Most country reports silent on women's issues

Ati Nurbaiti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

What is the use of focusing on all the details of women's daily lives when nations need to lift billions out of poverty?

Maybe it is because, for instance, girls still drop out of school so parents can keep their brothers enrolled; because more women are infected with HIV/AIDS, while they still must feed the family and care for the sick; and because spending precious cash on the doctor for a woman in labor who's fighting for her life must be approved by her husband and mother-in-law.

While special country reports on women have long been the norm for global forums seeking to enhance everyone's welfare, many countries are "silent" on the above issues, with apparent biases against women. All of this clearly contributes to poverty, a UN consultant said on Thursday.

"Real life is not divided into MDG goals," Kalyani Menon-Sen said. The expert with the United Nations Development Programme was referring to the eight Millennium Development Goals aimed to improve the well-being of people and human rights.

Trying to reach the goals without promoting gender "will raise the costs and decrease the likelihood of achieving the other goals," she said.

Menon-Sen noted the misperceptions on women's rights that were reflected in the country reports, in part because women are explicitly mentioned in only a few of the goals -- such as those mentioning "gender equality" and "improving maternal health."

Speaking during the second day of an Asia Pacific conference on reaching the MDGs, Menon-Sen said that the absence of the crucial issues on women in the reports, including that of Indonesia's, was "strange", given the "strong women's movements" in many of the countries. Further reports should involve "more consultation" between the government and the public including women's organizations, she said.

While governments have raised the issue of increasing the number of women in the labor force as one way to reduce poverty, she added, none of the reports mentioned the issue of workers' rights, which would require clear contracts. In most reports, women's rights are limited to their roles as mothers, she said.

In the same session, the UNDP launched a program to help ensure that gender equality was central to all the goals.

Earlier Sjamsiah Achmad, deputy of Asia Pacific Women's Watch, a regional network of non governmental organizations, read out a statement "on behalf of the millions of women of Asia and the Pacific", comprising "60 percent of the world's women".

Among others she said that the "accession by many of our countries to the World Trade Organization, through promising economic growth and business and employment opportunities, has caused employment contraction in many economies, and has driven to bankruptcy local small and medium enterprises that have been major providers of jobs and income for women."

She said women were ready to become full partners to governments in reaching the MDGs, and thus urged recognition for more women groups as participants in September's UN plenary on reviewing the five-year progress of the goals.