U.N. Budgeting Bypasses Women

Kelli Mack/ February 21, 2008/ 10:33 pm/ Gender Issues
The Commission on the Status of Women will be holding a conference starting next Monday, and one of the biggest issues that will be talked about is the continued under funding of women's activities by the United Nations. Their main theme is "financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women."
The commission believes that it is impossible to discuss the financing of womens issues without more funds. They believe that without further funding nothing of real clout can be done. The entire budget for women's equality is only 57 million dollars which is only 2% of the UNICEF budget and only .0005% of the world's military expenditure. The WILPF finds it very sad that even though there is said to be many initiatives for women by the UN, but the numbers are telling a different story. Unfortunately contributing states are dragging their feet in allowing an increase in budget.
In short, most of the funds from the UN go to items covered in trade agreements, and the commission believes that it is time that gender equality be included in this because steps forward cannot be made without the proper funding.
I find this atrocious that the UN gives such little money to something as large as gender issues. Though gender is not a huge problem in the US but in other countries that the UN covers have much larger gender issues. I think its very true what the commission says that forward progress cannot be made without the proper funding and the UN is not providing that and that is just depressing.