From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgSat Sep 23 09:39:19 1995
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 09:04:00 +0100
From: Debra Guzman <DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.org>
Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org
Subject: WCW: Beijing Declaration part 12
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## author : dpcsd@tempo.undp.org
## date : 21.09.95
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UNITED NATIONS
FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN
Beijing, China
4-15 September 1995
* ADVANCE UNEDITED DRAFT *
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for
Equality, Development and Peace
Beijing, 15 September 1995
Strategic objective F.1. Promote women's economic
rights and independence, including access to employment
and appropriate working conditions and control over
economic resources
Actions to be taken
167. By Governments:
(a) Enact and enforce legislation to guarantee the
rights of women and men to equal pay for equal work or
work of equal value;
(b) Adopt and implement laws against discrimination
based on sex in the labour market, especially
considering older women workers, hiring and promotion,
the extension of employment benefits and social
security, and working conditions;
(c) Eliminate discriminatory practices by employers and
take appropriate measures in consideration of women's
reproductive role and functions, such as the denial of
employment and dismissal due to pregnancy or
breast-feeding, or requiring proof of contraceptive
use, and take effective measures to ensure that
pregnant women, women on maternity leave or women
re-entering the labour market after childbearing are
not discriminated against;
(d) Devise mechanisms and take positive action to
enable women to gain access to full and equal
participation in the formulation of policies and
definition of structures through such bodies as
ministries of finance and trade, national economic
commissions, economic research institutes and other key
agencies, as well as through their participation in
appropriate international bodies;
(e) Undertake legislation and administrative reforms to
give women equal rights with men to economic resources,
including access to ownership and control over land and
other properties, credit, inheritance, natural
resources, and appropriate new technology;
(f) Conduct reviews of national income and inheritance
tax and social security systems to eliminate any
existing bias against women;
(g) Seek to develop a more comprehensive knowledge of
work and employment through, inter alia, efforts to
measure and better understand the type, extent and
distribution of unremunerated work, particularly work
in caring for dependants and unremunerated work done
for family farms or businesses, and encourage the
sharing and dissemination of information on studies and
experience in this field, including the development of
methods for assessing its value in quantitative terms,
for possible reflection in accounts that may be
produced separately from, but consistent with, core
national accounts;
(i) Review and amend laws governing the operation of
financial institutions to ensure that they provide
services to women and men on an equal basis;
(j) Facilitate, at appropriate levels, more open and
transparent budget processes;
(k) Revise and implement national policies that support
the traditional savings, credit and lending mechanisms
for women;
(l) Seek to ensure that national policies related to
international and regional trade agreements do not
adversely impact women's new and traditional economic
activities;
(m) Ensure that all corporations, including
transnational corporations, comply with national laws
and codes, social security regulations, applicable
international agreements, instruments and conventions,
including those related to the environment, and other
relevant laws;
(n) Adjust employment policies to facilitate the
restructuring of work patterns in order to promote the
sharing of family responsibilities;
(o) Establish mechanisms and other forums to enable
women entrepreneurs and women workers to contribute to
the formulation of policies and programmes being
developed by economic ministries and financial
institutions;
(p) Enact and enforce equal opportunity laws, take
positive action and ensure compliance by the public and
private sectors through various means;
(q) Use gender-impact analysis in the development of
macro- and micro-economic and social policies in order
to monitor such impact and restructure policies in
cases where harmful impact occurs;
(r) Promote gender-sensitive policies and measures to
empower women as equal partners with men in technical,
managerial and entrepreneurial fields;
(s) Reform laws or enact national policies that support
the establishment of labour laws to ensure the
protection of all women workers, including safe work
practices, the right to organize and access to justice.
