It’s time to leverage the VAWA victory and turn our attention to the needs of women and girls around the world.
One year ago, India’s first-ever Women’s Land Rights Facilitation Center opened in Odisha State. This month, 150 local women were approved to receive the titles to their land. There has been increased global momentum around women, land, and farming but for all the talk, will there be the walk?
Not everyone present at the Commission on the Status of Women was advocating for sexual and reproductive health. Some right-wing organizations wanted to roll back progress on women’s health.
A standing-room-only panel at the Commission on the Status of Women examined the need to integrate gender analysis in local HIV/AIDS responses.
The fact that this year’s Commission on the Status of Women theme was the “equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men” mattered little to right-wing organizations, who emphasized abortion and sexual orientation.
Personal stories of coerced sterilization and on the influence of religious tradition on sexual and reproductive health captured the audience at the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
All proposals to advance women, to empower women economically, socially, legally, will be highly ineffectual unless each and every woman is able to choose whether and when to have children.
