International Conference on Population and
Development (ICPD)
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Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development
Chapter 4 : Gender Equality, Equity and Empowerment of Women
A. Empowerment and status of women
B. The girl child
C. Male responsibilities and participation
A. Empowerment and status of women
Basis for action
4.1. The empowerment and autonomy of women and the improvement of their political,
social, economic and health status is a highly important end in itself. In addition, it is
essential for the achievement of sustainable development. The full participation and
partnership of both women and men is required in productive and reproductive life,
including shared responsibilities for the care and nurturing of children and maintenance
of the household. In all parts of the world, women are facing threats to their lives,
health and well- being as a result of being overburdened with work and of their lack of
power and influence. In most regions of the world, women receive less formal education
than men, and at the same time, women's own knowledge, abilities and coping mechanisms
often go unrecognized. The power relations that impede women's attainment of healthy and
fulfilling lives operate at many levels of society, from the most personal to the highly
public. Achieving change requires policy and programme actions that will improve women's
access to secure livelihoods and economic resources, alleviate their extreme
responsibilities with regard to housework, remove legal impediments to their participation
in public life, and raise social awareness through effective programmes of education and
mass communication. In addition, improving the status of women also enhances their
decision-making capacity at all levels in all spheres of life, especially in the area of
sexuality and reproduction. This, in turn, is essential for the long- term success of
population programmes. Experience shows that population and development programmes are
most effective when steps have simultaneously been taken to improve the status of women.
4.2. Education is one of the most important means of empowering women with the
knowledge, skills and self-confidence necessary to participate fully in the development
process. More than 40 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserted that
"everyone has the right to education". In 1990, Governments meeting at the World
Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, committed themselves to the goal of
universal access to basic education. But despite notable efforts by countries around the
globe that have appreciably expanded access to basic education, there are approximately
960 million illiterate adults in the world, of whom two thirds are women. More than one
third of the world's adults, most of them women, have no access to printed knowledge, to
new skills or to technologies that would improve the quality of their lives and help them
shape and adapt to social and economic change. There are 130 million children who are not
enrolled in primary school and 70 per cent of them are girls.
Objectives
4.3. The objectives are:
(a) To achieve equality and equity based on harmonious partnership between men and
women and enable women to realize their full potential;
(b) To ensure the enhancement of women's contributions to sustainable development
through their full involvement in policy- and decision-making processes at all stages and
participation in all aspects of production, employment, income-generating activities,
education, health, science and technology, sports, culture and population-related
activities and other areas, as active decision makers, participants and beneficiaries;
(c) To ensure that all women, as well as men, are provided with the education necessary
for them to meet their basic human needs and to exercise their human rights.
Actions
4.4. Countries should act to empower women and should take steps to eliminate
inequalities between men and women as soon as possible by:
(a) Establishing mechanisms for women's equal participation and equitable
representation at all levels of the political process and public life in each community
and society and enabling women to articulate their concerns and needs;
(b) Promoting the fulfilment of women's potential through education, skill development
and employment, giving paramount importance to the elimination of poverty, illiteracy and
ill health among women;
(c) Eliminating all practices that discriminate against women; assisting women to
establish and realize their rights, including those that relate to reproductive and sexual
health;
(d) Adopting appropriate measures to improve women's ability to earn income beyond
traditional occupations, achieve economic self-reliance, and ensure women's equal access
to the labour market and social security systems;
(e) Eliminating violence against women;
(f) Eliminating discriminatory practices by employers against women, such as those
based on proof of contraceptive use or pregnancy status;
(g) Making it possible, through laws, regulations and other appropriate measures, for
women to combine the roles of child-bearing, breast-feeding and child-rearing with
participation in the workforce.
4.5. All countries should make greater efforts to promulgate, implement and enforce
national laws and international conventions to which they are party, such as the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, that protect
women from all types of economic discrimination and from sexual harassment, and to
implement fully the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the World Conference on Human Rights
in 1993. Countries are urged to sign, ratify and implement all existing agreements that
promote women's rights.
