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WOMEN: LIVING LONGER, BETTER ACCESS TO EDUCATION AND MORE INDEPENDENT BUT STILL FACING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION, GLOBAL REPORT REVEALS

DAVID ADAMS reports

Women around the world are living longer, benefitting from better access to education and are more independent than previously but continue to face gender-based discrimination and violence, according to a new UN report.

The World’s Women 2015 report comes with plenty of good news – life expectancy among women has risen to 72 years (compared to 68 for men), the number of maternal deaths has dropped 45 per cent between 1990 and 2013, and there is nearly universal primary school enrolment among girls around the world.

“(F)ar too many women and girls continue to be discriminated against, subjected to violence, denied equal opportunities in education and employment, and excluded from positions of leadership and decision-making”.

– UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon

Yet the report also found that more than one in three women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or sexual violence by a non-intimate partner at some point in their lives.

In addition, two-thirds of people who are victims of intimate partner and family-related homicides are women, despite the fact that only 20 per cent of all homicide cases have female victims. Meanwhile, in the majority of nations, less than 40 per cent of women who experience violence receive help of any sort.

Other key findings of the report – issued by the Statistics Division of the UN Department for Economic and Social Affairs to mark World Statistics Day on 20th October – show that while the gender gap between boys and girls enrolled in primary education has narrowed, of the 58 million primary school aged children around the world who are out of school more than half are girls with nearly three quarters of them living in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia.

Meanwhile, in terms of employment, the report found women are concentrated in low paid jobs and earn on average between 70 and 90 per cent of what men make. Those in developing countries also spend three hours more a day on household chores and caring for family members than men (two more hours in developed countries), which the report said, along with estimates that only 50 per cent of working age women are in the labour force compared with 77 per cent of men, is a key factor in ensuring women in many countries remain economically dependent on their spouses.

Other findings show:

• while literacy rates among the world’s youth are improving, nearly two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults are women;

• child marriage remains a critical issue for girls in southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa but overall the occurrence has dropped from 31 per cent in 1995 to 26 per cent in 2010;

• lone mothers with children make up 75 per cent of all one-parent households and suffer higher poverty rates than lone father or two parent households;

• women make up 64 per cent of older people classed as ‘poor’;

• that only 19 of the world’s heads of state or government are women, up slightly from 12 per cent in 1995 while only 22 per cent of parliamentarians and 18 per cent of appointed ministers are women; and,

• that less than four per cent of the CEOs in the world’s largest 500 corporations are women.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the report showed “far too many women and girls” continue to be discriminated against and subjected to violence as well as denied equal opportunities in education and employment, and excluded from positions of leadership and decision-making.

“We cannot achieve our 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, without full and equal rights for half of the world’s population, in law and in practice,” he said.

~ http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/worldswomen.html

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