IV. STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES AND ACTIONS
TO BE TAKEN
85. Accelerated actions to address the
three core issues of the Platform for Action (equality, development
and peace) must integrate the gender dimension into all political,
social, economic and cultural activities for development. In
improving the status, empowerment, participation and decision-making
capabilities of women at all levels and in all spheres of life,
it is imperative to eliminate social, cultural and individual
attitudes and practices that perpetuate gender discrimination.
Subordination and discrimination in legislation, as well as
in political, economic and social relationships between women
and men have to be eliminated wherever they exist. African Governments
should take greater account of women's contribution, experience,
talents, insights and creativity, in the shaping of the future
of the continent. Although the post-Nairobi period has witnessed
some improvements in African women's status, it is imperative
that setbacks, continuing imbalances and new problems must be
clearly identified. It is necessary to devise measures to accelerate
the integration of the gender dimension into all political,
social, economic and cultural activities aimed at achieving
equality, development and peace.
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A. Measures required
86. The measures and actions outlined
in the following paragraphs have to be implemented at national,
subregional and regional and international levels. The process
of implementation has to involve a wide array and diversity
of partners and actors in development, acting in close concert,
collaboration and cooperation. Such actors include Governments,
intergovernmental bodies (regional and subregional), international
financial institutions, multilateral organizations, United Nations
agencies, national and international non-governmental organizations
and women's organizations. In all cases, however, national Governments
in Africa have to act as leading agents in all actions meant
to accelerate the advancement of women. But above all, women
as the major stake holders will have to make special efforts
to ensure the success of implementation of the African Platform
for Action.
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1. Women, poverty, insufficient food
security and lack of economic empowerment
87. Rationale
The struggle against poverty, the economic empowerment of women
and the promotion of sustainable livelihoods for women and youth
is a moral, political and economic obligation and responsibility
of national Governments and the international community. The
poverty experienced by women and their dependants should not
be seen only from a welfare perspective. Women and other people
living in poverty represent an under-utilization of productive
potential. Measures to reduce or eliminate poverty are major
parameters of growth, empowerment and overall political stability.
Women's deprived right to development should be explicitly recognized.
This requires policies that are gender sensitive that accommodate
the needs and interests of the women in poverty as defined and
articulated by themselves. It also requires specific and gender-based
anti-poverty policies, programmes and actions that are integrated
into overall economic planning at local, national, regional
and international levels. The realities of people and women
in poverty are specific, complex, diverse and dynamic. Besides
and beyond income poverty there are many other dimensions of
disadvantages, deprivations and ill-being experienced by women
and their dependants. These include social discrimination, exclusion,
desertion, isolation, physical disability, vulnerability and
deprivation. There is also the poverty associated with wars,
famine, displaced persons and refugees, imbalanced trade relations
and SAPs.
88. Objectives
(a) To mobilize women and youth to participate
effectively in all aspects of the implementation of the Platform
for Action, with particular regard to economic decision-making;
(b) To eliminate explicit and implicit
discrimination against women in the economic sphere;
(c) To ensure the full participation
and empowerment of women and girls in society in order to make
full use of all human resources in the struggle against multidimensional
poverty, particularly through the equal access by women to education,
economic opportunities, including production and trade employment,
public services, basic health-care services, reproductive health
including maternal and child health care and family planning
services;
(d) To provide greater and better opportunities
at each stage of girls' and women's life for redressing the
fundamental gender-based inequities;
(e) To eliminate the factors that accentuate
poverty among women;
(f) To ensure that all sectors make a
genuine effort to contribute positively to the employment of
women;
(g) To recognize and support women's
sustainable livelihood and other coping strategies in both the
marketed and non-marketed sectors.
