The Fifty-Second Session of the Commission on the Status of Women: International Development Research Centre

When (begins) : 2008-02-25 13:00 (Ottawa) 2008-03-04 12:00 (Ottawa) -

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is a functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), dedicated exclusively to gender equality and advancement of women. Every year, representatives of Member States gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York to evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and advancement of women worldwide.

The CSW will hold its fifty-second session from 25 February to 7 March 2008. The Commission will continue to emphasize national-level implementation of commitments made at the Fourth World Conference in Beijing and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly. The Commission will consider one priority theme, “Financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women”, and examine one emerging issue, “Gender perspectives on climate change”. In addition, the Commission will review the status of implementation at the national level of the recommendations on “Women’s equal participation in conflict prevention, management and conflict resolution and in post-conflict peacebuilding”, adopted at its forty-eighth session in 2004.

IDRC's Women’s Rights and Citizenship program (WRC) – in collaboration with the Globalization, Growth and Poverty program at IDRC– hosted three panels at this year's CSW session.

1. The first panel: “Financing for gender equality: what is not paid for”

Date: February 25th, 2008
Time: 1.15-2.45 P.M.
Venue: Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, UN Headquarters

Time use data show that the amount of unpaid care work carried out in any society is enormous, and that this work is unequally divided, not only between women and men, but also across social class, race and other social divides. Policy making that ignores something of this size and significance cannot but fail to produce optimal societal outcomes. While those who undertake unpaid care work may find such work rewarding, it nevertheless carries significant costs for them, both financial and social.

How do the broader economic and social policy frameworks, and macro political arrangements, shape policy responsiveness to care issues and support those who carry out such work? What kinds of policies are needed to support the unpaid care economy and to transform it along more gender-egalitarian lines?

The three speakers in the proposed panel—members of the UNRISD/UNDP Research Team on The Political and Social Economy of Care— examined these questions, from their respective national and regional perspectives: Ito Peng has explored recent social policy responses in South Korea, taking place in the context of democratization, fertility decline and rapid population ageing and the extent to which these can address the gender inequalities in the division of unpaid care work and in access to social welfare; James Heintz examined the distribution of unpaid care work in two African countries, South Africa and Tanzania, facing the challenges of HIV/AIDS in the midst of widespread poverty (Tanzania) and acute inequality (South Africa), where a significant proportion of the population does not have equitable access to the welfare services and utilities needed to reduce the burden of unpaid care; and Valeria Esquivel examined how rising income inequalities in Argentina are manifesting themselves in the division of paid and unpaid care work between women and men across social class in the city of Buenos Aires. They were joined by a discussant, Simel Esim, from ILO Lebanon.

2. The second panel: "Engaging Local Government in Evidence-Based and Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting"

Date: March 3rd, 2008
Time: 3.00-4.30 pm
Venue: Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium, UN Headquarters

Lack of data, and in particular sex-dissagregated data, remains one of the major challenges faced by gender responsive budgeting (GRB) initiatives. The problem is even more pronounced when GRB efforts move beyond national levels and attempt to engage local governments. This panel discussed how community based poverty monitoring systems (CBMS) can facilitate local level GRB by filling the data gap and by engaging local governments in planning and budgeting that is informed by the real needs and priorities of female and male residents. The panel presented the initial lessons from a pilot project in the Philippines, which explored the systematic integration of core GRB elements into the CBMS.

3. The third panel: “Mobilizing Taxes for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment”

Date: March 4, 2008
Time: 10:00-11:30 am
Venue: Church Centre, 2nd Floor, NGO Forum

Much attention has been placed in the last two decades on government budgets as critical tools for attaining the goals of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Most of the focus has however been on the expenditure side of the budget, with little, if any, systematic analysis of the revenue side. This panel discussed why and how the way governments raise money can play a key role in creating and/or reinforcing existing gender inequalities.

In many countries, there are concerns that tax codes are biased against women, and contemporary tax reforms tend to increase the incidence of taxation on the poorest women while failing to generate enough revenue to fund the programs needed to improve these women’s lives. Because taxes are the key source of revenues governments themselves raise, understanding the nature and composition of taxation and current tax reform efforts, as well as how tax burdens are distributed is key to achieving equity in financing, providing sufficient revenue for social protection, and promoting social justice. This panel presented the initial findings of an international comparative project examining the gender dimensions of tax policy and tax policy reforms in countries at different levels of development. It also presented preliminary recommendations for how to make tax reforms more gender equitable and supportive of poor women.