I had the privilege of attending the 68th UN Commission on the Status of Women this week. Reviewing the schedules, there’s a focus on women in the digital space, conflict zones, and financial systems and structures.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres (Portugal) opened with thanks to all who work to advance women and gender equality then made a hard pivot to describe how women are exponentially impacted in conflict situations. He went on to express his disgust at the ongoing hostilities in Gaza, Sudan, and Afghanistan on the first day of the Ramadan celebration.
“…despite evidence that women’s full participation makes peace-building much more effective, the number of women in decision-making roles is actually falling” he acknowledged while being one of four male speakers before a woman was recognized at the daïs.
Identifying two overarching trends, he spoke of the expansion of patriarchal, autocratic, and populist strategies to limit women’s rights and the non-representation of women in digital (AI) leadership and at the technical level. Male dominated algorithms program inequalities, he said, as he made the case for women in these roles.
“Globally, poverty has a female face.” He said as he went on to list the many struggles women face at rates beyond men – less access to lending, natural resources, financial assets, greater impacts from climate change, food insecurity, continued wage disparities, and the myriad of issues related to domestic care and its invisible underpinning of economies worldwide.
“The facts are clear: women lead to peace,” Guterres said. That phrase lingers in my head. Women as both the subject and object of the sentence.