89. Proposed actions
(a) Women and Governments in collaboration
and full partnership with non-governmental organizations, to
organize pressure groups and networks to ensure the implementation
of the Platform for Action;
(b) Enact and/or enforce laws that will
remove barriers to the economic participation of women, particularly
those which relate to property rights, asset holdings, inheritance
laws, credit policies, labour and zoning laws and to export
processing zones;
(c) Recognize the importance of the informal
sector and make all efforts to support it as it is a major source
of economic activity for women in both rural and urban areas
and make all efforts to promote it;
(d) To adopt firm political commitment
to develop the agricultural sector in order to ensure food security
and food self-sufficiency along with appropriate measures such
as allocation of financial, technical and human resources, and
equitable food price policies;
(e) Provide rural women with the necessary
means to participate in the process of economic growth by ensuring
access to assets and increasing returns on those assets through
land reforms, and the effective enforcement of related legislation,
resettlement schemes, special credit opportunities, access to
and information on markets, access to channels, marketing and
managerial strategies and skills, training programmes, improved
water connections to impoverished areas, improved agricultural
extension for small farmers in general and women farmers in
particular, techniques for processing agricultural products,
rural roads upgrading and rehabilitation programmes. Special
programmes targeted on the mobilization of rural and urban youth
should be established and promoted. In all these activities,
the gender perspective must be reflected;
(f) Improve the condition of women by
providing basic social services, e.g., education, public health,
nutrition and child-care facilities;
(g) Formulate and implement specific
economic, food security and related policies in support of female-headed
households;
(h) Provide land rights on an equitable
basis for women and men in terms of ownership and utilization
and monitor implementation;
(i) Reduce girls' and women's workload
through, among others, provision of appropriate technologies
for all aspects of farming and household tasks;
(j) Promote more equitable sharing of
work and family responsibilities between men and women boys
and girls;
(k) Design special economic schemes for
poor women, taking into consideration their multiple responsibilities.
Efforts should be geared towards ensuring greater access by
the poor to economic resources by forging links with existing
facilities and creating new structures suitable to their needs;
special economic schemes for poor women should reflect the reality
of young women and girls who are forced to abandon their education
in order to help take care of the family;
(l) Monitor the full implementation of
the recommendations of the International Year for the Eradication
of Poverty, with a special emphasis on women;
(m) Facilitate women's decision-making
role at the levels of family, community, marketing organizations
and the public/political spheres and improve their capacities
to promote change and manage development in and through the
public and private sectors;
(n) Strengthen local institutions' capacity
to train women for environmentally sustainable economic activities;
(o) Transform African debt as a means
of financing projects and programmes for the advancement of
women;
(p) Give high priority to women for access
to food resources made available through development efforts,
and fully involve destitute women - particularly refugees, migrants
and displaced - in the distribution mechanisms. Introduce measures
to make displaced women productive;
(q) Introducing training programmes on
regional and external trade operations for small and medium
size enterprises;
(r) Within the context of trade promotion
programmes at the national and regional levels, targeting of
business women in the provision of business support services,
including trade information and market intelligence, access
to credit, packaging. PTA, COMESA and ECOWAS should provide
technical support services on product design and adaption, technology
transfers and quality control;
(s) Building capacity in national, subregional
and regional trade organizations and business associations to
effectively play their role as facilitators, particularly in
providing advisory and trade services as well as information
on market opportunities including follow-up to the Uruguay Round
Agreement so as to promote private sector development and entrepreneurship
among women;
(t) Promote programmes aimed at developing
micro and small and medium-scale enterprises in production,
trade and services, by providing women with training programmes
in technical, management and external trade operations;
(u) Promote rural industrialization schemes,
thus reducing rural/urban migration through the participation
of women in the design, development, promotion and dissemination
of food technologies;
(v) Promotion of agriculture-industry
linkages through the development of micro, small enterprises
in the agro-industries subsector;
(w) Set up an appropriate institutional
framework on financial schemes to support programmes and projects
for women;
(x) Governments should review their economic
policies including structural adjustment programmes which impact
negatively on services offered to women with a view to improving
their socio-economic status.
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2. Inadequate access to education,
training, science and technology
90. Rationale
Universal access to basic and quality
education for all women and girls is a fundamental right which
requires the mobilization of existing and new financial and
human resources from public, private and voluntary sources.
African Governments must fulfil their commitment to the principles
of the 1990 World Declaration on Education for All and to the
goals and targets set by themselves in accordance with the Framework
for Action to meet Basic Learning Needs. Education is a key
factor in the development and well-being of all members of society,
therefore priority must be given to the education of girls and
women because of their past discrimination and marginalization.
Education is also a powerful tool for the social, economic and
political integration of women by promoting tolerance, democratic
values, political awareness and respect for the human person.
Its provision constitutes one of the primary responsibilities
of African Governments and civil society. Special efforts need
to be made by Governments in relation to the girl-child to ensure
parity at all levels.
91. The improvement of women's activities
and the development of their capacity to adapt to prevailing
economic hardships also require the implementation of training
programmes that meet their needs and involving them in scientific
and technological developments.
92. Objectives
(a) To provide gender-responsive education
and remove disparities from national policies and programmes
for universal primary, secondary and higher education and adult
literacy;
(b) To achieve gender equality in retention,
quality and achievement in both formal and non-formal education
by the year 2000;
(c) To take positive actions to encourage
women, especially young girls, to enter new fields of science
and technology which offer better job opportunities and career
prospects.
