“Gender equality should not be an afterthought” — Lakshmi Puri

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Excellencies,
President of Malta,
Prime minister of Malta and the Secretary General of the Commonwealth,
Colleagues from the Gender unit of the Commonwealth,
Distinguished Ministers of gender equality
Dear participants,

I’m delighted to join you here today at the inaugural Commonwealth Women’s Forum—another important milestone “because it is 2015" as the new Canadian Prime Minister and Commonwealth leader—and a feminist by conviction—said when asked why he prioritized a gender parity government. UN Women, which is the first twenty-first century UN entity and which I have the honour to represent here, welcomes the fact that the Commonwealth—the inter regional, intergovernmental Forum of Global Partnership— is straddling the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries and is decisively updating and strengthening its gender equality and women's empowerment mission and looks forward to cooperate and support it so that we can all step it up for gender equality and reach a Planet 50/50 by 2030. That is within this generation.

Women's agenda and role is ‘trending’ everywhere—of course in the United Nations it's a high point—but also in other intergovernmental fora. The G7 has set up a women's dialogue and working group, the G20 embraced this agenda and just last month the W20 was launched. UN Women was there to support.

UN Women and the world made history when we convened on 27 September in the United Nations, at the The Global Leaders Meeting where more than 70 Heads of State/Government around the world (20 from the Commonwealth countries) pledged to “step it up” by making highest-level political commitments for action to realize gender equality by 2030. We hope that those Commonwealth Heads of State and Government who could not make it to this event will use the CHOGM opportunity to announce their commitments so we can include them in the Global Book of Commitments and which we and the Women's Forum of the Commonwealth can monitor!

Ladies and gentleman,

We are at a historic junction in the realization of the gender equality project, perhaps the most important for humanity in the twenty-first century. There is an unparalleled opportunity to finish what has been languishing for centuries, to end discrimination and violence against women and give them equal right to their humanity as the feminist credo demands.

Since its creation five years ago, UN Women has successfully pushed the frontiers for gender equality, women's empowerment and women's and girls’ rights, including related norms, standards, prioritization, commitments and implementation on the ground, by governments, civil society, academia, parliamentarians and the private sector. All of these groups are represented here at global, regional and inter-regional levels, and at the national and local levels, in the interrelated domains of sustainable development, human rights, peace and security, and humanitarian agendas. This has meant that the essentialism of gender equality and women's empowerment is recognized as an intrinsic value and as a key enabler and beneficiary, a transformative force multiplier and driver of all of these critical pursuits of humanity and their success.

What is more, gender equality and women’s empowerment are no longer seen as a Sisyphean effort of halting progress and threat of regression. Though still politically challenged and culturally contested, and with new threats like those posed by violent extremists and terrorism in some quarters, this magical year has seen a remarkable unity of purpose, in the normative space. A self-belief that a gender-equal world is mission possible.

It is this self-belief that the Women’s Forum reflect when defining the theme of “Women Ahead and achieving whatever they want” as also was reflected in the songs at the opening, which urged women to stand up and be themselves and to capitalize on it to drive action and impact in all the spheres you operate in.

Normative Achievements

UN Women together with all our partners—all of you—secured the commitment to the centrality of achieving substantive gender equality in global normative intergovernmental processes and outcomes. We adopted the Beijing +20 review and commemoration, built on the Rio +20 “The Future We Want” agenda, and centered gender equality and women’s empowerment in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, the high-level review and global study of Security Council resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security, and the new climate change agreement to be adopted next month. We are also working to make sure that next year Habitat III on human settlements and new urban agenda, and the World Humanitarian Summit to set policies on effective humanitarian response and resilience building, will recognize the role and agency of women as much as their special needs.

Beijing +20

In particular, 2015 has marked an important milestone in the journey towards gender equality with the twentieth anniversary of the landmark women’s world conference in Beijing. One hundred and eighty-nine governments came together to sign the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which remains the most comprehensive international framework for and commitment to women's human rights—a Magna Carta.

This year’s UN Commission on the Status of women, which is the premier global intergovernmental normative body, marked this anniversary by adopting a Political Declaration and undertaking a global review of progress made in implementing the Beijing recommendations over the past two decades, based on a record 168 national reports and five regional reviews. The Declaration reaffirmed our political will, and is a firm commitment to tackle the challenges and remaining implementation gaps in all 12 critical areas of concern.

