional rights as men, in social, cultural, political fields and in the family itself. Cuban women have found their right to be heard within the Cuban revolution. A noticeable shift has taken place in the orientation of women. In terms of most female representation of the country’s main governing body, Cuba is ranked third in the world as the congress of Cuba is 49% female. Cuban constitution has guaranteed gender equality for both women and men, which means that Cuban men and women are treated as equal citizens in all respect that they deserve. Cuban women’s movement is demanding the eradication of barriers and enforcement of legalized women’s rights. The representation of women in policy-making platforms is slowly increasing, not in a proportional way, but in a substantial way. The position of women was advanced because government policies are supporting gender parity in employment. However, The country faces the change of working to change people’s attitudes to the roles of men and women in society and to change the ideologies that have constructed within the minds of citizens.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is a visionary agenda for the empowerment of women. Although some progress has been made to achieve the sustainable goal of gender quality, some issues are yet to be addressed. The fifth Sustainable Goal of the UN is about gender equality and women’s empowerment. Although the UN Charter in 1945 has preserved equality between men and women, women experience extensive gender inequality. The UN action plan to achieve gender quality consists of ending discrimination in law and practice, envisioning a sustainable economy with gender equality at its core, eradicating poverty through gender-responsive social protection and public services, and closing the leadership gap and unleashing the power of women’s collective action. The UN General Assembly has collectively voted to form a particular UN body tasked with accelerating growth in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. In addition, the UN has raised international awareness of this matter with the International Women’s Day and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The UN monitors other international days committed to raising responsiveness of the diverse characteristics of the resist for gender equality and women empowerment.

Solutions

• Governments and other agencies need to act fast and at scale to accelerate progress to ensure achieving generation quality.
• Equal political participation as giving quotas for women’s representation, reforming political parties, and ensuring a level playing field for women political aspirants.
• Invest and prioritize gender approachable data-collection and analysis
• Make certain that the policies of the country, investments, and other programs meet the needs of girls and women and give equal benefits to them.
• Uphold sexual and reproductive health rights as the substratum of generation equality.
• Enact policies that respect and protect the health rights of girls and women.
• Supporting gender equality-reformative research.
• Ensure that the minimum job requirements are not high.
• Stop gender-based-pay discrimination and ensure equitable access to financial assets.

References

• Gender Equality

https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/gender-equality/

• Gender Equality

https://www.un.org/en/sections/issues-depth/gender-equality/

• Women in Cuba

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Cuba

• Human rights of women

https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/end-violence-against-women/2014/rights