Brief summary of presentation of information made

Linda Liu – Moderator, International Council of Women (ICW), VP of National Council of Women Taiwan

• ICW established 129 years ago
• Despite many conventions and protocols adopted by UN, goals of women’s equality and empowerment progress towards those goals has been slow
• Equality in economic rights and women’s empowerment are integral to achieving women’s equality

Ms. Meg Jones – Chief of Economic Empowerment of Women, UN Women.  Inclusive sustainable development.

• Key strategies to transform empowering women -> engagement of women. 
• Governments have committed to SDGs including #5 – gender equality
  • Civil society role is to hold governments accountable
  • Look to Women’s business associations – national and international
• Recognize persistent inequalities in labour market, in unpaid home work, and in pay and labour participation rate gaps
• Functioning care system is required to allow women to participate in economy
• MDGs to SDGs – agenda now universal, all countries must report on progress (and private sector also participating)
• If women were able to participate identically it would result in $28 trillion in worth by 2030
• Need to look at gender dimension of all SDGs, not just focused on #5
• If enabled women to participate at same rate as men – in just Korea and Chile would have 2 million more jobs, 15 million in US
  • Losing job growth by not allowing women to participate
• When women part of workforce, money is spent on health and education of children – breaks intergenerational poverty
• In 97% of countries there is at least one law that prevents women from being part of economy
• Same issue coming up again and again:
  • G20 Governments – reducing gap in participation gap between men and women in labour market by 2025 (100 million women)
• Raises issue of implementation and accountability
• UN Women collecting good examples of policies to make it easier for governments to find policies that work
• Gender responsive budgeting is a necessary consideration to enable empowerment of women
• Strategy for working with business
  • Power of Procurement – how to source from companies owned by women (brochure produced by UN Women)

Ambassador Youngiu Oh – Korea

• No universally agreed upon definition of empowerment for women
• No country has managed to eliminate gaps between women and men in labour market (including wage gap)
• Challenges facing women through the employment cycle in Korea
  • Unequal employment opportunities
    • World Bank - 155 economies have at least one legal  barrier for women entering workforce
    • In addition social and cultural barriers
    • As a result need a holistic approach to addressing inequality
  • Investments by Korea in education, have repealed discriminatory laws
  • Make workplace more conducive to retention of women
    • Disproportionate amount of unpaid home work fallsto women
  • Family friendly certification system for companies – encourage companies to promote participation by women
  • Family and child care leave
• Women’s empowerment is a social development solution (shouldn't not just a goal)

Ms. Alicia Hammond – Gender Specialist at the World Bank, speciality is education

• Credit gap for women owned enterprises – $260 billion – $320 billion
• Women owned businesses tend to be smaller, have fewer employees and are home based
• Women’s job force participation has stagnated in the last few years
• Women less likely to work full time, earn between 10-30% less than men
• Proposed Solutions
  • Enabling Legal Framework
    • 943 legal differences between men and women  across 173 countries, including in 100 countries that prevent women from working same jobs (Vietnam - women not allowed to drive trains, Nigeria – women can’t work at night)
  • Women’s financial inclusion
    • Bank account – first step out of poverty.  1.1 billion women are excluded from institutional banking
    • 44% of women entrepreneurs rely on own savings or friends/family to start their businesses
    • Impact of mobile phones – helps manage and protect money
  • Occupational Sex Segregation
    • Occupational sex segregation starts early – education in different subjects
    • Break through with education
      • Experiments in Uganda and Ethiopia – give information about salary early before they choose their school subjects (so far demonstrating a shift in job choice)
      • Connecting women to business networks and mentors
• New area of work for World Bank – Care
  • Public and private provision of care important factor as women tend to bear the burden of caring for family
• Transportation system needs to be developed to enable women to participate
• World Bank work:
  • December 2015 launched gender strategy
  • More, better and inclusive jobs
  • Reduction in skills gap
  • Pair business training with soft skills (leadership, self-esteem)
  • Water and sanitation solutions as a way to free up women to participate
  • Land, housing, finance and technology
  • Engagement of men and boys
  • Focus on strong diagnostics and results

Tags: United Nations, Women, SDG5: Gender Equality