UN WOMEN DIRECTOR MICHELLE BACHELET MAKES ECONOMIC, POLITICAL & SOCIAL CASE FOR WOMEN AT WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
[UN Women, New York, 25 January 2011]
UN Women Executive Director Michelle Bachelet will partake at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week to “make the economic, political and social case for women in the world.”
During the annual meeting, Ms. Bachelet will participate at high-level forums, focusing on major challenges and solutions of and for women, on social protection and global sustainability. She will also discuss women’s participation in the workforce with corporate leaders whose companies are members of the UN’s Global Compact (UNGC). In this context, she will highlight the Women’s Empowerment Principles — a set of seven principles developed by UN Women in partnership with UNGC to support companies in reviewing existing policies and practices, or establishing new ones, to improve and increase employment of women in the private sector.
“We will continue calling on companies to sign on the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which commit them to increasing the number of women employees and managers,” Ms. Bachelet said.
So far, 142 CEOs of major corporations have signed on to the Principles.
The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index shows in its evaluation of 114 countries that those with greater gender equality are more competitive and grow faster. A forthcoming UN Women report, Progress of the World’s Women, states more than 80 percent of women workers are in jobs with no benefits or security in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. While women’s work in agriculture is essential to food security in many countries, globally less than six percent of foreign aid for agriculture goes to them.
