The global economic crisis provided a dark backdrop as about 1,000 people gathered to seek answers to obstacles and pass on success stories during the two-week long 53rd Commission on the Status of Women meeting at UN World Headquarters in New York.
With International Women's Day, March 8, falling on Sunday this year, the CSW marked it on Thursday, under the theme "Women and Men United to End Violence against Women and Girls."
It wasn't all women at the conference since several men participated, but the overwhelming numbers of delegates were women who were by far more colorful, with many in native dress.
The air in hallways outside meeting rooms was enthusiastic, but businesslike rather than festive, with serious conversations, albeit often punctuated with hearty laughter, setting the tone.
Between sessions, women from Africa along with representatives from Western Europe queued to use UN-provided desktop computers while other women, from Asia and South America perhaps, balanced laptop computers on their knees or plunked the devices down on the floor to email or hone presentations.
Message boards -- "Only one announcement per group, Please!" --overflowed with colorful notices of meetings.
The CSW advocates gender equality and empowerment of women and provides a forum for exchanges of experience and good practices, according to the Division for the Advancement of Women in the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. It said the commission plays a leadership role in ensuring the United Nations has a positive impact on the lives of women.
During the past week, delegates heard how opportunities and conditions for women were improving, such as the breaking of silence over violence against women, but also that the economic downturn was taking its toll, especially on women.
"It is sometimes said that women are weavers and men are too often warriors," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking at an international day commemoration. "Women bear and care for our children. In much of the world they plant the crops that feed us. They weave the fabric of our societies."
He said: "Violence against women is thus an attack on all of us, on the foundation of our civilization" and added that violence against women is an "abomination" and stands against everything in the UN Charter.
Women around the world are no longer fearful of speaking out against violence they suffer, Yakin Erturk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes and Consequences, said on Thursday.
"It's an initial step, but it's a prerequisite for us to respond to that violence," she said. "I think women in all parts of the world now realize that violence is not their fate."
Erturk found inspiration in the impressive struggle by survivors of violence to rebuild their lives and those of their families, sometimes against enormous odds.
"We don't have a mechanism to protect these women who speak out,where states are dysfunctional or can't respond," she said, "but we should not be afraid to act."
The special rapporteur pointed out that until relatively recently, the issue of violence against women was itself seen as too complex for legislation or intervention, but that attitudes had changed for the better.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the negative effects of discrimination are not only magnified by conflict but by man-made disasters, such as the current economic crisis.
The meltdown in global markets and financial institutions and ensuing recession is likely to have a disproportionate impact on millions of women, who already formed the majority of the poor and disenfranchised before the crisis developed, she said.
"Unless gender-sensitive policies are adopted, I fear we may well witness a serious setback in areas where progress has taken decades to achieve," Pillay said in message for the international day.
The Geneva-based International Labor Office Thursday launched its annual Global Employment Trends for Women report, calling for "creative solutions" to close the gender gap during the economic crisis.
"Gender inequality in the world of work has long been with us, but it is likely that it will be exacerbated by the crisis," said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia.
"In times of economic upheaval, women often experience the negative consequences more rapidly and are slower to enjoy the benefits of recovery," he said, adding that "before the crisis, the majority of working women were in the informal economy with lower earnings and less social protection."
The GET report said that of the 3 billion employed people around the world, slightly over 40 percent are women, and that the global unemployment rate for women could reach 7.4 percent in 2009,compared to 7 percent for men.
The biggest difference in unemployment rates between men and women due to the economic meltdown was expected to be felt by women in Latin America and the Caribbean, the report said..
Deputy UN Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro on Tuesday said: "A legal framework that ensures the promotion and protection of women's rights is crucial."
Over the past two decades many states have improved but Migiro said she found important gaps, with states throughout the world still failing to live up to their international obligations and commitments. "Too many perpetrators are not held accountable," she said. "Impunity persists."
In too many places, Migiro said, marital rape is still not a prosecutable offense, noting that perpetrators of rape who marry their victims can have their sentence reduced or mitigated.
In some places they may also invoke a defense of "honor" to justify acts of violence against women and definitions of rape still tend to be based on the use of force rather than the absence of consent, she said.
"Above all," Migiro said, "we can never allow violence against women to be dismissed as a private matter."
The CSW's two-week session ends March 13.
(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2009)