93. Proposed actions
The Ouagadougou Declaration on the Education
of Girls should constitute an important denominator of the proposed
actions.
(a) Provide gender sensitive occupational
and educational guidance and counselling services to girls at
all levels of the education system in respect of career choices
and personal development;
(b) Ensure that statistics on education
recognize and analyse the issue of gender by appropriate disaggregation
of all education data;
(c) Enact and ensure effective implementation
of legislation to enforce a minimum basic education of at least
nine years;
(d) Give incentives to families to minimize
the opportunity cost of girls' education through provision of
scholarships/bursaries for the education of girls and the establishment
of child-care facilities for young siblings;
(e) Adopt gender appropriate curricula
teaching of human rights and the integration of gender-awareness
in all aspects of training programmes to eliminate stereotyping;
(f) Enact legislation for and give financial
incentives to employers to provide functional literacy and training
for unskilled women employees;
(g) Take positive action to promote women's
interest in and benefits from scientific and technical education,
thus encouraging women to enter non-traditional fields;
(h) To encourage cooperation among African
women with the view to promoting sharing of experience in new
and traditional technology;
(i) Promote the training and recruitment
of female teaching, administrative and technical staff to achieve
gender equity using innovations such as special financial incentives;
and adopt favourable administrative measures and incentives
to encourage them to work in rural areas;
(j) Improve access to schools and provide
appropriate and community-based facilities, particularly in
rural areas;
(k) Make available basic, civic literacy
and functional literacy and life-skill programmes for women
and girls;
(l) Promote rural industrialization schemes
thus reducing rural-urban migration through the involvement
of rural women in agro-based industries;
(m) Conscientize parents and the community
at large to the importance of girls' education and the support
they should be provided on a continuous basis using all means
of information and communication;
(n) Make available appropriate technologies
aimed at reducing the workload of women and girls, in order
to provide more time for schooling and recreation;
(o) Provide technical and financial support
to training programmes for women;
(p) Develop relevant and effective health
education programmes for girls and women in both formal and
non-formal education;
(q) Adopt strategies to halt the brain
drain and to retain Africa's skilled human resources;
(r) Improve the level and status of women
in traditionally female careers such as nursing and teaching;
(s) Provide training in gender analysis
and gender planning to enable gender-responsive policy and programming;
(t) Promote pre-school education;
(u) Strengthen women's access to training
by providing child-care facilities and incorporating child-care
costs into training costs;
(v) Strengthen women's entrepreneurial
capacity by developing mechanisms which will link the research
of women scientists and technologists with the indigenous knowledge
of women entrepreneurs.
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3. Women's vital role in culture,
the family and socialization
94. Rationale
Culture constitutes the totality of people's ways of life, values,
moral principles, ideology, religion and social practices. A
culture can thus be a force of liberation or oppression. Male-dominated
ideologies in Africa have tended to use culture to justify oppressive
gender relations. But culture can also be a liberating dynamic
force in African society through its various active institution.
Governments should now repeal all negative stereotyped cultures
that still hinder full advancement of women.
The total integration of women in all
levels and activities of the society is a critical need which
has to be met within the overall framework of the cultural fabric,
the family and the various processes of socialization. In formulating
policies, strategies, objectives and actions, the different
components that promote the social and cultural integration
of women throughout the entire life cycle have to be seen within
a consistent framework because they reinforce each other and
also promote the development of creativity of rural women. The
identity of the woman as an individual has to be recognized
and respected.
95. Objectives
(a) To promote the status of women in
African societies through maintenance of social cohesion and
a balance between universality and quality of the individual;
(b) To recognize and value the role of
women in the diverse processes of socialization, particularly
at the family and community levels;
(c) Educate women about their religion
to prevent misconception that women are subservient to men;
(d) To remove the negative cultural attitudes
and harmful traditional practices towards women's participation
in public/political spheres through IEC programmes;
(e) To develop policies and laws that
provide better material and moral support for the family, that
contribute to its stability and that take into account its plurality
of forms, particularly the increasing number of single-parent
households;
(f) To establish social security measures
that are focused on the social, cultural and economic factors
behind the rising cost of child-rearing and education as well,
to promote and design policies and programmes that are sensitive
to the needs of the elderly in the society;
(g) To promote equality of opportunity
for family members, especially the rights of women and children
in the family;
(h) To promote sports and artistic activities
among African women.
