Next year marks the 10th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference of Women in Beijing-the largest UN conference in history. Although it accelerated efforts to improve the status of women, many nations have not fulfilled their commitments to international conventions, declarations, or platforms for improving the status of women in their countries, even though this could be one of the most cost-effective strategies for addressing the other challenges in this chapter. Increasing women's education and participation in the cash economy translates into improved health, nutrition, and education for children, as well as lower infant mortality and birth rates. The World Bank confirms that investing in girls and women is one of the soundest social and economic anti-poverty strategies. Women's presence in UN peacekeeping missions improves access to networks for local women and makes male peacekeepers more responsible.

Meanwhile, violence against females between 15 and 44 years old causes more deaths and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, or even war. Current reliable global data on domestic violence against women do not exist, but WHO reports that in 48 population-based surveys from around the world, 10-69% of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate male partner at some point in their lives, and Amnesty International estimates this to be about 33% worldwide. Some 80% of the world's refugees are women and children. The use of rape as a weapon leads to female deaths from preventable diseases, malnutrition, and childbirth complications in war-torn regions across the globe. People newly infected with HIV are now twice as likely to be women as men. Two-thirds of the world's illiterate people age 15 and older are female.

The numbers of women in government and in the cash economy are increasing, as is the percentage of women in all levels of education except in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Women account for 15.4% of parliamentary membership around the world, compared with 11.7% in 1997. Hence it is reasonable to assume that women's status will improve, further contributing to the general welfare of civilization. In the meantime, women earn on average two-thirds to three-fourths as much as men for the same work. In most developing countries, 50% or more of the female nonagricultural labor force is in the informal sector, where earnings and social protection are far less secure.

 

Future strategies to enhance the status of women should include creating and publishing gender indexes of participation in society, encouraging women to run for political office, guaranteeing the legal rights of women, raising gender awareness in all departments of government, and increasing women's access to resources such as credit, land, technology, training, health care, and child care. Women should establish more networking organizations for women from various economic sectors and geographic regions. This is of particular importance to rural, migrant, refugee, internally displaced, and disabled women. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has pointed out that "full equality for women means more than the accomplishment of statistical objectives: the culture has to change." Such an effort includes educating men to fully respect women and also directly working with the media, which too often perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes. Although discussions about the changing role of women are increasing, it may be necessary to explore sanctions against governments that do not guarantee the rights of women. A gender-based Gini co-efficient should be used and publicized.

 

Africa: Rwanda has the world's largest percent of women in parliament (49%), but for sub-Saharan Africa as whole the figure is 14.4%. Though women in many African countries play a substantial role in the agricultural labor force, they are still constrained by their lack of resources and lack of employment opportunities outside of the home due to societal beliefs about women's traditional roles in society. They also generally work more hours than men. This work burden has been further increased due to the spread of HIV/AIDS, as women continue to serve as primary caretakers.

 

Asia and Oceania: While 52% of boys in South Asia are in high school, only 33% of girls attend. Poor economic conditions are forcing many Asian women, most notably from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, into domestic or sexual labor abroad. Further, while globalization has brought employment opportunities for many women in Asia, the quality of these positions is often very low. A cultural preference for sons in many Asian countries perpetuates high rates of abortion of female fetuses and child mortality. Despite continued gender bias, programs such as the Grameen Bank and BRAC in Bangladesh and Mahila Samakhya and the Self Employed Women's Association in India have effectively helped empower women. China has begun funding pension plans for parents with daughters to counter male-only child preferences. The increasing dynamism and economic independence of Japanese women has become a social phenomenon. UNDP's Arab Human Development Report concluded that achieving legal gender parity was one of the three most important ways to improve Arab conditions.

 

Europe: The status of women in Europe has progressed in the last few years, but subregional disparities need to be resolved. Until men take on more family responsibilities, the quality time of family life will be reduced as mothers respond to social and financial pressures to work outside the home. According to the European Commission, sex trade has increased in Europe, with an estimated 120,000 women and children being trafficked into Western Europe every year.

 

Latin America:Women's organizations in Latin America are currently constructing indexes to measure how far 14 countries in the region have fulfilled their commitments to improving the status of women. Conditions vary widely in the region. About 70% of those entering the University of the West Indies are women, while 98% of abused victims in Bolivia are women and nearly 75% of them did not complete primary school. Governments need to change laws about rape, sexual harassment, and equal pay for women. Despite increased workforce participation, women continue to suffer discrimination in the job market. One of the greatest challenges to the region is changing male "machismo" attitudes.

 

North America: Although women in this region have greater legal rights than in most other regions, there is a need to monitor and enforce legislation, remove corporate and government "glass ceilings" to women's advancement, and make special efforts to address women in poverty and drug dependency. Single-mother households are raising a third of the children living in poverty in the United States, which still has not ratified the CEDAW.