Sustainable solutions to the world's economic, health, political, and social problems will not be solved until the rights and full potential of women are achieved states an Editorial in this week's issue of The Lancet.
March 8, 2007—International Women's Day—presents an ideal opportunity to focus on the predicaments facing women around the world. Although there has been some major progress to date, in no country in the world can women claim to have the same rights and opportunities as men, particularly when it comes to health.
One of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG-3) aims to promote gender equality and empower women, and its associated target is to eliminate gender disparity between primary and secondary education. However, globally, more than one in five girls of primary school age are not in school compared to about one in six boys, and women count for three-quarters of the 960 million people in the world who cannot read.
But what about the health of women? The lack of health as an indicator of MDG-3 is significant by its absence. Women put their lives at risk every time they become pregnant. They are the primary providers of child welfare. In areas that did not make the MDG priority list, such as sexual and reproductive health* and the experience of violence, the empowerment of women is even more important, since there is little interest from the international community in tackling these challenges.
To date some steps forward have been made—150 countries have ratified the UN Convention of the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and 189 countries have agreed an action plan resulting from the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
Yet despite this progress "women's health rights continue to be neglected by the international community, and no more so than in the health sector" concludes the Editorial.
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Notes to Editors
* Sexual and reproductive ill health accounts for nearly a third of lost disability-adjusted life-years in women of reproductive age. An estimated 90% of deaths from unsafe abortions and 20% of obstetric mortality could be avoided with improved access to contraception.
Journal
The Lancet