96. Proposed actions
(a) Mobilize boys and men to encourage
and support the emancipation of girls and women for the development
of African societies;
(b) Governments and community leaders
must combat culturally biased male and female stereotypes through
effective programmes of sustained education and communication,
enactment and enforcement of appropriate legislation;
(c) Undertake effective sensitization
and IEC programmes designed to change the attitudes and behaviour
of African parents with regard to the sound construction of
gender roles;
(d) Include in literacy programmes a
component on socialization;
(e) Governments should create conducive
environment for the development of associative networks for
promoting family counselling centres with NGO and community
involvement;
(f) Promote increased sharing of roles
and responsibilities within the family through innovative media
campaigns, school and community education programmes with emphasis
on gender equality and non-stereotyped roles of both women and
men within the family;
(g) Governments, in close consultation
and cooperation with employers, should provide and promote means
to facilitate compatibility between labour force participation
and parental responsibilities especially for single-parent households
with young children;
(h) African Governments should take effective
actions to eliminate all forms of coercion and discrimination
in policies and practices pertaining to marriages and the family
in general. In particular, measures should be adopted and enforced
to eliminate child marriages;
(i) Promote, develop and document the
positive aspects of African cultures and heritage;
(j) Governments should implement the
recommendations of the 1994 International Year of the Family;
(k) To enact legislation to protect women
and girls from being ostracized from their immediate families
and communities.
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4. Improvement of women's health,
including reproductive health and family planning and integrated
population programmes
97. Rationale
Health care and population-related programmes should be designed
to serve the needs of men and women at all ages and must include
equal involvement of women in leadership, planning, decision-making,
management, implementation, organization and evaluation of services.
Governments, NGOs, United Nations agencies and other organizations
should take positive steps to include women at all levels of
population and health care systems, but above all to integrate
population-related issues and health-care activities into overall
human development policies and strategies from a balanced gender
perspective. In accordance with the 1994 principles adopted
at the International Conference on Population and Development,
everyone has the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable
standard of physical and mental health. Therefore, appropriate
measures must be taken to ensure universal access to health
care services, including those related to reproductive health
care which encompasses family planning and sexual health for
both men and women. Population-related policies and programmes
must advance gender equality and equity and improve the quality
of women's lives by enabling them to exercise their rights to
plan and control their own fertility and to participate fully
at all levels of the implementation of population and human
development programmes.
98. Objectives
The objectives with regard to health,
reproductive health care including family planning and population
are to integrate fully population-related policies and balanced
gender concerns into:
(a) Development strategies, planning,
decision-making and resources allocation at all levels in order
to meet the needs and improve the quality of life of present
and future generations;
(b) All aspects of development planning in order to promote
social justice and to eradicate poverty through sustained economic
growth in the context of sustainable development;
(c) Another objective is to raise the
quality of life for all people through appropriate population
and human development policies and programmes targeted at the
eradication of poverty and human resource development. Since
women are generally the poorest of the poor and are at the same
time key actors in the development process, a major objective
is to eliminate all kinds of gender imbalances and discrimination
against women as a prerequisite to eradicating poverty and achieving
sustainable human development;
(d) To promote research on traditional
medicine and health practices;
(e) Making budgetary allocations to women's
health and issues commensurate with the critical and central
nature of women's health;
(f) Ensuring equitable representation
by women in professional and managerial positions in the health
sector;
(g) Reduce maternal and infant mortality
by 50 per cent by the year 2015;
(h) To improve post-natal facilities
and provide free health care for children under five years of
age;
(i) To promote the nutritional status
of adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
The objectives on HIV/AIDS are to: Control
the scourge of HIV/AIDS by urging African Heads of State and
Government to implement the Declaration on HIV/AIDS that they
adopted in July 1992 in which they decided:
(a) To sensitize 95 per cent of the adult
and youth population by 1995 about HIV/AIDS, how it is transmitted,
how to protect themselves and others against it and also ensure
that each government department of health will have prepared
a plan of action on the control of the disease;
(b) To elaborate a plan of action on
how to control HIV/AIDS in Africa;
(c) To sensitize women with a view to
enable them to negotiate the practice of engaging in protected
sexual practices without risk, especially when they know that
their sexual partners are not doing so;
(d) To promote within the family and
between partners the spirit of dialogue that permits mutual
protection against HIV/AIDS and give the necessary support when
one of them is infected with the disease.