Strategic objective F.2. Facilitate women's equal
access to resources, employment, markets and trade
Actions to be taken
168. By Governments:
(a) Promote and support women's self-employment and the
development of small enterprises, and strengthen
women's access to credit and capital on appropriate
terms equal to those of men through the scaling-up of
institutions dedicated to promoting women's
entrepreneurship, including, as appropriate, non-
traditional and mutual credit schemes, as well as
innovative linkages with financial institutions;
(b) Strengthen the incentive role of the State as
employer to develop a policy of equal opportunities for
women and men;
(c) Enhance, at the national and local levels, rural
women's income-generating potential by facilitating
their equal access to and control over productive
resources, land, credit, capital, property rights,
development programmes and cooperative structures;
(d) Promote and strengthen micro-enterprises, new small
businesses, cooperative enterprises, expanded markets
and other employment opportunities and, where
appropriate, facilitate the transition from the
informal to the formal sector, especially in rural
areas;
(e) Create and modify programmes and policies that
recognize and strengthen women's vital role in food
security and provide paid and unpaid women producers,
especially those involved in food production, such as
farming, fishing and aquaculture, as well as urban
enterprises, with equal access to appropriate
technologies,transportation, extension services,
marketing and credit facilities at the local and
community levels;
(f) Establish appropriate mechanisms and encourage
intersectoral institutions that enable women's
cooperatives to optimize access to necessary services;
(g) Increase the proportion of women extension workers
and other government personnel who provide technical
assistance or administer economic programmes;
(h) Review, reformulate, if necessary, and implement
policies, including business, commercial and contract
law and government regulations, to ensure that they do
not discriminate against micro, small and medium-scale
enterprises owned by women in rural and urban areas;
(i) Analyse, advise on, coordinate and implement
policies that integrate the needs and interests of
employed, self-employed and entrepreneurial women into
sectoral and inter-ministerial policies, programmes and
budgets;
(j) Ensure equal access for women to effective job
training, retraining, counselling and placement
services that are not limited to traditional employment
areas;
(k) Remove policy and regulatory obstacles faced by
women in social and development programmes that
discourage private and individual initiative;
(l) Safeguard and promote respect for basic workers'
rights, including the prohibition of forced labour and
child labour, freedom of association and the right to
organize and bargain collectively, equal remuneration
for men and women for work of equal value and
non-discrimination in employment, fully implementing
the conventions of the International Labour
Organization in the case of States party to those
conventions and, taking into account the principles
embodied in the case of those countries that are not
party to those conventions in order to achieve truly
sustained economic growth and sustainable development.
169. By Governments, central banks and national development
banks, and private banking institutions, as appropriate:
(a) Increase the participation of women, including
women entrepreneurs, in advisory boards and other
forums to enable women entrepreneurs from all sectors
and their organizations to contribute to the
formulation and review of policies and programmes
being developed by economic ministries and banking
institutions;
(b) Mobilize the banking sector to increase lending and
refinancing through incentives and the development of
intermediaries that serve the needs of women
entrepreneurs and producers in both rural and
urbanareas, and include women in their leadership,
planning and decision-making;
(c) Structure services to reach rural and urban women
involved in micro, small and medium-scale enterprises,
with special attention to young women, low-income
women, those belonging to ethnic and racial minorities,
and indigenous women who lack access to capital and
assets; and expand women's access to financial markets
by identifying and encouraging financial supervisory
and regulatory reforms that support financial
institutions' direct and indirect efforts to better
meet the credit and other financial needs of the micro,
small and medium-scale enterprises of women;
(d) Ensure that women's priorities are included in
public investment programmes for economic
infrastructure, such as water and sanitation,
electrification and energy conservation, transport and
road construction. Promote greater involvement of
women beneficiaries at the project planning and
implementation stages to ensure access to jobs and
contracts.
170. By Governments and non-governmental organizations:
(a) Pay special attention to women's needs when
disseminating market, trade and resource information
and provide appropriate training in these fields;
(b) Encourage community economic development strategies
that build on partnerships among Governments, and
encourage members of civil society to create jobs and
address the social circumstances of individuals,
families and communities.
171. By multilateral funders and regional development banks,
as well as bilateral and private funding agencies, at the
international, regional and subregional levels:
(a) Review, where necessary reformulate, and implement
policies, programmes and projects, to ensure that a
higher proportion of resources reach women in rural and
remote areas;
(b) Develop flexible funding arrangements to finance
intermediary institutions that target women's economic
activities, and promote self-sufficiency and increased
capacity in and profitability of women's economic
enterprises;
(c) Develop strategies to consolidate and strengthen
their assistance to the micro, small and medium-scale
enterprise sector, in order to enhance the
opportunities for women to participate fully and
equally and work together to coordinate and enhance the
effectiveness of this sector, drawing upon expertise
and financial resources from within their own
organizations as well as from bilateral agencies,
Governments and non-governmental organizations.