4.6. Governments at all levels should ensure that women can buy, hold and sell property
and land equally with men, obtain credit and negotiate contracts in their own name and on
their own behalf and exercise their legal rights to inheritance.
4.7. Governments and employers are urged to eliminate gender discrimination in hiring,
wages, benefits, training and job security with a view to eliminating gender-based
disparities in income.
4.8. Governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations should
ensure that their personnel policies and practices comply with the principle of equitable
representation of both sexes, especially at the managerial and policy-making levels, in
all programmes, including population and development programmes.
Specific procedures and indicators should be devised for gender-based analysis of
development programmes and for assessing the impact of those programmes on women's social,
economic and health status and access to resources.
4.9. Countries should take full measures to eliminate all forms of exploitation, abuse,
harassment and violence against women, adolescents and children. This implies both
preventive actions and rehabilitation of victims. Countries should prohibit degrading
practices, such as trafficking in women, adolescents and children and exploitation through
prostitution, and pay special attention to protecting the rights and safety of those who
suffer from these crimes and those in potentially exploitable situations, such as migrant
women, women in domestic service and schoolgirls. In this regard, international safeguards
and mechanisms for cooperation should be put in place to ensure that these measures are
implemented.
4.10. Countries are urged to identify and condemn the systematic practice of rape and
other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment of women as a deliberate instrument of war
and ethnic cleansing and take steps to assure that full assistance is provided to the
victims of such abuse for their physical and mental rehabilitation.
4.11. The design of family health and other development interventions should take
better account of the demands on women's time from the responsibilities of child-rearing,
household work and income-generating activities. Male responsibilities should be
emphasized with respect to child-rearing and housework. Greater investments should be made
in appropriate measures to lessen the daily burden of domestic responsibilities, the
greatest share of which falls on women. Greater attention should be paid to the ways in
which environmental degradation and changes in land use adversely affect the allocation of
women's time. Women's domestic working environments should not adversely affect their
health.
4.12. Every effort should be made to encourage the expansion and strengthening of
grass-roots, community-based and activist groups for women. Such groups should be the
focus of national campaigns to foster women's awareness of the full range of their legal
rights, including their rights within the family, and to help women organize to achieve
those rights.
4.13. Countries are strongly urged to enact laws and to implement programmes and
policies which will enable employees of both sexes to organize their family and work
responsibilities through flexible work-hours, parental leave, day-care facilities,
maternity leave, policies that enable working mothers to breast-feed their children,
health insurance and other such measures. Similar rights should be ensured to those
working in the informal sector.
4.14. Programmes to meet the needs of growing numbers of elderly people should fully
take into account that women represent the larger proportion of the elderly and that
elderly women generally have a lower socio-economic status than elderly men.
B. The girl child
Basis for action
4.15. Since in all societies discrimination on the basis of sex often starts at the
earliest stages of life, greater equality for the girl child is a necessary first step in
ensuring that women realize their full potential and become equal partners in development.
In a number of countries, the practice of prenatal sex selection, higher rates of
mortality among very young girls, and lower rates of school enrolment for girls as
compared with boys, suggest that "son preference" is curtailing the access of
girl children to food, education and health care. This is often compounded by the
increasing use of technologies to determine foetal sex, resulting in abortion of female
foetuses. Investments made in the girl child's health, nutrition and education, from
infancy through adolescence, are critical.
Objectives
4.16. The objectives are:
(a) To eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child and the root causes
of son preference, which results in harmful and unethical practices regarding female
infanticide and prenatal sex selection;
(b) To increase public awareness of the value of the girl child, and concurrently, to
strengthen the girl child's self-image, self-esteem and status;
(c) To improve the welfare of the girl child, especially in regard to health, nutrition
and education.
Actions
4.17. Overall, the value of girl children to both their family and society must be
expanded beyond their definition as potential child-bearers and caretakers and reinforced
through the adoption and implementation of educational and social policies that encourage
their full participation in the development of the societies in which they live. Leaders
at all levels of the society must speak out and act forcefully against patterns of gender
discrimination within the family, based on preference for sons. One of the aims should be
to eliminate excess mortality of girls, wherever such a pattern exists. Special education
and public information efforts are needed to promote equal treatment of girls and boys
with respect to nutrition, health care, education and social, economic and political
activity, as well as equitable inheritance rights.
