The SIGI shows that women undertake 75% of the unpaid care and domestic work worldwide, and more must be done to recognise, redistribute and reduce this time burden on women.

The #HowICare Campaign

Promundo and Oxfam’s #HowICare Campaign is an opportunity for a wide variety of voices to demand, together, a transformation of the gendered dynamics of unpaid care work. In particular, the campaign aims to “aims to shed a light on the realities, difficulties, and disparities of providing care – specifically in caring for children, in order to advocate for additional support for caregivers – including the parents and care workers who are most impacted – during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.”

The #HowICare campaign is part of a global call for:

1. Universal access to paid sick and family and medical leave.
2. 100% paid leave. 
3. Equal, fully paid, non-transferable parental leave for parents.
4. Action to ensure childcare infrastructures survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
5. A challenge to harmful norms and sexist beliefs.
6. Flexible working hours and conditions.
7. Social protection programs to support caregivers and recognize care as work.

How to Participate?

When? 18 June – 21 June 2020

Where? On Twitter using the hashtag ‘#HowICare’ and tagging @MenCareGlobal as well as @Promundo_US, @Oxfam, and @OxfamAmerica

How? Messaging guidance available here.

Mission

Mission: through policy work, to advocate for gender equality at local, regional and global levels.

Goals

• to ensure accountability of national, regional and global actors in the area of women’s rights and gender equality
• to secure equal opportunities to access sources
• to eliminate neo-conservative tendencies
• to fight violence against women
• to promote social inclusion
• to foster gender mainstreaming and enforcement of principle of equal opportunities

Programmes

1. Dissemination and further advocacy with the outcomes of the Equal Opportunities for Women and Men Network project (EONET): In the EU pre-accession and post-accession process, the situation of equal opportunities of men and women was monitored in the countries of accession and South Eastern Europe, framed by the EU legislation and policy. Three comprehensive reports were published and introduced to the expert’s public in order to bring attention to the discrepancies between law and practice in the respective area, significantly influencing the development of democracy. Further advocacy work with the information revealed in the reports continues and the recommendations included into the report are creating base for lobbying at the national and EU levels for implementation of legal changes and practical measures.
2. Promoting social justice through women’s rights documentaries: In the NIS, a complex project was implemented introducing women’s rights abuse and its shapes by documentary movies. The outreach was secured by presentation of the films and emerging issues at various international forums and festivals, followed by the discussions with represented experts from the region. Further advocacy work with the project outcomes is planned, together with the follow-up activities, Institute for Social and Gender Policy is the coordination body of the initiative, cooperating with IGPN members and IGPN executive staff.

References

• IGPN website

Background

HeforShe starts at the junction of several historic processes: the review of the Millennium Development Goals ; the deliberations on the post-2015 development framework and Sustainable Development Goals; and the twentieth year review and appraisal of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
The campaign is based on the idea, outlined in the core principles of UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2014-2017 paragraph 33 C, that the achievement of gender equality requires an inclusive approach that recognizes the crucial role of men and boys as partners for women’s rights. These principles build upon the agreed conclusions of the 48th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women held in 2004, which urged that men and boys have a greater role and accountability in the achievement of gender equality.
Raewyn Connell, a leading researcher on men, masculinity and gender equality, has argued that the achievement of gender equality has two pre-requisites. The first is cultural and social change – or, men’s and boys’ acceptance of the importance and benefit of a gender-equal society, which is more likely to occur when ‘[men] can see positive benefits for themselves and the people in their lives’. The second is institutional change. Despite this recognition, the enlisting of men and boys as equal partners in the crafting and implementing of a shared vision of gender equality is yet to be fully realized. http://www.unwomen.org/en

Testimonial

The campaign was launched by Emma Watson, actress and UN Women’s ambassador, who gave a powerful speech to the United Nations.

