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The Herald Scotland
04-05-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Young Women's Movement calls for urgent action to protect rights
This research engaged with around 600 young women and girls aged 16-30 from across Scotland, with representation from very Scottish local authority and from all of the target age groups. The report explores a wide range of findings about how young women understand, access and advocate for their human rights in Scotland – from the right to education to the right to live a life free from violence. Overall, young women across Scotland are very concerned about a regression in their human rights, expressing fear and anxiety as changes in society, culture and politics make their rights feel more precarious than ever. Many young women raised specific concerns about the feminist backlash we are currently experiencing, and the rise of far-right politics at home and globally. Many young women described frequently not feeling safe in public and online, and the actions they take to protect themselves from the daily threat of violence. The rise of misogyny, particularly online, and the radicalisation of young men in digital spaces, were identified as significant barriers to young women's human rights. One young woman said: 'Women experience sexual and gender-based violence at catastrophic rates, and it has extremely harmful effects on our physical and mental health and wellbeing, safety in our own homes, ability to access healthcare, and ability to achieve justice.' This year marks thirty years of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action where 189 governments from around the world unanimously adopted a ground-breaking agenda for gender equality and the human rights of all women and girls. Time alone does not drive progress. As our report shows, young women and girls across Scotland are struggling to have their human rights realised due to poor access to justice, the rise of misogyny, precarious employment opportunities, the prevalence of gender stereotypes in schools and in the workplace, and the persistence of gender-based violence, among many other rights-based issues. We are still waiting for young women and girls' human rights in Scotland to be fully articulated, protected and fulfilled. Against this challenging backdrop, the views of young women in this report give cause for some much-needed optimism. The vast majority of those surveyed identify as feminists, and most believe in the power of collective voice and action to challenge anti-rights actors and increase their confidence and assertiveness in human rights discourse. Dr Rebecca Mason, is the Research & Policy Lead at The Young Women's Movement
Politico
14-03-2025
- Politics
- Politico
Are Authoritarian Regimes Backtracking Women's Rights?
Presented by Happy Friday! New York City is abuzz this week, as women's rights leaders from all over the world gather at the United Nations. I'm thrilled to have chatted with some of the stars of the conference for this week's edition. Women's rights are declining all over the world — and the global rise of authoritarian regimes may be to blame, according to a new report from the United Nations. This week, the U.N. kicked off the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women — its second biggest meeting after the opening of the General Assembly. The aim of the commission: to address the barriers to gender equality that women face around the globe. This year's CSW marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a policy blueprint for advancing women's rights, such as access to education and health services and protection against violence. The March 6 report from U.N. Women released ahead of the conference found that progress on women's rights is on a downward trend around the world. In 2024, nearly a quarter of governments worldwide reported a backlash on women's rights. 'We are witnessing the mainstreaming of chauvinism and misogyny,' U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement. 'As we see in every corner of the world, from pushback to rollback, women's rights are under attack.' The report tracked data from member countries' five-year national-level reviews of progress and challenges, and 30-year reviews of reports from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean and Western Asia. It found that around the world, there was a 'disturbing 50 percent increase in the number of women and girls living in conflict, and women's rights defenders confront daily harassment, personal attacks and even death.' Laura Turquet, Deputy Chief of the Research and Data section at U.N. Women, tells Women Rule 'we've seen important progress, but it's not going fast enough and it's actually stalling.' And the rise in authoritarian and populist governments across the world could be what is impeding progress, Turquet says. 'We've seen the rise of very authoritarian governments … a lot of countries are experiencing backsliding when it comes to free and fair elections, to freedom of the press, even the ability of women and civil society organizations to speak out and participate in policy.' That democratic erosion, she says, 'has gone hand in hand with organized resistance to advances on women's rights.' As Turquet sees it, increasing inequality, wage disparities and traumatic world events like the Covid-19 pandemic have created an environment enabling authoritarian governments to push for a return to tradition, particularly the idea of a traditional family. Authoritarian leaders often suggest that 'we need to kind of go back to an imagined past where things were simpler and easier, where men and women had more defined roles,' she says, and this push for the traditional family contributes to limiting women's rights. 