International Women's Day un celebration: panel discussion - Women and the United Nations - Brief Article

WIN News, Spring, 2002

"IMPROVING THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT FOR WOMEN: BEST PRACTICES STATEMENT BY ANGELA E.V. KING. SPECIAL ADVISER ON GENDER ISSUES AND ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN ON BEHALF OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

"The twenty-first century faces many challenges... Changing demographics and workforce trends have profoundly altered the workplace. More and more couples pursue dual careers: family situations and structures are even more diverse. Women are especially concerned - with these issues - as typically, they assume more responsibility for family care. One of the critical challenges is how to establish innovative policies that enable staff to respond to the conflicting demands of work and family.

To attract and retain the best qualified staff, organizations must introduce personnel policies and practices which facilitate the reconciliation of staff members' work and family responsibilities ...

In short, modernizing our work/life policies makes good managerial and business sense. This has been recognized by the Secretary-General and the Heads of UN common system organizations.

Within the UN system a number of organizations such as UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and WFP have taken the lead in moving the work/family agenda forward. These organizations have introduced flexible working arrangements such as alternative work schedules and telecommuting enhanced child care arrangements, family-related leave policies, including paternity leave.

Within the UN Secretariat, the Secretary-General, has assigned priority to the reform of human resources management. To date, efforts have been dedicated to the reform and overhaul of the recruitment, promotion and placement system...

The Office of Human Resources Management (OHRM) recently initiated a worldwide survey of staff to obtain information on work/life conditions that are of greatest concern. The results will be used to propose improvements in work/life conditions... Earlier this year, OHRM also introduced a mentoring programme for recently recruited junior professionals.

Towards creating a more gender-sensitive environment my Office has also formed an inter-agency Task Force under the leadership of the Focal Point for Women to review and propose improvement in the organizations' policies to prevent and combat sexual harassment. The Task Force is currently developing consolidated user-friendly guidelines, drawing upon best practices of other agencies and the private sector.

While the UN Secretariat still has a long way to go, the Secretary-General is fully aware and committed to the establishment of a supportive and enabling environment for all staff, particularly women.

Although the overarching goal of the new system is to delegate authority for the selection of staff to heads of departments and to improve the speed and efficiency of the process, the Secretary-General remains committed to the goal of gender balance in the Secretariat... To ensure that gender concerns, such as 'substantially equal', for example, are fully integrated in the new staffing system, perhaps you could in groups or individually, initiate discussions with your head of department...

We work in close cooperation towards the goal of 50/50 gender distribution in the Secretariat... Women account for nearly 35 percent of the staff... Even though we have more women on peacekeeping than ever before, women still account for only 25 percent of the staff on mission. At the senior levels, the numbers are even more dismal with women accounting for only 6.6 percent of the staff at the D-1 and above. Clearly, we need to do more...

On higher level posts, two new women have recently been appointed to the posts of Executive Secretary of ECE, the first woman to head the Secretariat of Climate Change in Bonn.

When we assume higher level responsibilities we should also be viligant. In too many instances women's responsibilities on reaching decision-making levels have been diminished. In some cases women find themselves subtly marginalized or excluded from important meetings or from the full ramge of strategic functions formerly entrusted to their male predecessors: this is unacceptable...

The celebration of International Women's Day provides an opportunity for each of us to renew our commitment to the goals of gender equality in the Secretariat... The Secretary-General sets a great store by his women staff working together with men as he so eloquently emphasized in his speech acceptoing the Nobel peace prize.

May I say how pleased I am to be here on behalf of the Secretary-General and may I thank the Group on Equal Rights for Women in the United Nations for organizing this meeting which has now become an honoured tradition..."