4.18. Beyond the achievement of the goal of universal primary education in all
countries before the year 2015, all countries are urged to ensure the widest and earliest
possible access by girls and women to secondary and higher levels of education, as well as
to vocational education and technical training, bearing in mind the need to improve the
quality and relevance of that education.
4.19. Schools, the media and other social institutions should seek to eliminate
stereotypes in all types of communication and educational materials that reinforce
existing inequities between males and females and undermine girls' self-esteem. Countries
must recognize that, in addition to expanding education for girls, teachers' attitudes and
practices, school curricula and facilities must also change to reflect a commitment to
eliminate all gender bias, while recognizing the specific needs of the girl child.
4.20. Countries should develop an integrated approach to the special nutritional,
general and reproductive health, education and social needs of girls and young women, as
such additional investments in adolescent girls can often compensate for earlier
inadequacies in their nutrition and health care.
4.21. Governments should strictly enforce laws to ensure that marriage is entered into
only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. In addition, Governments
should strictly enforce laws concerning the minimum legal age of consent and the minimum
age at marriage and should raise the minimum age at marriage where necessary. Governments
and non-governmental organizations should generate social support for the enforcement of
laws on the minimum legal age at marriage, in particular by providing educational and
employment opportunities.
4.22. Governments are urged to prohibit female genital mutilation wherever it exists
and to give vigorous support to efforts among non-governmental and community organizations
and religious institutions to eliminate such practices.
4.23. Governments are urged to take the necessary measures to prevent infanticide,
prenatal sex selection, trafficking in girl children and use of girls in prostitution and
pornography.
C. Male responsibilities and participation
Basis for action
4.24. Changes in both men's and women's knowledge, attitudes and behaviour are
necessary conditions for achieving the harmonious partnership of men and women. Men play a
key role in bringing about gender equality since, in most societies, men exercise
preponderant power in nearly every sphere of life, ranging from personal decisions
regarding the size of families to the policy and programme decisions taken at all levels
of Government. It is essential to improve communication between men and women on issues of
sexuality and reproductive health, and the understanding of their joint responsibilities,
so that men and women are equal partners in public and private life.
Objective
4.25. The objective is to promote gender equality in all spheres of life, including
family and community life, and to encourage and enable men to take responsibility for
their sexual and reproductive behaviour and their social and family roles.
Actions
4.26. The equal participation of women and men in all areas of family and household
responsibilities, including family planning, child-rearing and housework, should be
promoted and encouraged by Governments. This should be pursued by means of information,
education, communication, employment legislation and by fostering an economically enabling
environment, such as family leave for men and women so that they may have more choice
regarding the balance of their domestic and public responsibilities.
4.27. Special efforts should be made to emphasize men's shared responsibility and
promote their active involvement in responsible parenthood, sexual and reproductive
behaviour, including family planning; prenatal, maternal and child health; prevention of
sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV; prevention of unwanted and high-risk
pregnancies; shared control and contribution to family income, children's education,
health and nutrition; and recognition and promotion of the equal value of children of both
sexes. Male responsibilities in family life must be included in the education of children
from the earliest ages. Special emphasis should be placed on the prevention of violence
against women and children.
4.28. Governments should take steps to ensure that children receive appropriate
financial support from their parents by, among other measures, enforcing child- support
laws. Governments should consider changes in law and policy to ensure men's responsibility
to and financial support for their children and families. Such laws and policies should
also encourage maintenance or reconstitution of the family unit. The safety of women in
abusive relationships should be protected.
4.29. National and community leaders should promote the full involvement of men in
family life and the full integration of women in community life. Parents and schools
should ensure that attitudes that are respectful of women and girls as equals are
instilled in boys from the earliest possible age, along with an understanding of their
shared responsibilities in all aspects of a safe, secure and harmonious family life.
Relevant programmes to reach boys before they become sexually active are urgently needed.
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