Empowering women: more education, better health care, less poverty

UN Chronicle, June, 1995 by Nancy Seufert-Barr

The young girl, a fifth grader, says goodbye to her classmates. Her mother died recently and she now has to stay home to cook and bring lunch to her father in the field where he works. At home, her grandmother, very old and blind, chides her son for withdrawing his daughter from school. "I will cook", she says. "But how can you? You are blind", he says. "What I can see being blind, you cannot see with your eyes open", the old woman replies.

The message of this dramatized public service announcement, broadcast frequently on national television in Bangladesh, is clear. This country, like many other developing countries, is opening its eyes to the reality that with almost two thirds of its female population illiterate, national development is severely hampered.

Therefore, education, along with poverty, health care, the environment and other issues, is one of the critical areas of concern identified by the UN for discussion at the upcoming Fourth World Conference on Women.

Poor, overworked and illiterate--this is the profile of most adult, rural women in the majority of developing countries. Although more girls and women are entering school, and near universal literacy has been achieved for young people in many regions, huge gaps exist in women's education and literacy, especially among adults--the caretakers and providers for whom the ability to read and write can make a world of difference.

According to the 1993 World Education Report of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 905 million men and women--almost a quarter of the world's adult population--are illiterate. About 587 million, 65 per cent of them, are women.

According to Conference Secretary-General Gertrude Mongella, if women are to contribute effectively to national development into the twenty first century, "the fundamental question is whether they will be sufficiently equipped to participate fully by receiving a quality education that will prepare them to enter any field, expose them to science, technology and communications and stimulate their creativity".

Pivotal links

Another critical area of concern is the status of women's health and their access to health care, which have been identified as pivotal links between the health of a population and its prospects for sustainable development.

"Setting an agenda for women's health must begin with a recognition of the fact not only that the health situation of women is different from that of men, but also that the systems identifying and determining that health situation are fashioned according to gender-biased models", states a February report of UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (E/CN. 6/1995/3/add.3).

"Gender discrimination has tended to be hidden within the general issue of poverty and underdevelopment", the report says. "Many women suffering from poor health status are found to lack knowledge, information, skills purchasing power, income-earning capacity and access to essential health services."

Despite the fact that in households and often in communities women are the primary providers of health care. they often lack access to such care for themselves. Data cited by the report show that in many countries there are fewer women than men who are treated in hospitals, receive prescriptions for medication and timely treatment from qualified practitioners, and survive common diseases.

A disproportionate share

Among the important topics to be considered at the Fourth Conference in relation to women's health are reproductive health, fertility, ageing, malnutrition, mental health and sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Women also comprise a disproportionate share of the world's poor. Over the past 50 years, the number of rural women in developing countries living in absolute poverty has risen by about 50 per cent versus some 30 per cent for rural men. The feminization of poverty is a problem in industrialized countries as well. By the end of the 1980s, some 75 per cent of all poverty in the United States was to be found among women, particularly those who were single parents.

Uneven burden

What is clear, according to a recent report on the implementation of the 1985 Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (E/CN.6/1995/3/Add.1), "is that female poverty is a persistent and unevenly distributed burden that threatens the sustainability of the development process and that is, in the long run, likely to translate into slower rates of economic growth":

The report says the poverty issue has been accorded particular weight among the critical areas of concern for the Conference due to a number of trends:

* The emphasis within the development debate has shifted from economic growth as the principle objective of society to human-centred sustainable development, concerns of the quality of life and hence to poverty alleviation as the main goal of the development process;

* A gender perspective on the relationship between women's advancement and poverty has focused attention on differences in the incidence, causes and dimensions of poverty as experienced by men and women;