“The more I have spoken about feminism, the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop. For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.”http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2014/0922/Emma-Watson-and-HeForShe-Points-to-flaws-in-man-hating-video

References

External links

• www.heforshe.org

Table of Contents

• 1 Aims
• 2 Work
• 3 See also
• 4 External links

Aims

Formally established in 2002 (and launched on International Women’s Day that year), the Gender and Education Association (GEA) works to challenge and eradicate sexism and gender inequality within and through education. GEA is based in the UK, but has an Executive Committee within representation from other parts of the world and hundreds of international members. Its members are mostly academics teaching and researching gender and education issues in universities but also include teachers and policymakers.

Work

The association promotes gender equity in education in a range of ways including through communicating current research through the website, annual conferences and a range of seminars. Members also work alongside policymakers, teachers, youth workers, pressure groups, students and trade unionists to raise awareness, lobby and exchange information. Resource pages on various aspects of gender and education are used by academics, students, teachers and policy makers internationally. They cover: Contexts (boys’ ‘underachievement’, feminism, legislation and policy, media representations); Inclusion (disability and special needs, ethnicity, promoting gender equality, sexuality, social class); Pedagogies (assessment, curriculum, single-sex and co-ed schooling, single-sex classes, working with girls in youth work and in schools, working with boys); and Subjects (geography, history, life skills and pastoral care, mathematics, music, physical education, religious education, science).

See also

• Gender Equality in employment, education and entrepreneurship

External links

Gender and Education Association

Scope and framework

Gender Equality is one of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ’s global priorities, together with Africa. Within this framework, UNESCO seeks to promote women’s empowerment and to mainstream gender in all UNESCO policies, strategies and programs.

UNESCO’s believes that the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) model provides interesting tools and processes with which women and men can create, exchange, share and exploit software and knowledge efficiently and effectively. FOSS can play an important role as a practical instrument for development as its free and open aspirations make it a natural component of development efforts in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Community “Gender equality in free and Open Source Software” aims at creating a network of different institutions, networks and actors that deal with the Gender Gap in FOSS.

Mandate

UNESCO, through the online Community on “Gender equality in Free and Open Source Software” aims to identify and measure the sociological and scientific reasons of this gap and find some possible solutions to these inequalities by looking at what challenges, either within or outside the FOSS community, prevent women (or men) from engaging with Free and Open Source Software or impede a full acknowledgement of their valuable contribution.

Activities

• Measuring the gender gap in FOSS: this goal could be reached by:

– creating appropriate statistical indicators (in collaboration with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Institute for Statistics). To this end, we would start open (but moderated) discussions that would enable us to define the elements for the development of relevant indicators.

– piloting these indicators in the communities, either at national or regional (international) level

– scaling-up

• Policy guidelines, awareness raising, development of targeted programmes

Development of Indicators

Concerning the development of relevant indicators, the Community will be called upon to agreeing on some key definitions, such as:

• “FOSS Communities and their members”: there are different kinds of communities with different populations, functioning and needs – bearing in mind the need for limiting the scope within feasibility
• Identification of target groups: both the direct (users and developers) and indirect (policy/decision makers at different levels, as well as development partners) beneficiaries

Any stage of this work and relevant findings could be presented at different International forums dealing with gender issue in the FOSS, such as: Open World Forum 2011, FOSSASIA 2011, Open UNESCO Permanent Exhibition, IDLELO 2012 and during the celebrations of International Women’s day at UNESCO Headquarters.

How to join?

To join this online community and take part in the above-mentioned discussion, please send an email to: wsiscommunity-invitation@unesco.org

Link to the community page.

See also

• Gender Equality and Web 2.0
• Gender Differences and the Internet
• Access to internet and computers
• Can the Internet Make the World a Better Place?

Activities

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, and screenings of V-Day’s documentary Until The Violence Stops to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. 2009 V-Day events have the option to introduce a new V-Day theatrical event, Any One Of Us: Words From Prison, which reveals the connection between women in prison and the violence that often brings them there. This event will bring forth raw voices of fierceness and honesty written by women from prisons across the nation and performed by local women. In 2008, over 4000 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.

