• by IPS Correspondents (united nations)
• Thursday, December 01, 1994
• Inter Press Service

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 01 (IPS) - The top U.N. official for women Thursday unveiled a strategy that calls for fundamental shifts in economic, political and social power between women and men.

Noeleen Heyzer, director of the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), outlined the strategy in her first policy address to the General Assembly since taking up her post roughly five weeks ago.

The Singaporean said that a new women's development agenda should first seek to "redirect the pattern and pace of economic growth," and redistribute the benefits and costs of that growth in gender-equitable ways.

Heyzer says women have been harder hit than men by changes in the world economic system because of "the constraints of the gender hierarchy imposed on women's ownership of assets and educational and employment opportunities, as well as their physical and social mobility."

She said that trends like trade deregulation, rapid technological change, moves towards market economies and changes in industrial production have had severe consequences for women, and for rural women in particular.

The United Nations says the number of rural women living in poverty has nearly doubled in the past 20 years, making them at least 60 percent of the world's one billion rural poor.

Heyzer said a women's development agenda should next seek to create and support sustainable livelihoods for women taking into account "the key role that women play in maintaining the ecological sustainability and renewability of finite resources."

"Women's livelihood needs and realities must therefore be the basis on which resource use and allocation is decided," she said.

The UNIFEM director said another challenge for the new women's development agenda was the rebuilding of stable and safe lives for the hundreds of millions of women migrants and refugees.

"It is vital to ensure the everyday security and well-being of ordinary people whose lives are disrupted by massive and sudden changes dictated by both global and local events," she said.

Heyzer added that apart from dealing with the consequences of the migratory processes, the women's development agenda should address the root causes of these movements -- environmental degradation, land loss, war and poverty.

Further, she said the agenda must seek to protect the lives and bodily integrity of women in situations of conflict while including them as mediators for global peace.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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