International Women's Day comes at a difficult time for the world and for gender equality
this year. Yet it is also a time to fight for transformative change. Millions of women and
girls and their communities face extraordinary hardships in their economies, in their social
life, and public health. This is despite the positive progress made in the previous decades on
issues such as girls education, the elimination of discriminatory laws, targeted health interventions
that reduced maternal deaths, and the greater engagement of youth in gender equality advocacy.
We salute women and young people for the continuous drive for gender equality and human
rights for the last 25 years since the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.
We look ahead to the solid opportunities presented by the Generation Equality Forum
and the Generation Equality Action Coalitions, that will address the unfinished business that
was started in Beijing twenty-five years ago. This is especially important as progress
in women's representation has been unbearably slow and it has affected the pace of change for women
overall. Women are still mostly absent where decisions are made, and we further lack policies
that promote women's leadership. In 2020, as a global average, women made up only 25 per cent of
national parliamentarians, occupied a global average of just 16.9 per cent of board seats,
4.4 per cent of CEOs and just 13 per cent of peace negotiators. Only 22 countries
currently have a woman as a Head of State or Government. This is clearly not good progress.
Of course, we celebrate breakthroughs of women that are at the helm of organizations such as WTO,
IMF, European Central Bank, and call for more such appointments.
This year both International Women's Day and the Commission on the Status of Women
focus on the participation of women in leadership and decision-making and call for actions that are
proven to boost and sustain that representation. For example, we know that where countries have put
in place and enforced special measures like quotas or targets, they have made systemic
progress on women's leadership, as well as those that have policies to address representation.
Where measures do not exist, progress is slower or even non-existent, and easily reversible.
The universal and catastrophic lack of representation of women in decision-making
affects women's lives and this has gone on for too long. And it is in fact
bad corporate governance to deny affected parties representation in matters affecting them. This
requires our urgent attention, especially now in view of the erosion of our equality gains by
the COVID-19 pandemic. During COVID-19, we have seen increased violence against women and girls,
school drop-out rates have increased, women's extreme poverty is growing and women have lost
jobs at a much higher rate than men. There is a lack of much-needed of digital skills as well.
Solutions to these and many other problems cannot be left to men alone.
Women's full participation in decision-making and in the recovery process is key. Currently
only 3.5 per cent of national COVID-19 task forces globally have equal numbers of men
and women. This is not good as it will retain the status quo. So we have to draw the line.
No country prospers without the engagement of women. We must draw lessons from women leaders
and their experience of handling of the pandemic. We need a recovery plan that brings measurable
relief and responds to the identified needs. So, this International Women's Day as well as
in the Commission on the Status of Women and everywhere, we need bold decisions so that
we can build back better, which means building back in a gender-responsive manner,
in a greener manner, and in an equitable and inclusive manner.