speech on general discrimination
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Thank you so much for this warm welcome. It is a pleasure to be here, and I wish I was also here earlier on for some of the deliberations that you already had. I wanted to kick-start this discussion with a short clip that frames some of the issues I would like to highlight, and the issues that came out of work that we did together with Dr. Jeni Klugman, who is here with me, and with whom we will have the conversation later.
This is a real story, but these are actors.
(Short Ethiopian film "Alem" screened)
I think this summarizes why we do what we do. There are so many Alems in the world. Obviously, this situation represents the worst-case scenario for what is potentially a very clever girl with so much to give to the world; with an unsuspecting mother; with a father maybe somewhere in the labour market working very hard for the family; maybe in a political system that does not invest in addressing the redistribution of unpaid care work, the norms that discriminate against women and girls, and the wishes of fathers who actually may want to be present in the upbringing of their children.
What would happen to Alem? Let us assume she is 12 years old; what is her life’s trajectory? Get married early? Poverty? And once that happens, maternal health complications and child mortality could also follow.
What do you think would happen to the boys? They would teach their children the same way so inter-generational poverty is perpetuated. What else? The boys might have a possibility to improve their education. Alem’s brother already might get a scholarship, which perhaps Alem was also well qualified to compete for. It’s not that we do not wish the boys to have success, but we want both the girls and the boys to have equal opportunities.
What else crossed your mind? What would we say to the father, remembering that 80 per cent of men in the world will become biological dads, and most of them are not hands-on parents, which exacerbates the burden of care on the mothers and their potential to enter the labour market smoothly. Yes, there is potential for human trafficking. The mother may just need more money to educate the boys, to look after the younger children, and it may be easier to make money from Alem.
So, you see the cycles that repeat and may sometimes just look like the normal course of the way our lives are.
When the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment met—which I would like to talk about with the help of Jeni—we emphasized the fact that private is public. When we think about the importance of the participation of women in the global economy, we must not forget about creating an enabling environment for gender equality at a household level, and institutionalized to the extent that we have gender equality at home. The chances are that the boys will take their home behaviour to the workplace and they will perpetuate gender inequality if and when they become senior in the institutions that they may be a part of.
Policymakers need to understand how this continuum affects the work relations and the performance of economies; how th
This is a real story, but these are actors.
(Short Ethiopian film "Alem" screened)
I think this summarizes why we do what we do. There are so many Alems in the world. Obviously, this situation represents the worst-case scenario for what is potentially a very clever girl with so much to give to the world; with an unsuspecting mother; with a father maybe somewhere in the labour market working very hard for the family; maybe in a political system that does not invest in addressing the redistribution of unpaid care work, the norms that discriminate against women and girls, and the wishes of fathers who actually may want to be present in the upbringing of their children.
What would happen to Alem? Let us assume she is 12 years old; what is her life’s trajectory? Get married early? Poverty? And once that happens, maternal health complications and child mortality could also follow.
What do you think would happen to the boys? They would teach their children the same way so inter-generational poverty is perpetuated. What else? The boys might have a possibility to improve their education. Alem’s brother already might get a scholarship, which perhaps Alem was also well qualified to compete for. It’s not that we do not wish the boys to have success, but we want both the girls and the boys to have equal opportunities.
What else crossed your mind? What would we say to the father, remembering that 80 per cent of men in the world will become biological dads, and most of them are not hands-on parents, which exacerbates the burden of care on the mothers and their potential to enter the labour market smoothly. Yes, there is potential for human trafficking. The mother may just need more money to educate the boys, to look after the younger children, and it may be easier to make money from Alem.
So, you see the cycles that repeat and may sometimes just look like the normal course of the way our lives are.
When the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment met—which I would like to talk about with the help of Jeni—we emphasized the fact that private is public. When we think about the importance of the participation of women in the global economy, we must not forget about creating an enabling environment for gender equality at a household level, and institutionalized to the extent that we have gender equality at home. The chances are that the boys will take their home behaviour to the workplace and they will perpetuate gender inequality if and when they become senior in the institutions that they may be a part of.
Policymakers need to understand how this continuum affects the work relations and the performance of economies; how th
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