'When you take a closer look at what the traditional family is … we're talking about a biological male husband who is married with a biological female wife and as many kids as they can possibly have,' Rosalyn Park, director of The Advocates for Human Rights' Women's Human Rights Program, says. That idea 'really goes to the heart of attacking sexual reproductive rights, family planning, contraception, abortion, all those kinds of things, in the interests of preserving and maintaining the family unit.' According to Park, this preservation of the family unit has played out in other countries. 'We've seen countries that decriminalized domestic violence, for example, like Russia, because they want to keep the family together at the expense of women's safety.' 'This also lets them push for a revival of stereotypical roles by positioning women first and foremost in the home as homemakers, caretakers … And then men remain as the breadwinners,' Park continues. One example of the global regression of women's rights: the recent backlash against the Istanbul Convention, a European human rights treaty opposing violence against women and domestic violence. It was initially successful and signed by 34 countries in 2019, but in 2021, Turkey — whose largest city gave the treaty its name and who was the first to ratify it — withdrew from the agreement. Other countries like Poland have also considered withdrawing from it, citing concerns about the agreement promoting harmful gender ideology and threatening the traditional family. Women's rights have 'become very caught up in this idea of gender ideology, this idea that gender is not about women and men and equality, but that it's … a radical agenda that is almost entirely about LGBT rights,' Turquet explains. As a result, she says, we are seeing 'a backlash on something as basic as protecting women from the violence that they are facing in their everyday lives.' Similar concerns about gender ideology have popped up in the United States, as exemplified by one of President Donald Trump's first executive orders, 'Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.' Trump's order argues that gender ideology 'replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.' In closed-door meetings at CSW, the U.S. proposed weakening or removing provisions that encourage states and U.N. entities to expand the role of women in peacekeeping and diplomacy, according to a Devex report. Meanwhile, at the CSW on Friday, Jonathan Shrier, acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, reinforced Trump's message. 'The United States government will no longer promote radical ideologies that replace women with men in spaces and opportunities designed for women, nor will it devastate families by indoctrinating our sons and daughters to begin wars with their own bodies or each other,' he said. 'In rejoining the Geneva consensus declaration, we have shown our commitment to women's health, the protection of life at all stages, and the defense of the family as the fundamental unit of society.' POLITICO Special Report Top Illinois Democrat Readies a Senate Bid — And Tells People She Has Major Backing by Ally Mutnick and Shia Kapos for POLITICO: 'Juliana Stratton, who first took office in 2019, is quietly positioning herself for a Senate bid if Durbin bows out, calling key Democratic figures to ask for support, according to three people with knowledge of her plans, one of whom spoke with her directly and the other two who spoke with members of her team. And she and her staff have said that she's already secured the support of Gov. JB Pritzker, the three people said.' Klobuchar Hits Trump on Tariffs: You Can't Be 'Just Declaring Yourself a King' by Jordan Wolman for POLITICO: 'Klobuchar, speaking at POLITICO Playbook's First 100 Days breakfast series, said Trump should be working through trade issues in the context of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, 'not by just declaring yourself a king.' 'The way to negotiate this is in the USMCA,' she said.' Sen. Tina Smith: DOGE Efforts at USDA Are 'Completely Wrong' by Grace Yarrow and Samuel Benson for POLITICO: 'Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) slammed the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to slash spending and cut staff at the Agriculture Department on Thursday. 'I think what they're doing is completely wrong,' Smith said at POLITICO Playbook's First 100 Days breakfast series. 'I think it runs counter to the intentions of Congress and what we have passed,' Smith added. 