Progress made

Generations have been inspired by Beijing Platforms bold commitments to change, and the past two decades have brought progress on many fronts, but we still have a long path ahead of us. Overall, progress has been uneven and unacceptably slow, and change has not been deep enough. Despite significant advances in laws to promote gender equality and address violence against women and girls in educational enrollment, labor force participation, women’s access to contraception, in declining rates of harmful practices, and gains in women’s representation in national parliaments, twenty years on, many of the same structural barriers remain in force globally. The hard truth is that no country has achieved substantive gender equality.

Challenges remaining

Violence against women is a global epidemic including in Commonwealth countries and takes different forms. Forms of violence include early, forced and child marriages, honour killings, female genital mutilation, rape and abuse and trafficking for sexual exploitation, domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual harassment at the workplace, girl-aversion and boy preference-related sex selective practices. The majority of the world's poor are women. Education gaps persist especially in secondary and higher education as they do in the labour force participation, wages, income, social protection, unpaid care work and domestic work, in corporate, parliamentary and government participation and leadership.

Political Declaration of CSW 59

It was concluded that if we proceed at the usual pace, we will take another century. The cost of that to women and girls and to all of society, economy and government, is one we cannot afford. So this is an acceleration moment. One that member states signaled when they vowed full, accelerated and effective implementation of the Beijing Platform for action in the Political Declaration, undertook to strengthen laws policies and measures and their implementation and to transform discriminatory social norms and gender stereotypes, to significantly increase investment to close the gender resource gap including through prioritization in ODA and in domestic resource mobilization, to data, monitoring and accountability and last but not least to strengthen gender machineries / institutions in relation to gender equality and women’s empowerment. This is reiterated in the Gender Compact of 2030 Agenda.

Agenda 2030 and the Gender Compact

At UN Women, we take heart in the potential of the 2030 Agenda for transforming the lives of women and girls throughout the world. We have secured a Gender Compact that builds on existing commitments to gender equality, such as those contained in the Beijing Platform for Action and CEDAW, and further advances the global framework by tackling the structural underpinnings of gender inequalities.

UN Women welcomes the commitment to a world that fulfills its promise for a more peaceful, just and inclusive society, recognizing that “sustainable development is not possible if one half of humanity continues to be denied its full human rights and opportunities”. The framework’s three balanced and indivisible dimensions of sustainable development— economic, environmental and social—and its strong references to human rights and non-discrimination, as well as its concepts of universality and leaving no one behind, carry relevance for all individuals, and countries, including developed countries.

From a gender perspective, the sheer breadth of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets represent a significant step forward from the limited gender commitments in the predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We have secured a strong stand-alone goal to achieve—not just promote—gender equality (SDG5) and empower all women and girls.

SDG 5: The high five

SDG 5 has six transformative targets. These targets are about ending all forms of discrimination in law and practice, ending all forms of violence against women and harmful practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation, equal participation and leadership in economic, political and public life, valuing and reducing women's unpaid care work, through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family, universal access to sexual and reproductive rights and health, economic empowerment though access, ownership and control over resources—natural and productive—and ICT which are seen as critical means of implementation.

Through linkages to other goals, it is affirmed that empowering women to participate fully in economic life across all sectors and throughout all levels of economic activity is essential for achieving these goals and building strong economies, establishing more stable and just societies, and improving quality of life for women, men, families and communities.

Other goals

Further, gender equality is integrated across 11 more SDGs. To implement the comprehensive program of work to which the world has now committed—including the gender dimensions of poverty, hunger, health, education, water, sanitation, employment, safe cities, peace and security—political will and greater investment are needed, as has been also promised. UN Women has drawn up a global indicators framework to cover all gender-related targets which have been accepted widely, and the Commonwealth countries could use them to measure progress.

2015 is a pivotal year for establishing the necessary ground work. This year we take stock of where we are and position ourselves for transformative change that will shape the next generation. Countries must implement the 2030 Agenda comprehensively in line with international human rights standards and norms on gender equality.

It is imperative that we localize the SDGs and implement them. We must build on existing commitments and draw on the lessons learnt from the 20 year review of the Beijing Platform for Action and the MDGs. Ensuring that the lofty ambitions of the SDGs become a reality on the ground requires serious commitment to data, implementation and monitoring. You must not allow this to be business as usual, governance or finance as usual.

Implementation at all levels must be driven by government commitments to strengthening existing gender equality machineries, mechanisms and platforms, and establishing new ones where necessary.

Development and sectoral strategies, plans, policies and programmes should be aligned with the gender equality commitments in the SDGs, and national institutional arrangements should ensure that gender equality perspectives are central to all aspects of decision-making.

Gender equality should not be an afterthought, but instead central to all aspects of policy development and implementation. Further, gender-responsive follow-up and review will require an all of government approach, including a strong role for gender equality mechanisms to help drive evidence-based implementation and monitoring of the SDGs.

