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to the United Nations

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6.6.00

 

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UK National Statement to the

Nations General Assembly Special Session

United Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace

for the 21st Century: 5-9 June 2000

 

 

Statement by the Rt Hon The Baroness Jay of Paddington

Leader of the House of Lords and Minister for Women

 

 

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to present the UK national statement to this conference. We have come a long way since 1995. In the UK we have driven through a new approach to improving women's lives.

 

I am the Minister for Women in the Cabinet and I am here with my ministerial colleague Valerie Amos, who has special responsibility for our development agenda. I work with the Women's Unit in the Cabinet Office, at the heart of Government, to implement policies across the whole of Government. Policies that give opportunity and choice to women. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that women in the UK and throughout the world can achieve their true potential.

 

Our approach in the UK is driven by our commitment to fairness, social justice and equality of opportunity. We want everyone to have the chance to fulfil their potential. These are values that we hold at home and values that all of us here today share.

 

The Beijing Platform for Action recognised that global economic success and the elimination of poverty depends on the fulfilment of our commitment to uphold the human rights and freedoms of women.

 

Women make up over half the global workforce. We work in a wide variety of roles: as farmers, in commerce, in manufacturing, in the service industries and as business owners and entrepreneurs.

 

But there remain major economic inequalities between men and women. Inequalities in access to land and credit; the gap between women's and men's lifetime incomes; and women's unpaid workloads, such as childcare, domestic and community work.

 

We can address these imbalances by improving women's choices and opportunities in education and training. We must equip women to play a full and equal part in the twenty-first century economy by life long learning programmes which include the new technologies and the new skills.

 

This is precisely what we are doing both in the UK, and throughout our international development efforts.

 

Education is at the heart of our strategy. In the UK, girls excel at school. More girls than boys now go to college or university, a rise of fourteen percent in just sixteen years.

 

But when women leave school they are still mostly working in low paid jobs. Sixty per cent of women are in the ten lowest paid occupations. This occupational segregation is the main cause of the gap between women's and men's lifetime incomes. To redress this imbalance we are finding ways to encourage girls into non-traditional and higher paid occupations.

Education .enhances economic and life choices. It improves health. There is no stronger argument for renewing our commitment, and accelerating our progress toward meeting the Beijing objectives.

 

Closing gender gaps in education must be our top priority. Equality cannot be a reality while there are still 600 million women in the world who can neither read nor write.

 

In the UK we are committed to developing economic policies for growth and prosperity. We are also committed to social policies that tackle poverty and social exclusion and improve opportunity for all.

 

Over the past 25 years an economic and employment revolution has been taking place. There are more women in work than ever before in the UK. Over half of all women - double the number 25 years ago - now work, and 8 out of 10 mothers work outside the home.

 

Since 1997 we have introduced new measures to suppoft women's choices:

 

• a National Minimum Wage - which gave over one million women an immediate pay rise and closed the pay gap between men and women by 1 per cent in just one year;

 

• improved employment rights for all part time workers - the majority of whom are women - including improved rights to parental leave;

 

• a tax credit system for families on low incomes which includes help with childcare costs;

 

• a National Childcare Strategy which aims to provide new childcare places for one million children;

 

• and the development of a new framework to provide support for women who want to set up their own businesses.

 

These measures, along with others, are designed to lift working families in the UK out of poverty and give women the opportunity to have successful working lives as well as successful home lives.

 

We recognise we can also do more throughout the world by working in partnership to improve women's contribution to the global economy and to improve their social status.

 

In the current, rapidly expanding economic context, the continuing existence of a pay gap between men and women is both an anomaly and an inefficiency.

 

In the last 6 months the Women's Unit has published research which exposes for the first time the true extent of the pay gap in the UK and its horrifying fact that an averagely educated woman earns nearly quarter of a million pounds sterling or nearly four hundred thousand U.S. dollars less than her male counterpart, over her lifetime, simply as a result of being female. If she has children, she forgoes a further one hundred and forty thousand pounds or just over two hundred thousand U.S. dollars.

 

 

hese facts are stark and we must tackle the root causes of this continuing anomaly. Women in developing countries, who make up the majority of the world's poor, suffer even more acutely. In this global age, we must strive for true economic equality for women everywhere.

 

Women will not be able to achieve their potential if they do not have equal access to health services. Reproductive and sexual rights are fundamental. If women are not healthy our society and economy will not be healthy.

 

This is especially apparent when we consider the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which is set to challenge the success of our global economy. Women represent half of all adults infected with HIV and more women than men are now contracting HIV. I welcome the fact that the Millennium Assembly is to look more closely at this important issue.

 

Before concluding, I would like to draw your attention to our document Equality in Practice: A celebration - and an agenda for the future which we published today. It documents examples of good practice by the UK Government and our partners, at home and abroad, in supporting women's contributions to their economies, their communities and their families.

 

For example it includes the partnerships our Department for International Development has formed in many countries to provide support to women's enterprises through micro-credit and other schemes.

 

It reflects that a lot has been done and achieved, since 1995 - but it also makes it very clear that there is still much more to be done.

 

Let us go forward from this meeting with renewed determination to accelerate our progress, so that we can liberate the potential of women everywhere. Let us remember our purpose. This is not a "talking shop" - we, as State Leaders, are here to recommit to achieving the goal we set ourselves five years ago Equality, for all women, everywhere.

 

I hope I have shown how the adoption of a positive approach to the women's agenda in our work in the UK has enabled us to support women's choices and aspirations. We have done a lot to deliver on these but, of course, there is still a lot to do.

 

Of course, we need to work in partnership with others including NGOs, business and trade unions, to bring about long term, sustainable change. We want to work with the UN, and with all of you to ensure that opportunities are extended to the majority of women in every country. We want everyone to share in the wealth and success that is being generated worldwide.

 

If we maintain our ideals and combine these with practical strategies, women will have real choice, will fulfil their aspirations and all our societies will be enhanced by their vital and important contribution.