172. By international, multilateral and bilateral
development cooperation organizations:
Support, through the provision of capital and/or
resources, financial institutions that serve
low-income, small and micro- scale women
entrepreneurs and producers in both the formal and
informal sectors.
173. By Governments and/or multilateral financial
institutions:
Review rules and procedures of formal national and
international financial institutions that obstruct
replication of the Grameen Bank prototype, which
provides credit facilities to rural women.
174. By international organizations:
Provide adequate support for programmes and
projects designed to promote sustainable and
productive entrepreneurial activities among women,
in particular the disadvantaged.
Strategic objective F.3. Provide business services,
training and access to markets, information and
technology, particularly to low-income women
Actions to be taken
175. By Governments in cooperation with non-governmental
organizations and the private sector:
(a) Provide public infrastructure to ensure equal
market access for women and men entrepreneurs;
(b) Develop programmes that provide training and
retraining, particularly in new technologies and
affordable services to women in business management,
product development, financing, production and quality
control, marketing and the legal aspects of business;
(c) Provide outreach programmes to inform low-income
and poor women, particularly in rural and remote areas,
of opportunities for market and technology access, and
provide assistance in taking advantage of such
opportunities;
(d) Create non-discriminatory support services,
including investment funds for women's businesses, and
target women, particularly low-income women, in trade
promotion programmes;
(e) Disseminate information about successful women
entrepreneurs in both traditional and non-traditional
economic activities and the skills necessary to achieve
success; facilitate networking and the exchange of
information;
(f) Take measures to ensure equal access of women to
ongoing training in the workplace, including unemployed
women, single parents, women re-entering the labour
market after an extended temporary exit from employment
owing to family responsibilities and other causes, and
women displaced by new forms of production or by
retrenchment, and increase incentives to enterprises to
expand the number of vocational and training centres
that provide training for women in non-traditional
areas;
(g) Provide affordable support services, such as
high-quality, flexible and affordable child-care
services, that take into account the needs of working
men and women.
176. By local, national, regional and international business
organizations and non-governmental organizations concerned
with women's issues:
Advocate, at all levels, for the promotion and
support of women's businesses and enterprises,
including those in the informal sector, and the
equal access of women to productive resources.
Strategic objective F.4. Strengthen women's economic
capacity and commercial networks
Actions to be taken
177. By Governments:
(a) Adopt policies that support business organizations,
non-governmental organizations, cooperatives, revolving
loan funds, credit unions, grass-roots organizations,
women's self- help groups and other groups in order to
provide services to women entrepreneurs in rural and
urban areas;
(b) Integrate a gender perspective into all economic
restructuring and structural adjustment policies and
design programmes for women who are affected by
economic restructuring, including structural adjustment
programmes, and for women who work in the informal
sector;
(c) Adopt policies that create an enabling environment
for women's self-help groups, workers' organizations
and cooperatives through non-conventional forms of
support and by recognizing the right to freedom of
association and the right to organize;
(d) Support programmes that enhance the self-reliance
of special groups of women, such as young women, women
with disabilities,
elderly women and women belonging to racial and
ethnic minorities;
(e) Promote gender equality through the promotion of
women's studies and through the use of the results of
studies and gender research in all fields, inter alia,
in the economic, scientific and technological fields;
(f) Support the economic activities of indigenous
women, taking into account their traditional knowledge,
so as to improve their situation and development;
(g) Adopt policies to extend or maintain the protection
of labour laws and social security provisions for those
who do paid work in the home;
(h) Recognize and encourage the contribution of
research by women scientists and technologists;
(i) Ensure that policies and regulations do not
discriminate against micro, small and medium-scale
enterprises run by women.