99. Proposed actions
(a) Incorporate population and gender
concerns into all national development strategies, plans, policies
and programmes and ensure women's full participation as decision
makers in these processes;
(b) To mobilize adequate resources for
research, documentation and services relating to the impact
of stress and risk-related to the environment on the health
of women;
(c) Increase the accessibility, availability
and affordability of primary health care services and reproductive
health facilities and ensure that the design of health interventions
takes into account women's specific health needs, multiple responsibilities
and the demands on their time;
(d) Promote social justice and eradicate
poverty through people-centred and sustainable economic growth
policies so as to meet equitably the health needs of women of
present and future generations;
(e) Promote safe motherhood by ensuring
pre-natal, peri-natal and post-natal care for the mother's and
child's health;
(f) Promote community-based family services
aimed at informing on all choices of family planning methods
in order to space, postpone or limit pregnancies, particularly
in rural areas and involve men in this process;
(g) Plan IEC in the home and in all forums
where the youth gather in order to promote family life education;
(h) Decrease maternal and infant mortality
rate by 50 per cent by the year 2015;
(i)Prevent and reduce the incidence of
and provide treatment for STDs;
(i) Actively safeguard the mental health
of families through the provision of health laws, facilities
and counselling; enact appropriate legislation to eradicate
traditional practices which are harmful to girl's and women's
health (e.g., female genital mutilation and child marriage).
On population and family planning:
(a) Provide safe, accessible, affordable
and quality reproductive health care including family planning
services to all those who need them without discrimination;
(b) Adopt and enforce measures to ensure
that women and men can exercise their responsibility and right
to decide freely the number and timing of births that they desire;
(c) Provide timely and accurate information
to enable men, women and youth to make informed choices about
their sexuality and health;
(d) Enlist the support of men in safeguarding
the reproductive health of their sexual partners through sensitive
and appropriate programmes that target men;
(e) Provide updated gender-sensitive
training and information to health care providers to empower
them to give compassionate, appropriate and timely reproductive
health services to women at all stages of their life cycle;
(f) Ensure equal representation of women
as key decision makers at all levels of population and health
policy formulation, programming and implementation in order
to ensure the incorporation of balanced gender concerns;
(g) Mobilize and allocate more financial
and human resources to the health sector incorporating reproductive
health and family planning and health sectors in order to reverse
the observed decline in overall health and well-being of women,
men, adolescents and children;
(h) Integrate reproductive health services
in the primary health care systems and adopt innovative approaches
which will involve communities as active participants as well
as beneficiaries;
(i) Ensure better reproductive health
including family planning coverage by adopting an integrated
development approach through multidisciplinary activities in
order to outreach rural families involving the joint efforts
of social partners, NGOs and communities;
(j) Ensure targeted measures on AIDS
in the field of awareness, information, education and protection.
Combat the spread of AIDS by accelerating
the implementation of the 1992 Declaration on AIDS and the Child
in relation to, inter alia:
(a) Working out a Plan of Action to combat
the spread of HIV/AIDS;
(b) Ensuring that 100 per cent of every
country's adults know how HIV is transmitted and how to protect
themselves and others from infection;
(c) Mounting awareness-raising activities
to ensure negotiating skills for women to practise safe sex
techniques especially when they are aware that their spouses/partners
are involved in high-risk behaviours;
(d) Organizing activities that promote
caring relationships within families in a context in which partners
will protect each other from HIV and provide support in the
event that either partner develops AIDS;
(e) Provide financial support for scientific
research on African pharmacopoeia for the intention of vaccines
on AIDS and malaria.
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5. Women's relationship and linkages
to environment and natural resource management
100. Rationale
The development and maintenance of human
habitat is not possible without the participation of both men
and women. The economic agenda cannot be complete without focusing
on land rights and ownership for women. Women are crucial in
making a sound sustainable environmental programme. There is
need to make women with disabilities visible in their role as
managers and users of the environment.
101. Objectives
(a) To ensure that gender/population,
environmental and poverty eradication factors are integrated
in sustainable development policies, plans and programmes;
(b) To ensure that customary laws and
harmful practices linked to religion that discriminate against
women are reviewed and amended to include the rights of women
to land;
(c) To create awareness among women regarding
their dependency on the environment and how this impacts upon
the natural resource base;
(d) To establish, strengthen and maintain
institutions responsible for environment and women's issues;
(e) To mainstream environmental concerns
into the planning and policy process, upgrade the work of women
in natural resource management and to teach youth on what constitutes
nature and respect for nature.
