UN-hosted regional forum highlights Georgia’s progress on gender equality
By Levan Abramishvili
Wednesday, October 30
Representatives from Georgia including representatives of the Government Administration, the Parliament’s Gender Equality Council, Bolnisi Municipality and civil society were among the participants. In the regional report prepared for the occasion, Georgian examples also featured prominently.
Delegations from Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, and Ukraine discussed how to ensure women have a fair say in politics and decision-making at a side event organized with support from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Swedish Gender Equality Agency.
The discussion began with a powerful video statement made by six prominent Georgian figures – politicians community activists, scholars, and artists – to highlight the political and economic challenges facing women in Georgia and demand an end to gender stereotypes and greater equality in all areas of life.
“Georgia’s statehood stands on the principles of equality and human rights,” said Natalia Jaliashvili, Head of the Human Rights Secretariat at Georgia’s Government Administration. “We are moving forward in carrying out democratic reforms, but we also acknowledge the remaining gaps, including the need to address gender-based violence and the low levels of political and economic participation of Georgian women,” she added.
Louisa Vinton, the Head of UNDP in Georgia listed some of the alarming statistics regarding the women’s participation and expressed hope that with the 2020 elections the trend will be reversed.
“Georgia can rightly point to many achievements in women’s rights,” said Vinton. “However, women are still relegated to margins in political decision-making, with only 15 percent of the seats in Parliament and only one of 64 mayoral posts. With parliamentary elections approaching in 2020, we see an urgent need to reverse this trend and confront the gender backlash building across the region,” she noted.
Georgian participation was also notable in one of the key sessions of the conference, which focused on closing gender gaps using active economic and social policies.
Members of the Parliament's Gender Equality Council joined the Iceland Prime Minister's Office, the European Institute for Gender Equality, and members of the private sector in evaluating progress on women's economic empowerment and discussing possible solutions to the region's significant gender pay gap.
On average, women earn 82 percent of what men make in the UNECE region, whereas in Georgia the figure is only 64 percent.
These activities were part of a much larger program taking place over two days in Geneva. The regional conference, coordinated by UNECE and the UN Women Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, was arranged as a preparatory event for the international review of the historic Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action at the 64th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York in March 2020.
National reports prepared by all signatory countries to the Beijing Declaration will feed into a global report that will assess the implementation of the Declaration across its 12 priority areas of concern.
The 2020 review marks the 25th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action as well as the first five-year milestone in the period dedicated to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
According to the SDG Gender Index, released in summer 2019, not a single country in the world is on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. The index measures progress against the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a set of goals agreed upon by all UN member states in 2015.
In the Europe and North America region, Georgia, with its score of 72.8 ranks 33 out of 41. On the top of the region list are Denmark (89.3) and Finland (88.8), while Moldova (69.5), Russia (67.6) and Azerbaijan (67.5) take the last three spots, respectively.
Georgia ranked high on the list of countries close to full parity between men and women in science and technology research positions.
The Beijing Declaration was a resolution adopted by the UN at the end of the Fourth World Conference on Women on 15 September 1995. The Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments to 12 key areas of concern as a guiding mechanism for progress. It remains an important source of guidance and inspiration for human rights defenders around the globe even nearly 25 years later.