It could take 300 years to achieve gender equality as per the latest estimates of the UN Women, a United Nations organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said.
Speaking ahead of International Women’s Day, in Doha on Sunday, Guterres said the progress towards gender equality is “vanishing before our eyes.”
To support his argument, Guterres cited the UN Women data, mentioning that maternal mortality rates, early marriage and girls being kidnapped and assaulted for attending school are contributing to the growing distance toward achieving gender equality.
“Women’s rights are being abused, threatened, and violated around the world,” Guterres said, naming a few countries in particular, including Afghanistan, where he said “women and girls have been erased from public life.”
The UN recently presented a report noting the rise in forced and child marriages, bans on female education, and other restrictions limiting women’s ability to work and travel independently in Afghanistan.
Guterres, however, did not mention Iran, which was expelled from the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women in December over protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country’s so-called “morality police.”
To achieve gender equality, Guterres called for collective and urgent action, including increasing education, income, and employment for women and girls in developing nations in the Global South, promoting the participation of women and girls in science and technology, and changing global frameworks.
“Centuries of patriarchy, discrimination and harmful stereotypes have created a huge gender gap in science and technology,” he said.
Guterres also stated that women’s sexual and reproductive rights are being rolled back in many places, although he didn’t specify where.
Last June, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving the right to abortion up to individual states, and in Poland, a ban on abortions due to fetal defects took effect the year before, essentially ending almost all abortions in the country.
The UN chief stressed that crisis and conflict affect women and girls first and worst, referring to the war in Ukraine as an example. The UN called for an investigation into reports of rape and sexual violence against Ukrainian women and children following Russia’s invasion. Guterres also mentioned that the deputy secretary-general and the executive director of UN Women recently visited Afghanistan and conveyed to the Taliban authorities that “we will never give up fighting for” women and girls.