178. By financial intermediaries, national training
institutes, credit unions, non-governmental organizations,
women's associations, professional organizations and the
private sector, as appropriate:
(a) Provide, at national, regional and international
levels, training in a variety of business-related and
financial management and technical skills to enable
women, especially young women, to participate in
economic policy-making at those levels;
(b) Provide business services, including marketing and
trade information, product design and innovation,
technology transfer and quality, to women's business
enterprises, including those in export sectors of the
economy;
(c) Promote technical and commercial links and
establish joint ventures among women entrepreneurs at
the national, regional and international levels to
support community-based initiatives;
(d) Strengthen women's participation in production and
marketing cooperatives by providing marketing and
financial support, especially in rural and remote
areas, including marginalized women;
(e) Promote and strengthen women's micro-enterprises,
new small businesses, cooperative enterprises, expanded
markets and other employment opportunities and, where
appropriate, facilitate the transition from the
informal to the formal sector, in rural and urban
areas;
(f) Invest capital and develop investment portfolios to
finance women's business enterprises;
(g) Give adequate attention to providing technical
assistance, advisory services, training and retraining
for women connected with the entry to the market
economy;
(h) Support credit networks and innovative ventures,
including traditional savings schemes;
(i) Provide networking arrangements for entrepreneurial
women, including opportunities for the mentoring of
inexperienced women by the more experienced;
(j) Encourage community organizations and public
authorities to establish loan pools for women
entrepreneurs, drawing on successful small-scale
cooperative models.
179. By the private sector, including transnational and
national corporations:
(a) Adopt policies and establish mechanisms to grant
contracts on a non-discriminatory basis;
(b) Recruit women for leadership, decision-making and
management and provide training programmes, all on an
equal basis with men;
(c) Observe national labour, environment, consumer,
health and safety laws, particularly those that affect
women.
Strategic objective F.5. Eliminate occupational
segregation and all forms of employment discrimination
Actions to be taken
180. By Governments, employers, employees, trade unions and
women's organizations:
(a) Implement and enforce laws and regulations and
encourage voluntary codes of conduct that ensure that
international labour standards, such as International
Labour Organization Convention 100 on equal pay and
workers' rights, apply equally to female and male
workers;
(b) Enact and enforce laws and introduce implementing
measures, including means of redress and access to
justice in cases of non-compliance, to prohibit direct
and indirect discrimination on grounds of sex,
including by reference to marital or family status in
relation to access to employment, conditions of
employment, including training, promotion, health and
safety, as well as termination of employment and social
security of workers, including legal protection against
sexual and racial harassment;
(c) Enact and enforce laws and develop workplace
policies against gender discrimination in the labour
market, especially considering older women workers, in
hiring and promotion, and in the extension of
employment benefits and social security, as well as
regarding discriminatory working conditions and sexual
harassment; mechanisms should be developed for the
regular review and monitoring of such laws;
(d) Eliminate discriminatory practices by employers on
the basis of women's reproductive roles and functions,
including refusal ofemployment and dismissal of women
due to pregnancy and breast-feeding responsibilities;
(e) Develop and promote employment programmes and
services for women entering and/or re-entering the
labour market, especially poor urban, rural and young
women, the self- employed and those negatively affected
by structural adjustment;
(f) Implement and monitor positive public and
private-sector employment, equity and positive action
programmes to address systemic discrimination against
women in the labour force, in particular women with
disabilities and women belonging to other disadvantaged
groups, with respect to hiring, retention and
promotion, and vocational training of women in all
sectors;
(g) Eliminate occupational segregation, especially by
promoting the equal participation of women in highly
skilled jobs and senior management positions, and
through other measures, such as counselling and
placement, that stimulate their on-the-job career
development and upward mobility in the labour market,
and by stimulating the diversification of occupational
choices by both women and men. Encourage women to take
up non- traditional jobs, especially in science and
technology and encourage men to seek employment in the
social sector;
(h) Recognize collective bargaining as a right and as
an important mechanism for eliminating wage inequality
for women and to improve working conditions;
(i) Promote the election of women trade union officials
and ensure that trade union officials elected to
represent women are given job protection and physical
security in connection with the discharge of their
functions;
(j) Ensure access to and develop special programmes to
enable women with disabilities to obtain and retain
employment, and ensure access to education and training
at all proper levels, in accordance with the Standard
Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for People
with Disabilities; 25/ adjust, to the extent possible,
working conditions in order to suit the needs of women
with disabilities, who should be secured legal
protection against unfounded job loss on account of
their disabilities;
(k) Increase efforts to close the gap between women's
and men's pay, take steps to implement the principle of
equal remuneration for equal work of equal value by
strengthening legislation, including compliance with
international labour laws and standards, and encourage
job evaluation schemes with gender-neutral criteria;
(l) Establish and/or strengthen mechanisms to
adjudicate matters relating to wage discrimination;
(m) Set specific target dates for eliminating all forms
of child labour that are contrary to accepted
international standards and ensure the full enforcement
of relevant existing laws and, where appropriate, enact
the legislation necessary to implement the Convention
on the Rights of the Child and International Labour
Organization standards, ensuring the protection of
working children, in particular, street children,
through the provision of appropriate health, education
and other social services;
(n) Ensure that the strategies to eliminate child
labour also address the excessive demands made on some
girls for unpaid work in their household and other
households, where practised;
(o) Review, analyse and, where appropriate, reformulate
the wage structures in female-dominated professions,
such as teaching, nursing and child care, with a view
to raising their low status and earnings;
(p) Facilitate the productive employment of documented
migrant women (including women who have been determined
refugees according to the 1951 Convention relating to
the Status of Refugees) through greater recognition of
foreign education and credentials and by adopting an
integrated approach to labour market training that
incorporates language training.