102. Proposed actions
(a) Analyse the structural linkages between
gender relations, poverty, environment and development and integrate
demographic and gender factors into environmental impact assessments
and other planning and decision-making processes aimed at achieving
sustainable development;
(b) Undertake measures to enhance the
full participation of women at all levels of decision-making
to achieve sustainable use of natural resources;
(c) Ensure that environmental protection
laws take due cognizance of women's concerns;
(d) To develop relevant science curricula
to incorporate current advances in science and technology and
to provide for the integration of indigenous science and technology
into mainstream teaching;
(e) Develop and make available appropriate
and affordable technologies, introduce and educate women, especially
rural women, on the application of alternative sources of energy
which effectively reduce women's workload while protecting the
environment;
(f) Promote, design and disseminate information
on appropriate housing and necessary hygienic conditions in
rural and urban areas in order to enhance the internal environment;
(g) Legitimize, promote and replicate
women's understanding and knowledge systems on the environment
as well as their traditional techniques for resource utilization
in support of their productive and reproductive functions;
(h) To introduce legal reforms that protect
women's rights that ensure women's access to natural resources;
(i) To develop housing infrastructure,
potable water, electrification and roads in rural areas;
(j) To ban the dumping and import of
toxic waste and solid waste as well as industries that pollute
the environment and ensure that waste-generating energy using
technologies are not dumped in Africa;
(k) Women and youth should be fully integrated
in afforestation programmes and environmental preservation.
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6. The political empowerment of women
103. Rationale
The empowerment and autonomy of women
and the improvement of their political, social, economic and
health conditions are highly critical areas of concern for the
Platform for Action. The full participation and equal partnership
of both women and men is required in all aspects of development.
Women in Africa receive much less formal
and informal education than men, and at the same time, their
knowledge, talent and abilities to cope with a highly adverse
environment are hardly ever recognized. Women's inherent knowledge,
talent and organizational and managerial abilities should be
fully recognized as attributes for their active participation
in politics and decision-making processes. Similarly, the power
relations that impede women's full participation and attainment
of healthy and fulfilling lives operate at many levels of society
and they should be fully recognized and adequately addressed.
104. Objectives
(a) To promote solidarity among women
of all ages and social background;
(b) To initiate and implement policies
and programmes that are designed to improve women's access to
secure livelihoods and economic resources, alleviate their heavy
responsibilities and tasks with regard to farm and housework
and child care, and remove legal impediments to their full participation
in public life;
(c) To raise political and social awareness
through effective programmes of civic education and mass communication
and ensure that women are given responsibilities at the social,
cultural and political and trade union levels;
(d) To improve the status of women in
order to enhance their decision-making capacity at all levels
in all spheres of life;
(e) To promote a democratic and harmonious
partnership between women and men in order to achieve equality
at all levels;
(f) To increase the numbers of women
politicians and parliamentarians and trade union leaders.
105. Proposed actions
All development partners and actors should
act to empower women and should take concrete actions to eliminate
inequalities between men and women by:
(a) Establishing mechanisms and strengthening
chances for women's full and equal participation and equitable
representation at all levels of the political process, power
structures and decision-making in each community and society,
and enable women to articulate their concerns and needs;
(b) Adopting appropriate measures to
improve women's ability to earn income beyond traditional occupations,
achieve economic self-reliance and ensure women's equal access
to the labour market and social security systems. The private
sector should support these measures;
(c) Adopting specific measures including
affirmative actions to redress past and present imbalances between
women and men;
(d) Mobilizing and sensitizing both women
and men, NGOs, political parties and pressure groups including
trade unions to support and promote and encourage women candidates
at all political levels and support women aspiring to political
careers, identify and encourage them to take part in politics
and governance. The selection must be based on careful consideration
of their commitment of candidates to promote women's interests;
(e) Documents to institute legislation
that protects and promote the status, rights and well-being
of women with disabilities and to ensure their effective representation
in decision-making;
(f) Governments should appoint more women
- at least 35 per cent - with due regards to their competence
decision-making positions in key ministries, such as foreign
affairs, defence, finance, economic planning and development;
(g) Information and training particulars
should be provided to motivate women to participate in the political
process. Political parties and pressure groups should encourage
women to take part in local and national elections, and other
competitive leadership situations;
(h) Taking further action to correct
the low representation of women at the regional level and in
the United Nations system, particularly at decision- making
levels;
(i) Adopt specific measures to ensure
equal participation of women in decision-making at the community
level;
(j) To invite parliamentarians, politicians,
and all concerned institutions to promote and implement a Plan
of Action adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union to reduce
the disparity between men and women in political life.
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