Global Actions Towards SDG 5: Gender Equality
On 22 March 2022, the Journalists and Writers Foundation organized a virtual panel discussion “Global Actions Towards SDG5: Gender Equality” on the occasion of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) 66th Session. The parallel event hosted Myrna Dawson, Director of Canadian Femicide Observatory (Canada), Hafza Girdap, academic from the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Stony Brook University, Ex. Director of AST (USA) and Sylvain Obedi, Executive Director of Enable the Disable Action (Cambodia). The discussion was moderated by Cemre Ulker, the Representative of the JWF to the UN Department of Global Communications (USA).
The panelists addressed some of the most crucial working areas to close the increasing gap of gender inequalities and fully implement SDG 5: combatting all forms of violence, women`s meaningful participation in various decision-making mechanisms, feminist leadership norms, and the importance of male leadership in creating strong partnerships for the gender mainstreaming of all the Global Goals.
In her opening remarks, Cemre Ulker underlined that the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have adversely affected recent progress on gender equality: violence against women and girls has intensified, increasing effects of climate crisis continue to impact women and girls disproportionately, they remain underrepresented on critical decision making positions to create gender-mainstreaming policy actions. Ulker highlighted “To counteract the increasing gaps of many different forms, and considering the changing dynamics of development trends, we must create opportunities to reshape and rebuild systems, laws, policies, and institutions to advance gender-sensitive actions and address the specific needs of women and girls”.
Myrna Dawson talked about the unprecedented increase of gender-based violence of all forms during the shadow pandemic saying that “In Canada, we have recently documented a %26 in killings of women and girls mostly by men in 2021 compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019”, which must be analyzed as minimum estimates only. Dawson put an important emphasis on the role of data collection and data quality which is one of the major issues in responding to the reports about violence against women and girls as there is not adequate and credible information available. She also stressed that scientific data on femicide and sexual violence against women is a must for effective policymaking as a part of prevention mechanisms. In her remarks as a part of a successful responding mechanism, Dawson embraced a bottom-up development approach underlining the importance of civil society organizations for the full protection of women and girls from domestic violence. She said “Ongoing advocacy and activism with a particular emphasis on increasing public education and awareness needs to be prioritized going forward. With an emphasis on research, education, advocacy, and partnership building, we (Canadian Femicide Observatory) believe that civil society organizations and bottom-up grassroots initiatives must push political and social leaders to respond adequately to gender-based violence”.
Following Myrna Dawson, Hafza Girdap elaborated on the role of feminist norms, values in achieving SDG 5 and provided a framework on the norms that feminist leadership values work towards closing different forms of social, economic, political gender gaps. Girdap underlined that interlocking actors and factors must be recognized while taking feminist steps in research and in activism work to urge decision-makers to take action in terms of gender equality or eliminating gender-based injustices. Fight against gender-based injustices can and should be carried out by recognizing gender and sex-based oppression as the first step so that patriarchal powers that dominate individuals, communities, institutions, laws can be addressed efficiently to combat oppression or inequalities and injustices. Girdap said “Having both theoretical and practical aspects, feminism plays a significant role in resisting inter-locking systems of gender-based discrimination, violence and oppression put forward by patriarchal powers as well as in well-established knowledge production and transformations regarding equality and social justice.” According to her, in feminist discourses and movements, the essential element is gender and “equal status of genders”, not traditions, religion or other cultural and contextual norms even though strategies vary to generate “empowerment and transformation”.
The last speaker of the session, Sylvain Obedi spoke on the importance of male leadership to support gender equality goals and highlighted that women’s rights are a matter of equality that must be embraced by all, not only promoted by women activists only. Obedi said that policy development and strategic planning are important to implement policies on gender equality. Global actions must match with global commitments words. Obedi introduced the Generation Equality Forum which is a global, solution-oriented platform endorsed by UN Women mobilizing civil society organizations, feminist leaders, and young advocates to facilitate gender equality coalitions. He indicated “such international platforms are very important for us to elaborate on the new economic systems and socially inclusive policies for all.”
In the Q&A session, the virtual audience shared their reflections and the panelists answered further questions posed by the participants.