Being in the Arena – Part 4
Plan of action and Review of Beijing Declaration for the past 25 years.
The UN declaration for women support is considered as the largest reformation of the women’s movement in Asia. Did it achieve the action plans that it set out to do? Is it still relevant in today’s era? Is it time to reassess where we stand on bringing women to center stage?
Let us look at this in detail, shall we?
To deconstruct, the twelve areas of concerns focused by the UN Beijing declaration were:
- Women and Poverty
- Education and training of Women
- Women and health
- Violence against Women
- Women and armed conflict
- Women and the economy
- Women in power and decision-making
- Institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women
- Human rights of Women
- Women and the media
- Women and the environment
- The girl child
All of these areas specifically target improving various aspects of women’s lives and providing them with equal opportunity to explore their future. However, a review conducted by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), in cooperation with the UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific has shown that the progress rate has been very slow.
“Education is a human right and an essential tool for achieving the goals of equality, development and peace.” – Platform for Action Critical Area of Concern, Beijing Declaration
The focus of this action step is to provide equal access to education, vocational training, science and technology and continuing education, the institutionalization of non-discriminatory education and training, and the promotion of life-long education and training. This has pushed governments of these countries toward making policy changes and created large scale impact for girls in education.
In the review report, except Kiribati and Tonga, all of the Beijing+20 respondent countries reported the existence of national policies that mandate equal access of women and men, girls and boys to education. Female enrollment rate at primary and secondary school level has been over 90% in these countries. Overall, the past twenty-five years has seen an enormous increase in the female literacy rates. Even though the results seem hopeful, there are challenges that are still difficult to overcome.
Lack of Women in STEM
Enrollment is the first step which is successful in almost all of the countries, however, to retain female students in education is a major challenge in many of the countries. Lack of basic infrastructure, transportation to school and even lack of female teachers were few challenges raised by many of these countries.
Apart from all these challenges, even if girl children are retained in education with their mere will and grit, biggest issue that stops them from entering STEM is the socio-cultural norms and practices that result in subject-streaming. Technology, Science and Engineering are considered as streams that are ‘masculine’ in nature. In countries such as Kyrgyzstan, Samoa, Georgia, Vietnam, it was reported that females were concentrated in such fields as the humanities, arts, education, health and journalism. Subject-streaming is influenced by the societal practice of getting daughters married earlier, giving preferences to education of sons, girls carrying out household chores along with education. Girl children always carry the burden of a household even after having access and freedom to get education.
However, one can hope that these review audits and reporting at a global level can create changes at an institutional level in retaining female children in the field of STEM. Providing them with proper infrastructure, including more female teachers, and encouraging them to be at par with male children are few areas to be focused on by governments, and we can be assured the this can bring out a mass of women engineers and scientists in the near future.