Shvedova N. A. Gender equality in a changing world: «We need big bold steps…», p. 90-106


A quarter century after the United Nations endorsed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), which identified the necessary steps to remove all barriers to gender equality and the advancement and empowerment of women, support for gender equality across the world inspires encouraging optimism, judging by the results of a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (April 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic and its social and economic impact have triggered a global crisis unparalleled in the history of the United Nations, requiring a response from the entire community to match its scale and complexity. The UN underscores the idea that responses, whether nationally or internationally, will become inadequate if they do not take into account the gender dimension. Taking into account the key achievements in the field of gender equality and the empowerment of women — important agreed benchmarks developed by the world community that are contained in a number of international documents, the UN considers it necessary to promote the priorities of women and ensure their equal rights and participation in the agenda, especially nowadays, the specificity of which is associated with COVID-19. The UN exerts a moral and psychological stimulating influence on the policies of nation-states, especially calling for the systematic inclusion of gender perspectives in the implementation of their comprehensive agenda for life, so that women play an equal role in shaping the future. read in PDF>>>