"Equality for women is progress for all"
Since its inception in 1945, gender equality has been of paramount importance to the United Nations. Fifty years after its establishment, the 1995 Human Development Report - which marked the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing - concluded that human development is endangered unless it is engendered. The Millennium Development Goals further reiterated that gender equality is a human right.
 
Despite these frameworks, however the 2014 theme for International Women’s Day - Equality for women is progress for all - betrays persistent gaps between the stated objectives of international frameworks designed for the complete integration of women into global society and the lived realities of many women and girls across the globe.
 
Lamentably, despite annual observances and international fora to identify strategies to address power inequalities, atrocities against women continue, in many ways taking on more insidious and evasive forms. Often, it is at the very sites where women are entitled to, and have come to expect to enjoy feelings of safety and justice – in the home, at institutions of learning, through systems of justice, at their places of employ and worship – that they are most disenfranchised and stripped of their humanity.
 
In Jamaica and the Caribbean, legacies of colonialism, inadequate gender-sensitive education and ideologies of female inferiority all coalesce in such a way to make many aspects of this disenfranchisement of particular concern.  Despite strides made in relation to education at the secondary and tertiary levels, women remain disadvantaged in the labour market.  Additionally, stereotypes that devalue women, insufficient training of criminal justice personnel and the lack of enforcement measures designed to address violence against women have resulted in a de facto culture of impunity; and sexual violence against women and girls continues seemingly unabated. In relation to issues of governance and participation, women continue to be disproportionately absent in relation to their male colleagues in houses of parliament and systems of governance at all levels.
 
In addition to being counterintuitive to our international obligations, the situation is particularly worrisome when considered within the context of the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, which notes that “…without the active participation of women and the incorporation of women’s perspectives… the goals of equality, development and peace cannot be achieved”.
 
The Institute for Gender and Development Studies (Regional Coordinating Unit) joins with the international community in the commemoration of International Women’s Day 2014 and renews its commitment - through its programme of research, teaching and advocacy - to create a global community in which women’s rights are human rights and where equality for women is a conduit for progress for all.
 
The Institute echoes the sentiments of former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who noted that without progress in the situation of women, there can be no true social development.  Human rights are not worthy of the name if they exclude the female half of humanity.  The struggle for women's equality is part of the struggle for a better world and for all human beings and all societies.
 
Professor Verene A. Shepherd, University Director, IGDS