V-Day works to end violence against girls and women by partnering directly with women’s organizations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East who are working to end violence against women and girls in all its forms—changing minds, changing laws, changing lives.

V-DAY 2009

Stop Raping our Greatest Resource: Power to Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a new global campaign, initiated by V-Day and United NationsICEF, representing UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict that that calls attention to the wide-scale atrocities committed against women and girls in Eastern DRC and demands an end to the impunity with which these crimes are committed.

References

• Official website

About

UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) unites the work of 12 UN entities with the goal of ending sexual violence in conflict. It is a concerted effort by the UN system to improve coordination and accountability, amplify programming and advocacy, and support national efforts to prevent sexual violence and respond effectively to the needs of survivors.

UN Action member entities

• DPA – UN Department of Political Affairs
• DPKO – UN Dep. of Peacekeeping Operations
• OCHA – UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
• OHCHR – UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
• UNAIDS – Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS
• UNDP – UN Development Programme
• UNFPA – UN Population Fund
• UNHCR – UN High Commissioner for Refugees
• UNICEF – UN Children’s Fund
• UNIFEM – UN Development Fund for Woman
• WFP –UN World Food Programme
• WHO – UN World Health

Resolution 1820: Women, Peace, and Security

On 19 June 2008, the United Nations Security Council unanimously agreed that sexual violence “when used or commissioned as a tactic of war in order to deliberately target civilians or as a part of a widespread or systematic attack against civilian populations,can significantly exacerbate situations of armed conflict and may impede the restoration of international peace and security,” affirming that “effective steps to prevent and respond to such acts… can significantly contribute to the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Objectives

• Country Level Action: support joint strategy development and programming by UN Country Teams and Peacekeeping Operations, including building operational and technical capacity.
• Advocating for Action: action to raise public awareness and generate political will to address sexual violence as part of a broader campaign to Stop Rape Now.
• Learning by Doing: creating a knowledge hub on the scale of sexual violence in conflict, and effective responses by the UN and partners.

Cross It

The crossed-arm gesture is being used by the Stop Rape Now campaign,  to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence.

The campaign raises awareness about conflict-related sexual violence and invites everybody to get involved and becoming a fan of Security Council Resolution 1820.

The objective is to tell the UN Security Council and governments around the globe that conflict-related sexual violence must and can stop. The campaigns aim is to tell the world leaders that survivors must be able to seek justice, perpetrators must be prosecuted, and that peacekeeping troops, police, and civilian personnel must be trained to prevent sexual violence, and protect and empower women and girls.

Testimonies

“We Congolese women, we are doing what we can to help each other. Women here have long felt neglected-but we hope this feeling will one day be over.”(Testimony of a Congolese woman)– Stephanie Hanes, “Life After Rape in Congo”, Christian Science Monitor, April 25, 2007

“A woman would never go to report a rape to the HNP [Haitian National Police],” said a Haitian woman, “she is likely to be raped by them again.” — Refugees International “RI Bulletin: Haiti: UN Civilian Police Require Executive Authority” (March 14, 2005)

“After my relative declined to give me a job at his shop, I went to a labour market where two men hired me for construction work for 50 Afghani (US $1) a day. They took me into an empty house where they both forcefully had sex with me.”–(statement of 12-year-old boy)-IRIN, “Afghanistan: War, Poverty, and Ignorance fuel sexual abuse of children” (02 June 2007)

See also

• Women, Peace and Security
• Women and peace organisations
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1888
• United Nations Security Council Resolution 1889

Links

• Stop-rape-now website
• Facebook page
•  List of NGOs addressing the issue of sexual violence in armed conflict and post-conflict situations
• AIDS, Security & Conflict Research Hub
• Peace Women, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

History

The Women’s Institute was formed in 1915 with two clear aims: to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. Since then the Women’s Institute’s aims have broadened and they are now the largest women’s organisation in the UK. They currently have 205,000 members in 6,500 WIs.

