Women’s Progression
Anti-Sexism | Feminist Movement | UN Fourth World Conference on Women - Bejing, China | GLBTQ | INCITE | Men's Liberation | Anti-Sexism Sources
The problems of women are not different from county to country or region to region. They only differ in intensity. - Gertrude Mongella, Secretary-General of the Conference
Health
Even in industrialized nations, gender discrimination in healthcare is responsible for the deaths of many women, so the progress of women’s health was an important topic that was discussed at the UN FWCW. It was found that while women’s health in some areas had improved, in other areas it had worsened. Women’s health had improved in the fact that, life expectancy for women had increased over the last few years, while fertility and infant mortality rates had decreased. However, there was little improvement in reducing the maternal mortality rate and unfortunately, women accounted for 40 percent of HIV-infected adults. [2]
Education
A mother’s literacy and education has profound implications about her children’s health and mortality rates, so women’s progression in education was another important topic that was highlighted at the UN FWCW. Women’s progress as far as education looked promising. Although girls in many countries around the world were still receiving less education than boys, it was encouraging to see that the percent of girls and women enrolled in primary, secondary, and even graduate schools was increasing. Additionally, the percent of illiterate girls and women dropped from 46.5 percent in 1970 to 33.6 percent in 1990. While there was obviously still a lot of work to be done, trends as far as women’s education looked promising and at the UN FWCW the UNICEF even predicted that by 2000 only 28.2 percent of women would be illiterate. [3]
Employment
Family Life
Politics
Human Rights
