1. Introduction 3 Understanding women’s economic and social rights 10
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5. Recommendations“While it is important to ensure that policies designed to address the immediate crisis identify differential impacts on vulnerable groups, it is also important to look to the future and identify the world that we want to emerge from the current crisis. We need to act now to challenge inequalities and discrimination, so that in the recovery we draw on the talents, skills and energies of the widest possible cross-section of society.” - European Commission Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men 5.1 Recommendations for StatesWomen’s economic and social rights are a fundamental dimension of women’s equality and empowerment. While economic and financial crisis represent particular challenges, women’s economic and social rights are critical at all times and demand specific attention and protection. States, international human rights bodies and mechanisms, and international and regional economic/financial actors all have a vital role to play. The following recommendations are offered to help improve the status of these rights. Ratification of International Treaties and Domestication States should ratify – without reservations – key international human rights treaties protecting women’s economic and social rights, as well as their rights to non-discrimination and equality, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. States who have already ratified these treaties should remove any reservations that they may have, and States should also ratify the relevant Optional Protocols associated with these treaties. Temporary Special Measures States should accelerate the equal participation of women in economic and social life, and should adopt without delay temporary special measures aimed at ensuring women’s de facto equality in economic and social life, including in relation to education, employment, health, housing, food and nutrition, land and property, water and sanitation, and social security. States should consult CEDAW General Recommendations and Concluding Observations for guidance on how to design and implement temporary special measures. Intersectionality States should recognize and address at all levels the impact of multiple disadvantage/intersectional discrimination on women’s economic and social life, including in the context of addressing the economic crisis, and ensure that measures pay attention to women in particularly marginalized/vulnerable positions – for example, as experienced by women marginalized on the basis of race/ethnicity/language/culture or caste, older women, single mothers, women affected by HIV, disabled women, displaced women and female migrant workers, etc. States should ensure that data and national statistics are broken down by sex and other relevant factors such as age, disability, race, and ethnic origin. Women’s Substantive Economic and Social Rights States must comply fully with their international human rights obligations to respect, protect and fulfill the complete spectrum of women’s economic and social rights in accordance with the provisions of international human rights laws and standards (including vis-à-vis education, work, health, housing, food and nutrition, land and property, water and sanitation, etc.) and do so on the basis of non-discrimination and substantive equality. Several important recommendations have been made in this regard by Unites Nations treaty bodies (please see Annexes 1 & 2 for further detail) as well as by United Nations Special Rapporteur and others, which should be looked to for authoritative guidance on how to formulate effect laws, policies and programs. States should pay special attention to these recommendations and ensure their domestic implementation. States should further recognize that the right to equality entails immediate obligations related to women’s economic and social rights, and therefore is not to be subject to the ‘progressive realization’ standard. States obligated to allocate the maximum for available resources to the effective realization of women’s economic and social rights. Concretely, States should design, adopt and implement gender-sensitive and human rights-based laws, policies and programs which reflect international human rights standards related to women’s economic and social rights, and incorporate and reflect gender sensitive understandings these rights. In particular, States should: ensure accountability for actors who violate women’s economic and social rights and women’s access to effective remedies; facilitates women’s empowerment by creating awareness of women’s economic and social rights;508 prioritize the needs of particularly vulnerable and/or marginalized women, taking into account intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination; ensure that women are able to meaningful participate in design, planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluation of laws, policies, programs and budgets related to the enjoyment of their economic and social rights; ensure that implementation of laws, policies, programs and budgets is adequately supported in terms of both financial and human resources; and provide for the collection of gender-sensitive and gender-disaggregated data which can serve as a tool for evaluation and measurement of women’s de facto enjoyment of their economic and social rights. Specific areas of women’s economic and social rights are also addressed in more detail below: Education States must uphold girls’ right to education, and should adopt measures to guarantee their rights to non-discrimination and equality in relation to the right to education. States should ensure that girls are protected against exploitation and child/early marriage, and that they are protected against physical and sexual abuse both within and outside of the school system. States should provide incentives to further girls’ education, and provide support to vulnerable girls and their families to offset the costs of education, including by providing specific programs aimed at ensuring girls are able to succeed in, and stay in, school. In particular, States should ensure that mechanisms are put in place to ensure that girls stay in school despite economic strain on families and a potential increase in the burden of care for women are needed. Conditional cash transfers have been effective in many countries and should be combined with measures to reduce the higher burden of care put on women and girls during crises. States should also encourage young women to choose non-traditional fields of