Campaigns

• No More Violence Against Women Campaign

The WI is part of the End Violence Against Women campaigning coalition which aims to create a world in which women and girls are afforded their basic human rights and can live free from violence and its threat.

• Women Reaching Women Project

Together with Oxfam GB and the Everyone Foundation the NFWI is running a three-year project on the links between development, women and climate change.

• Adult Education

The NFWI has been working on adult education since 1922. The current NFWI education campaign focuses on fairer funding, choice and opportunities for adult education courses especially for women to maintain the self confidence and social equity these help provide.

• The WI is calling on the Government to stop the closure of community hospitals. WI members are calling for measures to protect these services and support local communities.

References

• Women’s Institute

Table of Contents

• 1 The Campaign “Africa for Women’s Rights: Ratify and respect!”
• 2 The Campaign “Dossier of Claims” 
• 3 The Campaign Blog
• 4 The Campaign in 31 African countries

The Campaign “Africa for Women’s Rights: Ratify and respect!”

In the majority of countries in Africa, women continue to face discrimination, violence and violations of their fundamental freedoms. Although legislative progress has been achieved in some countries, discriminatory practices remain widespread across the continent.

Despite the ratification by most African states of international and regional instruments protecting the rights of women, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), its Optional Protocol and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), their provisions are widely violated, due to legislative deficits or lack of adequate measures to enable their effective implementation.

On 8 March 2009, over one hundred organizations, present throughout the continent, launched the Campaign “Africa for Women’s Rights: Ratify and Respect!”.

This initiative aims to put an end to discrimination and violence against women in Africa, calling on states to ratify international and regional instruments protecting women’s rights, to repeal all discriminatory laws, to adopt laws protecting the rights of women and to take all necessary measures to ensure their effective implementation.

The Campaign calls upon all African governments to RATIFY the women’s rights protection instruments and to RESPECT them in law and practice. 

The Campaign was launched at the initiative of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in collaboration with five non-governmental regional organisations: the African Center for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS), Women’s Aid Collective (WACOL), Women in Law and Development in Africa (WILDAF) and Women and Law in Southern Africa (WLSA). These organisations make up the Steering Committee responsible for the coordination of the Campaign.

The Campaign has also received the support of Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate 1984, Shirin Ebadi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate 2003, Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize in Literature 1991, Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize in Literature 1986, artists Angelique Kidjo, Youssou N’Dour and Salif Keita, as well as Soyata Maiga, Special Rapporteur of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa and many others.

The Coalition of the Campaign stresses the urgency of the implementation and respect of the rights of women. Each and every violation of women’s human rights is a violation of the principle of the universality of human rights.

The Campaign “Dossier of Claims”

The Campaign Dossier of Claims, published in March 2010, is the outcome of investigations conducted by national human rights and women’s rights organizations in their respective countries and reflects the situation of women’s rights in over thirty African countries.

It contains key demands to eliminate discrimination and violence against women. These “claims” are directed towards national governments, since strengthening respect of women’s rights is primarily a question of political will. The Dossier is composed of a series of notes, detailing the main violations of women’s rights in each country. Each note underlines where they exist – any positive measures that have been taken over recent years, and identifies the main obstacles to respect of women’s rights in law and practice. In addition to its informative and awareness-raising functions, this Dossier  constitutes an important advocacy tool at the disposal of all those involved in campaigning for women’s rights. The claims formulated in the Dossier will be brought to the attention of the competent authorities at the national, regional and international levels. The Dossier is also a tool for all those whose aim is to achieve full equality between men and women, an essential condition for the fulfillment of universal human rights. The Dossier is available on the wikigender website – LINK as well as on the campaign blog –Africa4Womensrights

The Campaign Blog

For further information, visit the Campaign blog: http://www.africa4womensrights.org

The blog, with information in English and French, is maintained by the organisations participating in the Campaign across Africa. You will find the Campaign Declaration, to be signed online, regularly updated information on women’s rights in Africa and details of the Campaign actions undertaken across Africa.