No Woman, No World

By Sean BuchananLONDON, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)Almost exactly two years ago, on the morning of Apr. 24, over 3,600 workers – 80 percent of them young women between the ages of 18 and 20 – refused to enter the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, because there were large ominous cracks in the walls. They were beaten with sticks and forced to enter.Forty-five minutes later, the building collapsed, leaving 1,137 dead and over 2,500 injured – most of them women.The Rana Plaza collapse is just one of a long series of workplace incidents around the world in which women have paid a high toll.It is also one of the stories featured in the UN Women report Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016: Transforming Economies, Realizing Rights, launched on Apr. 27.All too often women fail to enjoy their rights because they are forced to fit into a ‘man’s world’, a world in which these rights are not at the heart of economies.Coming 20 years after the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, which drew up an agenda to advance gender equality, Progress of the World’s Women 2015-2016 notes that while progress has since been made, “in an era of unprecedented global wealth, millions of women are trapped in low paid, poor quality jobs, denied even basic levels of health care, and water and sanitation.”At the same time, notes the report, financial globalisation, trade liberalisation, the ongoing privatisation of public services and the ever-expanding role...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: Global & Universal Authors: Tags: Civil Society Democracy Development & Aid Economy & Trade Gender Gender Identity Gender Violence Global Globalisation Health Human Rights Inequity IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse Population Poverty & MDGs TerraViva United Natio Source Type: news