UNIFEM works to foster women’s empowerment and gender equality throughout the world. UNIFEM has identified four strategic areas that are of critical concern for the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment and which guide our work:

Reducing Women’s Poverty and Exclusion

Since poverty traps women in multiple layers of discrimination and hinders their ability to claim their rights, ending feminized poverty has always been a core UNIFEM priority. Not only do women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty, but in some cases, globalisation has widened the gap, with women losing more than their share of jobs, benefits and labour rights. From tax systems to trade regimes, however, economic policies and institutions still mostly fail to take gender disparities into account. With too few seats at the tables where economic decisions are made, women themselves have little chance of rectifying the deepening of existing inequalities.

UNIFEM IN ACTION

• In the Philippines, UNIFEM and a migrant workers’ organization have started a savings and investment programme for returnees. Across South Asia, UNIFEM has assisted with the formation of networks of home-based workers that are now discussing social protection proposals with their governments.

• In Rwanda, UNIFEM-brokered connections to the private sector have allowed groups of widows to sell their handicrafts on the international market. Support for the Platform for Women’s Land and Water Rights in Southern Africa led the Southern African Development Community to set up a land desk to advocate for national land policies that protect women’s interests and rights.

Ending Violence Against Women

Fighting gender-based violence is a major concern for UNIFEM, because violence against women is a universal problem and one of the most widespread violations of human rights. One in three women will suffer some form of violence in her lifetime, becoming part of an epidemic that devastates lives, fractures communities and stalls development. Despite some progress on this issue over the past decade, its horrendous scale remains mostly unacknowledged. New dimensions include the global trafficking of women and girls.

UNIFEM IN ACTION

• UNIFEM has helped established trauma counselling centres along trafficking corridors in Bangladesh, India and Nepal, as well as anti-trafficking committees in villages that provide information on assistance.

• UNIFEM joined the UN Development Programme and the UN Population Fund to support a national strategy in Morocco to combat gender-based violence. It has resulted in changes to the penal code, with stronger provisions on domestic violence and rape.

Achieving Gender Equality in Democratic Governance

One of the pillars of UNIFEM’s work is women’s political participation, a fundamental prerequisite for gender equality and genuine democracy. Around the world, however, in times of peace and especially of war, women’s participation continues to be extremely limited. As a result, laws, policies and government institutions fall short, neither reflecting the needs of all citizens nor supporting progress on women’s rights.

UNIFEM IN ACTION

• UNIFEM nurtured two years of concerted lobbying by women’s activists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that resulted in a Constitution guaranteeing women’s full participation in peace-building. Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission now includes a witness protection programme to help women report gender-based violence.

• In Timor-Leste, UNIFEM has helped organize political skills workshops that have encouraged women to run for office; a new NGO active on women and politics is now training women candidates for village elections

Reducing HIV/AIDS Among Women and Girls

Across the world, HIV/AIDS threatens the lives and rights of individuals, severely restricting their hope for development. Countries with the highest HIV-prevalence rates face consequences that include the loss of people able to run the government, businesses and vital public services. This sets the stage for both individual suffering and social and economic decline. Tragically, social stigmas related to HIV/AIDS still hinder efforts to stem the disease in all regions of the world. For women, the picture is made more complex by gender inequality, poverty and blatant violations of women’s rights — without tackling these issues, overall efforts to address the epidemic will be futile.

Almost half the HIV-positive people in the world are now women, but in Africa, where the epidemic has stretched the furthest, young women are three times more likely to be HIV-positive than young men. Gender inequality leaves women with less control than men over their bodies and their lives. They have less information about how to prevent HIV, and fewer resources to take preventative measures. They face barriers to the negotiation of safe sex that include economic dependency and violence. In some cases, poverty forces women into the sex trade. And regardless of whether they themselves are HIV positive or sick with AIDS, women assume the burden of home-based care for others who are sick or dying. While many have shown great fortitude and courage in these situations, they lose time and energy that might be spent on earning a livelihood or caring for their own illness, and risk sinking into an ever-deepening degree of poverty.

Many more resources need to flow into halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, and need to be targeted to women in particular. In 2001, at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS, over 180 countries agreed that gender equality and women’s empowerment are fundamental to reducing girls’ and women’s vulnerability to HIV/AIDS. They committed to increasing their efforts to challenge gender stereotypes and inequality. The sixth Millennium Development Goal calls for reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

UNIFEM IN ACTION

• In Cambodia, the Fund has helped positive women create a network that now sends representatives to attend government policy sessions on HIV/AIDS, advise public health providers on how to make services accessible and friendly to women, and participate in the national programming deliberations for grants from the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

• In Brazil, UNIFEM is collaborating with the UN Population Fund to set up permanent collaboration on HIV/AIDS between the Ministry of Health and civil society experts. Brazilian media campaigns stress the link between HIV/AIDS and violence; advocacy in Honduras focuses on providing women with basic facts they need to protect themselves.