Data requirements to effectively monitor the SDGs for women and girls will be substantial, and significant investments and capacity-building of statistical systems will be needed to fill data gaps. In this pursuit, we must pay particular attention to intersectionality and capturing the experiences of those who face multiple forms of discrimination.

Transformative Financing of Gender Equality

The expectations of the SDGs must be matched by an equally ambitious level of financing and investment. This is to ensure political priorities do not lead to disconnected funding and policy priorities at the expense of an integrated approach. It is critical that national budgets and official development assistance (ODA) prioritize and significantly increase their allocations towards gender equality and that all other sources of funding are committed to achieve gender equality. The private sector has also important contributions to make in this regard.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda was adopted in June this year at the World Conference on Financing for Development. It recognizes gender equality and women’s empowerment as a priority and it must be mainstreamed. This includes through targeted actions and substantially increased investments in the formulation and implementation of economic, social, environmental and financial policies. Further "transformative actions" must be taken apart from enforceable legislation and sound policies to achieve it at all levels - global, regional, national and local.

All sources of finance, domestic and international, public and private, finance and trade, entrepreneurship and private sector, migration, innovative financing mechanisms, gender responsive budgeting and lending, are covered and must therefore prioritize this issue. UN Women has already launched an Action Plan for Transformative Financing of gender equality and women’s empowerment commitments, which we hope the Commonwealth will embrace and take forward. I hope some of you here will echo this call.

People and civil society involvement

The enormous task of effectively implementing and monitoring gender equality commitments in the SDGs and as pledged by governments will require the active participation of all stakeholders. Governments should provide transparent gender sensitive mechanisms and inclusive consultations to ensure the influence of the women’s movement and civil society in all planning, including the allocation of resources for the SDGs, and follow-up and review processes.

Private sector role

Further, governments have a role in ensuring that the increasing influence and impact of private sector actors on the enjoyment of women’s rights is aligned with national efforts to advance gender equality. In this regard the Addis Accord specifically calls upon the private Sector to accede to the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) Framework of UN Women and UN Global compact thus holding themselves responsible to act within their companies, in the marketplace and in their communities to advance gender equality goals.

UN Women is committed to deepening our engagement with the private sector, with both large and small and medium corporations and women business owners. The Women’s Empowerment Principles are the gateway through which corporations can both engage with UN Women and deliver on the 2030 Agenda. In fact, UN Women has a budding relationship with Commonwealth business women under the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which is connecting women business owners to corporate and government buyers and leveraging the principle of markets access in the WEPs.

Currently women business owners secure only one per cent of corporate and government procurement. Globally, the government procurement market is over 12 trillion USD. UN Women and Commonwealth business women aim to increase women’s access to the market for business and enterprise success.

We have developed Key Flagship Programmes on Women's economic empowerment, one of which is about gender responsive procurement policies and practices, women's entrepreneurship, and women's political participation and leadership, and we are ready to work with you to implement it in the Commonwealth.

Youth involvement

Moving from economic empowerment to empowered youth, I would like to highlight that UN Women’s Executive Director has identified youth as critical levers in creating Planet-5050 by 2030. Empowered young women and young men as advocates of gender equality are fundamental to transforming societies.

I am very pleased to introduce you to our Youth and Gender Equality Strategy, our “LEAP framework”. This will lead us to strengthening youth participation in the SDGs with a strong youth participation framework:

L: Leadership of women in all spheres strengthened.

E: Economic empowerment of young women.

A: Action on ending violence against young women and girls.

P: Strengthening participation of, voice of, and partnerships with young women and their organizations.

P: Partnerships with young men to deliver of gender equality.

P: Strengthening inter-generational partnerships throughout the lifecycle to achieve gender transformative society

I encourage you to consider this framework as you discuss youth leadership and gender tomorrow.

Education: The game changer

Closely linked to the topic of youth is that of education. As is well know, there is overwhelming evidence on the positive effects of education for girls and women. Despite these far-reaching benefits, experiences with education are highly gendered when it comes to access to and completion of school, quality of teaching and learning, skills offered and acquired, and opportunities to experience learning in safe and non-violent environments. As noted by David and Myra Sadker in their seminal book Failing at Fairness, "sitting in the same classroom, reading the same textbook, listening to the same teacher, boys and girls receive very different educations."

Deep-seated gender stereotypes, cultural beliefs, attitudes and expectations often permeate the teaching and learning environment for both boys and girls, but with more extensive consequences and impact on girls. UN Women thus considers girls’ and women’s quality education to be a game changer in its pursuit of gender equality. We emphasize that such education must take full advantage of modern information and communication technologies as tools for instruction as well as forming part of the acquired tool set for graduates. We must provide formal and non-formal opportunities as well as second and third chances for those who drop out prematurely to learn and acquire relevant skills.