Strategic objective F.6. Promote harmonization of
work and family responsibilities for women and men
Actions to be taken
181. By Governments:
(a) Adopt policies to ensure the appropriate protection
of labour laws and social security benefits for
part-time, temporary, seasonal and home-based workers;
promote career development based on work conditions
that harmonize work and family responsibilities;
(b) Ensure that full and part-time work can be freely
chosen by women and men on an equal basis, and consider
appropriate protection for atypical workers in terms of
access to employment, working conditions, and social
security;
(c) Ensure, through legislation, incentives and/or
encouragement, opportunities for women and men to take
job-protected parental leave and to have parental
benefits. Promote the equal sharing of
responsibilities for the family by men and women,
including through appropriate legislation, incentives
and/or encouragement, and also promote the facilitation
of breast- feeding for working mothers;
(d) Develop policies, inter alia, in education to
change attitudes that reinforce the division of labour
based on gender in order to promote the concept of
shared family responsibility for work in the home,
particularly in relation to children and elder care;
(e) Improve the development of, and access to,
technologies that facilitate occupational as well as
domestic work, encourage self-support, generate income,
transform gender-prescribed roles within the productive
process and enable women to move out of low-paying
jobs;
(f) Examine a range of policies and programmes,
including social security legislation and taxation
systems, in accordance with national priorities and
policies, to determine how to promote gender equality
and flexibility in the way people divide their time
between and derive benefits from education and
training,
paid employment, family responsibilities, volunteer
activity and other socially useful forms of work,
rest and leisure.
182. By Governments, the private sector and non-
governmental organizations, trade unions and the United
Nations, as appropriate:
(a) Adopt appropriate measures involving relevant
governmental bodies and employers' and employees'
associations so that women and men are able to take
temporary leave from employment, have transferable
employment and retirement benefits and make
arrangements to modify work hours without sacrificing
their prospects for development and advancement at work
and in their careers;
(b) Design and provide educational programmes through
innovative media campaigns and school and community
education programmes to raise awareness on gender
equality and non-stereotyped gender roles of women and
men within the family; provide support services and
facilities, such as on-site child care at workplaces
and flexible working arrangements;
(c) Enact and enforce laws against sexual and other
forms of harassment in all workplaces.
G. Women in power and decision-making
183. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that
everyone has the right to take part in the Government of
his/her country. The empowerment and autonomy of women and
the improvement of women's social, economic and political
status is essential for the achievement of both transparent
and accountable government and administration and
sustainable development in all areas of life. The power
relations that impede women's attainment of fulfilling lives
operate at many levels of society, from the most personal to
the highly public. Achieving the goal of equal participation
of women and men in decision-making will provide a balance
that more accurately reflects the composition of society and
is needed in order to strengthen democracy and promote its
proper functioning. Equality in political decision-making
performs a leverage function without which it is highly
unlikely that a real integration of the equality dimension
in government policy-making is feasible. In this respect,
women's equal participation in political life plays a
pivotal role in the general process of the advancement of
women. Women's equal participation in decision-making is
not only a demand for simple justice or democracy but can
also be seen as a necessary condition for women's interests
to be taken into account. Without the active participation
of women and the incorporation of women's perspective at all
levels of decision-making, the goals of equality,
development and peace cannot be achieved.