'Honestly, I don't really believe that Elon Musk or the DOGE guys that are in there really have any idea, what they're doing, or what the impact is of the decisions that they're making.'' Number of the Week Read more here. MUST READS Teenagers Say Girls Are Equal to Boys in School, or Are Ahead by Claire Cain Miller for The New York Times: 'More than half of teenagers say that boys and girls are now mostly equal in school. And significant shares say that girls have advantages over boys — that they get better grades, have more leadership roles and speak up more in class, according to a Pew Research Center survey of teens nationwide published Thursday. Boys are more likely to be disruptive, get into fights or have problems with drugs or alcohol, the teenagers said. And strikingly, boys said they're much less likely to be college-bound: 46 percent of boys said they planned to attend a four-year college, compared with 60 percent of girls.' Why We Need More Women Leaders in Politics for the Future of Work by Katica Roy for the World Economic Forum: 'When women hold political power, economies grow. A 10 percentage point increase in women's parliamentary representation is associated with a 0.7 percentage point increase in GDP growth. Countries with greater female political representation consistently implement policies that support gender-equal labour markets, such as paid family leave, pay transparency and childcare infrastructure. These policies don't just benefit women; they increase workforce participation, boost productivity and fuel economic expansion. 'Two Transgender Girls, Six Federal Agencies. How Trump Is Trying to Pressure Maine Into Obedience by Callie Ferguson and Erin Rhoda, Bangor Daily News, and Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen for ProPublica: 'On a Monday last month, after a conservative Maine legislator expressed outrage on Facebook about a transgender girl winning a high school pole vaulting event, the hammer of the federal government began to swing. By Friday of that week, Feb. 21, President Donald Trump singled out Maine's governor during a White House event and threatened to cut off the state's federal funding. 'See you in court,' Gov. Janet Mills shot back. Then came a barrage of investigations and threats: The U.S. Department of Education opened inquiries into the Maine Department of Education and the student's school district, alleging they had violated federal civil rights law.' Quote of the Week Read more here. on the move Aviva Aron-Dine will join the Brookings economic studies program as a senior fellow and director of the Hamilton Project. She most recently was acting assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department. (h/t POLITICO Playbook) Hailey Miller is now director of government relations and public policy for the Digital Power Network, an affiliate of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. She was previously a vice president at 1607 Strategies and is an FTI Consulting and Ted Cruz alum. (h/t POLITICO Influence) Rachel Millard is now director of corporate reputation and public affairs at EY (Americas). She previously was an SVP at Edelman Smithfield. (h/t POLITICO Playbook)
Times of Oman
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Times of Oman
Oman empowers women in scientific innovation
Muscat: The Sultanate of Oman reaffirmed its commitment to empowering women in science, technology, and human rights during its participation in the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) in New York, being held from 10 to 21 March 2025. Leading Oman's delegation, Dr. Laila Ahmed Al Najjar, Minister of Social Development, emphasised the nation's dedication to creating an enabling environment that supports scientific innovation among Omani women. 'Oman is keen to provide an attractive ecosystem for women's scientific and technological advancements, strengthening their position and enabling them to achieve significant milestones regionally and internationally,' she said. Speaking at the side event, 'Women and Technology: Inspiring Stories in the GCC Countries,' Al Najjar highlighted Oman's efforts in advancing educational and vocational infrastructure to align with labour market demands. She pointed out that the country has developed modern facilities, including digital laboratories, to cater to technological requirements, ensuring that women are well-equipped for roles in emerging scientific fields. Notably, she cited an increase in female enrollment rates in science and technology disciplines for the academic year 2024/2025 as a testament to these efforts. Oman's presence at CSW69 extended to the high-level interactive dialogue with regional committees, where Al Najjar delivered a speech on the 'Muscat Declaration on Progress in Implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in the Arab Region after Thirty Years.' She underscored that the 'Beijing Declaration' offers strategic pathways for strengthening women's rights and fostering their empowerment globally. On the international stage, Al Najjar strongly condemned the ongoing Israeli aggression in the occupied Palestinian territories, denouncing grave violations of international law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. She stressed the need for adherence to international resolutions and the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the occupation's illegal status. She also raised concerns over the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, particularly the escalating violence against women and girls. She emphasised that regional conflicts and crises lead to forced displacement, deprivation of fundamental services, and increased insecurity, disproportionately affecting women. Oman's participation at CSW69 highlights its unwavering commitment to advocating for women's empowerment, both within the Sultanate and on the global stage, ensuring that issues impacting women remain at the forefront of international dialogue.