study and professions and step up career guidance activities to encourage girls to pursue non traditional paths. States should also improve the gender awareness of teaching personnel at all levels of the education system, and ensure that curricula promote the human rights of women and girls, and combat gender stereotypes. Employment States should ensure that women have access to quality part-time and full-time work and should adopt effective measures to eliminate occupational segregation, both horizontal and vertical. States should reduce the wage gap between women and men and include the principle of “equal pay for work of equal value” in all areas of work. States should also ensure more flexible working opportunities for women, contributing to gender-sensitive employment creation. States should also adopt, disseminate and effectively implement legislation prohibiting and criminalizing sexual harassment in the workplace. States should encourage balanced representation of both sexes in positions of senior leadership (at both Board and management levels) through gender mainstreaming, affirmative action, and active campaigns against gender stereotypes. States should compensate for unequal employment opportunities based on gender – principally compensating for the adverse impact of career breaks through paid leave and right of return to post. States should also provide training and apprenticeship opportunities to women and include the skills needed for new jobs in the future. States should encourage implementation of Women’s Empowerment Principles509 by businesses, so as to empower women in the workplace, marketplace and community. Maternity and Child Care States should ensure that legislative and social policy frameworks at national level should contain strong provisions on maternity protection, in keeping with ILO Convention No. 183 on Maternity Protection. States should also reduce the burden of unpaid care work through provision of care services – child care (and in some demographic contexts, care for elderly) being especially correlated to women’s participation in the labor force. Reducing Women’s Caregiving Burden and Promoting Equal Sharing of Family Responsibilities States should ratify ILO Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention, 1981, (No. 156) and implement its corresponding Recommendation (No. 165). States should reduce the burden of house work through better infrastructure – principally electricity, water, sanitation, mobility and school access. States should support workers with family responsibilities and facilitate a more even sharing of these responsibilities between the sexes. In this regard, States should take steps to balance the gender division of paid and unpaid work and invest in programs to increase fathers’ share of parenting and other caregiving. There should be a focus on encouraging greater sharing of domestic labor so that women do not continue to carry the majority of domestic tasks. States should also carry out awareness-raising and education initiatives for both women and men on the sharing of domestic and family responsibilities States should ensure that the increase in unpaid care for women and girls that often occurs in times of economic crisis needs to be mitigated against through the provision of social care supports such as child-care services and support for elderly people and people with disabilities. Social Security and Social Protection States should implement Recommendation 202 of the ILO on Social Protection Floors (2012). States should combat gender inequality by creating and maintaining an adequate Social Protection Floor and should ensure that social protection measures actively promote gender equality and empowerment of women. In the design and implementation of social protection systems, States should also take into account the multiple forms of discrimination that women experience throughout their lives and ensure that women’s specific needs are addressed throughout the life cycle. Public Financing and Economic Crisis Response States should ensure that allocation of public resources promotes gender equality and ensure that all proposed policies are subject routinely to gender impact assessment, as a matter of good governance. States should finance public campaigns to challenge gender stereotypes, and finance adequately implementation of legislation against discrimination. In particular, States should combat patriarchal attitudes about men as primary economic ‘breadwinners.’ States should give systematic consideration to the differential gender impacts of the crisis and of policy responses to the crisis; assess the impact of the economic crisis on women and girls and take into account the gender dimension in future initiatives taken to counteract the crisis or limit its impact. In regard to financial stimulus packages for women’s employment, States should ensure that priorities do not focus only on infrastructure projects which create jobs primarily for men but also social investments in care services which reduce the pressure on unpaid work. States should create jobs especially in the public sector by investing in social infrastructure (education, health, child and dependent persons care), which would also ease the disproportionate burden on women to enable them to participate in the labor market. States should also allocate funding for social infrastructure investment, in areas such as public health, education, child care, and other social services. States should avoid austerity measures in general, but where unavoidable and justified under international human rights law, should assess them carefully for gendered effects. Gender Budgeting States should ensure that participatory ender budgeting is a standard methodology of all public budget processes and ensure oversight bodies have a quota for equal representation of women. States should endeavor to ensure gender equality by correcting negative consequences of ‘gender-blind’ budgets and improve governance and accountability, in particular in respect of the financial targeting and future budgets. States should improve women’s participation at all levels of decision-making, especially in the areas of budgets and in respect of governance arrangements for financial systems. Monitoring and Data Collection States should effectively monitor and analyze women’s enjoyment of economic and social rights, including by disaggregating key employment data by gender to improve monitoring and analysis of the gender impact of the economic and financial crisis, and to facilitate the identification of measures at national level to ameliorate adverse impacts. |