Danielle Plesser
August 29, 2008 (1:45 PM)
Gender Inequality
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Union (AU) are working together to sponsor a conference at the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which will focus on the topic of gender inequality in Africa. The conference started on Monday August 25th, and runs through Friday August 29th. Over twenty five government ministers are expected to attend the last two days of the conference during which there will be a Ministerial segment.
Okay, so the article was kind of short, but it was the longest one I found online about this conference. Given the limited amount of information, I looked for more information about the conference and its aims, because I’m one of those people who’s usually skeptical about how a meeting of great minds ever actually changes anything, awesome though their ideas may be. I found these notes on UNECA’s page: http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/acgd/events/cfmGender/Conference%20of%20Ministers_doc/Concept%20note%20for%20meeting%20of%20ministers%20_2008_.pdf
I don’t know much about the issues in Africa, but this article and these notes were interesting. They brought up past data and observed that while improvements have been made, they have been minimal and that the growth of violence against women almost cancels out the progress made. Despite this concerning report, I think the aims of the conference seemed important. They make mention of the right to own property, for instance, which is something that definitely to me symbolizes independence in a lot of ways. They also showed that while the amount elementary education young girls receive is growing, the number of women furthering their studies beyond that level has not improved and until this is resolved, I don’t think any number of conferences can change much. The people inside the countries have to want the changes (it can’t be accomplished purely through the efforts of an outside or continent-wide group like AU or the UN), and these issues in particular deal with change for women. If the women of these nations aren’t educated it will be more difficult for them to confront these issues.
In the end, I’m glad that the UN is working on projects like these. I’m still not convinced that much will change, given the list of countries who still haven’t adopted the previous conference’s policies. But I would rather see people trying like this than note an absence of such efforts. I hope these changes will come swiftly, but if they can’t, I just hope they happen.
2 comments:
I was looking at this article earlier. I was pleased to hear they were having this conference in Ethiopia, where I'm partly from. I think its great that they are having a conference on this issue. It's extremely important to focus on.
I'm with you on your last paragraph. I doubt change will come swiftly but the fact that the ball is rolling (seemingly) in the right direction is a good thing. I'm glad your were skeptical about your initial reading and gave us a little more information.
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