“At our cur­rent speed, full le­gal equal­i­ty for women is some 300 years away; so is the end of child mar­riage.  This rate of change is frankly in­sult­ing. Half of hu­man­i­ty can’t wait cen­turies for their rights. We need equal­i­ty now.”

The de­c­la­ra­tion comes from Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed Na­tions, An­to­nio Guter­res, in a spe­cial open ed­i­to­r­i­al he has penned in ad­vance of the world’s ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day on Fri­day, March 8, 2024.

While Sec-Gen Guter­res lauds the progress for women’s rights over the past half cen­tu­ry, he warns that all those gains could be lost if coun­tries fail to con­tin­ue mean­ing­ful in­vest­ment in women and girls.

“We need pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment in pro­grammes to end vi­o­lence against women, en­sure de­cent work, and dri­ve women’s in­clu­sion and lead­er­ship in dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, peace­build­ing, cli­mate ac­tion, and across all sec­tors of the econ­o­my. We must al­so ur­gent­ly sup­port women’s rights or­ga­ni­za­tions fight­ing against stereo­types, bat­tling to make women’s and girls’ voic­es heard, and chal­leng­ing tra­di­tions and cul­tur­al norms,” he writes.

He al­so is­sued a se­ri­ous chal­lenge to world lead­ers:

“Equal­i­ty is over­due.  End­ing the pa­tri­archy re­quires mon­ey on the ta­ble—it’s time to cough up.”

The fol­low­ing is the full text of the open ed­i­to­r­i­al by the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al…

The Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al

OP-ED – IN­TER­NA­TION­AL WOMEN’S DAY 2024

“IN­VEST IN WOMEN: AC­CEL­ER­ATE PROGRESS” 

The fight for women’s rights over the past fifty years is a sto­ry of progress.

Women and girls have de­mol­ished bar­ri­ers, dis­man­tled stereo­types and dri­ven progress to­wards a more just and equal world. Women’s rights were fi­nal­ly recog­nised as fun­da­men­tal and uni­ver­sal hu­man rights. Hun­dreds of mil­lions more girls are in class­rooms around the world. And pi­o­neer­ing lead­ers have smashed glass ceil­ings across the globe.

But progress is un­der threat. And full equal­i­ty re­mains light years away. 

Bil­lions of women and girls face mar­gin­al­iza­tion, in­jus­tice and dis­crim­i­na­tion, as mil­len­nia of male dom­i­na­tion con­tin­ue to shape so­ci­eties. The per­sis­tent epi­dem­ic of gen­der-based vi­o­lence dis­graces hu­man­i­ty. Over four mil­lion girls are es­ti­mat­ed to be at risk of fe­male gen­i­tal mu­ti­la­tion each year. Dis­crim­i­na­tion against women and girls re­mains per­fect­ly le­gal in much of the world. In some places, that makes it dif­fi­cult for women to own prop­er­ty, in oth­ers, it al­lows men to rape their wives with im­puni­ty.

Mean­while, glob­al crises are hit­ting women and girls hard­est. Wher­ev­er there’s con­flict, cli­mate dis­as­ter, pover­ty or hunger, women and girls suf­fer most. In every re­gion of the world, more women than men go hun­gry. In both de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, a back­lash against women’s rights, in­clud­ing their sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive rights, is stalling and even re­vers­ing progress. 

New tech­nolo­gies—which have such po­ten­tial to dis­man­tle in­equal­i­ties—too of­ten make mat­ters worse. That can be be­cause of un­equal ac­cess, al­go­rithms with baked-in bias, or misog­y­nis­tic vi­o­lence—from deep fakes to tar­get­ed ha­rass­ment of spe­cif­ic women.

At our cur­rent speed, full le­gal equal­i­ty for women is some 300 years away; so is the end of child mar­riage.  This rate of change is frankly in­sult­ing. Half of hu­man­i­ty can’t wait cen­turies for their rights. We need equal­i­ty now. That means ac­cel­er­at­ing the pace of progress. And that re­lies on po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tion, and on in­vest­ment—the theme of this year’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. 

We need pub­lic and pri­vate in­vest­ment in pro­grammes to end vi­o­lence against women, en­sure de­cent work, and dri­ve women’s in­clu­sion and lead­er­ship in dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies, peace­build­ing, cli­mate ac­tion, and across all sec­tors of the econ­o­my. We must al­so ur­gent­ly sup­port women’s rights or­ga­ni­za­tions fight­ing against stereo­types, bat­tling to make women’s and girls’ voic­es heard, and chal­leng­ing tra­di­tions and cul­tur­al norms. Cur­rent­ly they re­ceive a pal­try 0.1% of in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment spend­ing. That must change. 

In­vest­ment may sound far re­moved from women’s every­day lives. But it takes in­vest­ment to give school­girls the same op­por­tu­ni­ties as school­boys. It takes in­vest­ment to pro­vide dig­i­tal ed­u­ca­tion and de­vel­op skills. It takes in­vest­ment to pro­vide the child­care that en­ables care­givers, who are main­ly moth­ers, to do paid work out­side the home. And it takes in­vest­ment to build in­clu­sive com­mu­ni­ties and so­ci­eties with the full par­tic­i­pa­tion of women and girls of all back­grounds.   

Putting mon­ey be­hind equal­i­ty is the right thing to do, but it al­so makes fi­nan­cial sense. Sup­port­ing women to en­ter for­mal labour mar­kets grows economies, boosts tax rev­enues and ex­pands op­por­tu­ni­ties for all.

Se­cur­ing the in­vest­ment we need in women and girls re­quires three things. First, in­creas­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of af­ford­able, long-term fi­nance for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, and tack­ling the debt cri­sis stran­gling many de­vel­op­ing economies. Oth­er­wise, coun­tries sim­ply won’t have the funds to in­vest in women and girls.  We need im­me­di­ate ac­tion to pro­vide breath­ing space for coun­tries with un­bear­able debt re­pay­ments loom­ing, and to en­cour­age mul­ti­lat­er­al de­vel­op­ment banks to lever­age far more pri­vate fi­nance at af­ford­able costs. Over the long term, we must re­form the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial ar­chi­tec­ture and make it far more re­spon­sive to the needs of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Sec­ond, coun­tries must pri­ori­tise equal­i­ty for women and girls—recog­nis­ing that equal­i­ty is not on­ly a mat­ter of rights but the bedrock of peace­ful, pros­per­ous so­ci­eties. That means gov­ern­ments ac­tive­ly ad­dress­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, spend­ing on pro­grammes to sup­port women and girls, and en­sur­ing poli­cies, bud­gets and in­vest­ments re­spond to their needs.

Third, we need to in­crease the num­ber of women in lead­er­ship po­si­tions. Hav­ing women in po­si­tions of pow­er can help to dri­ve in­vest­ment in poli­cies and pro­grammes that re­spond to women and girls’ re­al­i­ties.  I am par­tic­u­lar­ly proud that since ear­ly in my tenure—and for the first time in his­to­ry—we have equal num­bers of women and men in se­nior man­age­ment across the en­tire Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem. 

Equal­i­ty is over­due.  End­ing the pa­tri­archy re­quires mon­ey on the ta­ble—it’s time to cough up.