No country in the world has reached gender parity and equality, and a girl born today will have to wait until she is 81-years-old before she has the same chance as a man to become CEO of a company, head of the U.N. agency promoting equality for women told the Associated Press.
It's been twenty years since 189 countries adopted a blueprint to achieve equality for women, but not a single country has reached that goal, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the AP.
The agency plans to review the 150-page action plan for achieving gender equality that was adopted at the U.N. women's conference in Beijing in 1995.
The platform developed in Beijing asked governments to end discrimination against women in 12 areas, including health, education, employment, political participating and human rights. The most controversial issue at Beijing was that of sexual and reproductive rights, which still causes the most controversy during U.N. negotiations, Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said there has been progress in the area of women's health and girls' education, but pointed out that there are still fewer than 20 female heads of state and government. The number of women lawmakers has only increased 10 percent in the past two decades, from 11 percent to 22 percent, she said.
"We just don't have critical mass to say that post-Beijing women have reached a tipping point in their representation," she told AP, calling their under-representation a "global phenomena" resulting from male domination that needs to change for there to be true equality.
Mlambo-Ngcuka said that world leaders need to start speaking out "very strongly and very openly" in favor of women's rights, and place it at the top of their agenda.
The key, she said, is for men and boys to renounce patriarchal privileges that are so prevalent throughout the world.
To help accelerate the change, Mlambo-Ngcuka said U.N. Women is pushing forward with its "He for She" campaign, which is looking for 10 world leaders, 10 CEOs and 10 universities to lead the push for equality.
