The world’s future progress depends on women`s skills and leadership, UN Women executive director, Sima Bahous, has observed.
Speaking at the Business 20 (B20), the official G20 dialogue forum with the global business community tasked with formulating policy recommendations to the G20 Presidency, Sima said that women played important roles in taking care of families, staffed health-care systems, and invented lifesaving vaccines. “As leaders of countries, women instigated some of the most effective responses to the pandemic,” she was quoted by reports as saying.
A fall out of the pandemic, more women than men left the workforce to shoulder responsibilities at home. They have stayed out of the job market for a long time.
Sima also pointed out that systemic gendered problems required solutions.
Speaking at the event, Anne Hathaway, who is also the UN’s Goodwill Ambassador, pointed out that with women being pushed out of the paid economy, the focus should be on their role in the heart of economic growth and recovery.
Reports quoted her as saying that for women and girls, progress was dramatically reverse in many countries. She added, “Rights and freedoms that women and girls had experienced as normal — to work, to learn, to make choices about their bodies — have been abruptly taken away. Some of those losses have been legislated or imposed by governing authorities against courageous resistance. Others have been brought to light and sharpened by unprecedented global crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic.”