Women's political participation and leadership

And lastly, I move to Women’s Political Empowerment. Today, while more women than at any other point in history are participating in political processes and decision-making, they remain sorely underrepresented at all levels of political power. This must change. The SDG 5 calls for women’s equal participation in political and public life at all levels.

Here at the Commonwealth Women’s Forum, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to forge a clear pathway to fulfilling commitments made in Beijing twenty years ago and to achieving SDG 5 by leveraging shared values and leading by example. Unlocking the potential of women in political decision-making will unlock the potential of societies everywhere. When women lead as Members of Parliament, Heads of State or Government or even as a future SG of the Commonwealth, the decisions and laws they make help everyone.

Women prove time and again across the world that they are highly effective at working across partisan lines—even in the most politically combative environments—to enact changes that improve citizens’ lives. Women’s political participation is thus about justice and about sustainability; without it, decisions necessary for a sustainable future are not reflective of the population; they are not democratic; they are not legitimate.

And yes, numbers do matter. Targets set by states around the world to increase women’s political leadership, including by the Commonwealth to ensure women lead in at least 30 per cent of decision-making roles, have not been met. Just 22 per cent of all national parliamentarians across Commonwealth member states are women. This is the same as the current global average.

Indeed, this reflects the diversity of political systems across the Commonwealth. Among its member states is the country with the highest proportion of women in parliament worldwide (Rwanda), and also many which have the lowest. But 22 per cent is well short of the gender balance target established by the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. On the current trajectory it will take another 50 years to reach the target.

We can go further. We know by now how to do it. Nearly all Commonwealth states that have 30 per cent or more women parliamentarians have engaged in the necessary legal and electoral reforms to introduce Temporary Special Measures to advance women’s representation.

If women are to take part in shaping our sustainable future, such Measures are vital. But they must also be combined with electoral systems conducive to gender balance in politics, and the political will to empower women and level the playing field.

I challenge those present at this inaugural Commonwealth Women’s Forum to hold their leaders accountable. We have an opportunity to be bold. To not only review, but to re-think commitments beyond 22 per cent, beyond 30 per cent.

All stakeholders involved

Gender equality is a shared vision of social justice and human rights. To make this vision a reality all stakeholders including governments, the UN, the Commonwealth Secretariat (with whom we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding), the private sector, philanthropic foundations, civil society, and individuals must play a role and be held accountable for their contributions to achieving gender equality through the SDGs and beyond.

Advocacy campaigns

We must remember gender equality requires active citizenship to be exercised to change the culture of gender inequality, discrimination and violence. As emphasized by the President of Malta, let the Commonwealth countries undertake this very opportunity to “highlight the lived experiences of women today and serve as a catalyst to further address women’s issues.”

We therefore call all of you to join our advocacy campaigns, HeForShe, UNiTE, and Planet 50/50 by 2030, and step it up for gender equality, and become champions and activists. Media must play a very important role in this.

Messages to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting

I can see that there will be many issues discussed and debated by this Forum for your input into the CHOGM Communique and beyond. We owe it to the 1 billion women of the Commonwealth, majority of whom are among the most economically, politically and socially disempowered. But Commonwealth countries are also among those which validate optimism with achievements in overcoming challenges and establishing good practices.

That is why the taking up of this agenda by the Commonwealth at this historic moment is critical. The Commonwealth, by virtue of its size and weight in the world economy and geopolitics, its diversity, and it's north-south intercontinental character, has a special responsibility and capacity to be a role model to advance this agenda globally though macroeconomic, aid, trade, financial and corporate policies. You must also build alliances with the other fora of the Commonwealth including business, youth, people's and human rights and more. The Prime Minister asked you to be the brain of the Commonwealth. I would say that you must aspire to be all brain, heart and hands. Aspire to drive action.

With the 2030 Agenda, I call on you now, let’s put a firm expiry date of 2030 for gender inequality, with real equality being nothing short of 50-50. This has already been envisioned and targeted and committed internationally. Let the Commonwealth now show the world that it will run and win the race to Planet 50/50 no later than 2030. Let’s set about making that a reality, so that every girl and woman can live with dignity, physical integrity, security, freedom of choice, build capabilities and enjoy full voice participation and leadership in all spheres and at all levels. That's what it takes for women to be ahead and do and be what they want to be. We as UN Women stand by your side and are ready to run the race with you. The Women's Forum must mark the distance run every two years to the last lap.

I thank you!