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Gender progress yet powerful pushback
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Gender equality is a means of redefining and transforming power that will yield benefits for all. (Shutterstock/File)
G
ender inequality is the overwhelming injustice of our age and the biggest human rights challenge we face. But gender equality offers solutions to some of the most intractable problems of our age.
Everywhere, women are worse off than men — simply because they are women. The reality for women from minorities, older women, those with disabilities and women migrants and refugees is even worse.
While we have seen enormous progress on women’s rights over recent decades, from the abolition of discriminatory laws to increased numbers of girls in school, we now face a powerful pushback.
Legal protections against rape and domestic abuse are being diluted in some countries while policies that penalize women, from austerity to coercive reproduction, are being introduced in others. Women’s sexual and reproductive rights are under threat from all sides.
All this is because gender equality is fundamentally a question of power.
Centuries of discrimination and deep-rooted patriarchy have created a yawning gender power gap in our economies, our political systems and our corporations. The evidence is everywhere.
Women are still excluded from the top table, from governments to corporate boards to prestigious award ceremonies. Women leaders and public figures face harassment, threats and abuse online and off. The gender pay gap is just a symptom of the gender power gap.
