Excellencies,
Distinguished guests,
Dear colleagues,
But most importantly my sisters,
I am delighted to join such a powerful group of women this morning. Women who are leading our response to COVID-19 across different fields. Every time I look at the Rise for All video, it resonates in a different way.
As our lives have shifted online, one advantage has been in the way we are able to engage with each other despite distance, and to bring together our collective expertise and experience to go a step further.
This pandemic is an unprecedented wake-up call, laying bare deep inequalities and exposing precisely the failures that are addressed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. As the Secretary-General has said, had we been further along in the implementation of the SDGs, we would not be facing the scale of development emergency we are today for the most vulnerable.
This pandemic has been with us for just over six months now. In that time, it has caused an unprecedented health, humanitarian and economic crisis. It is straining health and care systems, widening socio-economic divides and creating deep political and social insecurity. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the side effects of the prescriptions we took for the health would also impact in an unprecedented way our social and economic recovery. Hope this discussion today talks about challenge but also pathways we have taken up.
Sadly, these dynamics are disproportionately impacting women and girls.
Gender-based violence is increasing — at home and online – impacting both women and children. Access to sexual and reproductive health services is being compromised. Women’s unpaid care burden is rising. And millions of girls are out of school with the risk that many may not return.
Our shared global agenda remains the clearest path to mitigate, respond, and recover from the current crisis.
At the same time, perhaps more clearly than ever, we see women on the frontlines of the response, as heads of state and government, health and care workers, and community leaders and mobilisers. We need to protect them and listen to them.
Local women’s organizations and women’s rights activists are providing essential services for those often left behind, as well as information, advocacy and oversight to help ensure that the most marginalized are not further excluded.
We are going to hear today from many women leaders that are showing through their example how women’s leadership and participation brings more effective, inclusive and fair policies, plans and budgets.
And yet the numbers of women leaders remains dismally low across the board – in COVID-19 task forces and in decision-making bodies steering our crisis response.
Women’s under-representation in the health sector and decision-making positions is especially concerning: while women make up 70 per cent of health sector workers, less than 20 per cent of the world’s health ministers are women, and they only hold 25 per cent of senior roles in health institutions. Only 7% of heads of state and 6% of heads of government are women. Similarly, women represent only 25% of national legislators and 35% of local counselors—still far short of gender balance.
Now is the time to leverage the visibility on women’s leadership and push for change, including through quotas and temporary special measures. This will achieve not only greater gender balance and representation, but greater credibility and delivery in all our institutions.
In our response to COVID-19 we must ensure that women are in decision-making roles, take leadership positions and participate in public life.
As the UN, we are leading efforts to safeguard the gains made of gender equality and push for transformative change. We have 50% women in the leadership of the UN today and they are at the forefront of our COVID-19 response. We have women leading in UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF, Hannah Tetteh at the AU and many more. And these women are speaking out. Whether it’s Natalia speaking out about the levels of violence against women and the need for continued access to health services for women, or Phumzile taking Generation Equality online so that we can continue in this moment to celebrate gains and strengthen our efforts for gender equality. Women leaders in the UN are at the forefront of our efforts.
In the first weeks of April, the Secretary-General issued a call for peace in the home as levels of violence against women and girls escalated alongside the pandemic.
Our UN agencies are working with Member States to ensure that domestic violence prevention and response are part of national COVID plans, that shelters are declared essential services, and that services for survivors can be shifted online. The UN is shifting resources to civil society organizations on the front line of COVID response, supporting women’s organizations to deliver public health messaging in communities, working with governments to inform gender-responsive stimulus packages, and ensuring that vital sexual and reproductive health services remain accessible to women.
COVID-19 is exposing how inequalities of all types have hollowed out our societies, institutions and systems, making them more vulnerable to health, climate, economic and human security threats.
Women’s leadership and participation is essential to overcome this inequality and to create the strong and functioning socio-economic systems we will need to address the challenges of today and tomorrow.
There has never been a greater opportunity to seize the intergenerational opportunity. To bring together in dialogue women leaders.
This is the reason why I have initiated ‘Women Rise for All’ – a platform to shine a light on and recognize women’s extraordinary front-line leadership that is winning against COVID-19. Across the globe, as women leaders, we are taking action to overcome the pandemic and build back better. Our aim is clear: societies and economies that are more resilient, climate just, and gender equal. Let’s help women leaders rise for all. Thank you.