U.N. Links Poverty, Violence Against Women

[Rose Siding]

LONDON - The world will never eliminate poverty until it confronts social, economic and physical discrimination against women, the United Nations said Wednesday.
....
"We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls," the fund's executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, said at the report's launch in London. "We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic and political rights."

The report said gender equality and better reproductive health could save the lives of 2 million women and 30 million children over the next decade — and help lift millions around the world out of poverty.
.....
Lack of contraception leads to 76 million unintended pregnancies in the developing world and 19 million unsafe abortions worldwide each year, the agency said. More than half a million women die annually from preventable pregnancy-related causes — a figure that has changed little in a decade.

LINK

[MountainLaurel]

1. You'd think this would be so obvious

But apparently not.

:cry:

[bemildred]

3. I read the same story 40 years ago. It is obvious. nt

[mom cat]

2. How did Bolton let this slip out!

[GayCanuck]

4. The UN

has an uncanny knack of uncovering the obvious.

[Moderator]

5. kick

[emad]

6. Only greater rights for women can end poverty, warns UN

· Governments must tackle inequality, says report
· Education identified as key to social change

Sarah Boseley, health editor
Thursday October 13, 2005
The Guardian


The war on poverty cannot be won unless much greater efforts are made to give women equality, says the annual UN Population Fund report, published yesterday.

The report calls for government action to free women from the poverty and ignorance often forced upon them by cultural confines in many countries, which has an economic as well as a social toll.

"I am here today to say that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history," said the UNFPA's executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, at the report's launch. "We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls. We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic, and political rights."

Each year more than 500,000 women die in childbirth, says the report, with most being preventable. Around 76 million women become pregnant unintentionally because they do not have access to contraception.
There are some 19m abortions every year, many of which are carried out unsafely in backstreet clinics and sometimes lead to disability or death.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/hearafrica05/story/0,15756,1590903,00.html

[TallahasseeGrannie]

7. And the abortion and maternal death rate

is just the beginning. When there are women who cannot leave their homes without a male relative, we are all figuratively trapped with her.

I remember all the outcry against apartheid. But the status of women around the world doesn't evoke rock concerts for some reason.

[emad]

8. When Saudi Arabia's oil runs out, just HOW are the men gonna

keep up their stupid campaign of banning universal suffrage? Or stopping the women from driving? Or keep up the charade that women must continue to share their husbands in the name of religion?

[TallahasseeGrannie]

9. Yes, we will pass out the popcorn

and enjoy watching a bit of Saudi Female RAGE.

I hope.

[emad]

11. The Chinese view the Saudis as the most repressed and neurotic

males on planet earth and consider Wahabist version of Islam a poor excuse for state-sponsored sexism....

[sweetheart]

10. Its so sad that this is not bloody obvious

It took until 2005 to know women get the shaft and are the majority
of the very-poor, the politically disenfranchised, globally repressed, raising 1 out of 5 american children in poverty... it took until
2005 to figure this out? Are we stupid or just thick..