A SIGNIFICANT LANDMARK ON THE PATH TO WOMEN’S EQUALITY
A SIGNIFICANT LANDMARK ON THE PATH TO WOMEN’S EQUALITY
Report from the Commonwealth Women’s Forum
Professor Margaret Wilson is a former Member of the New Zealand Parliament (1999–2008) and a former Speaker (2005–2008). She held several Ministerial appointments including Attorney-General, Minister of Labour and Minister Responsible for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. Today, she is a Professor of Law and Public Policy at the University of Waikato. Positions held include: Director of the Reserve Bank; Law Commissioner; Foundation Dean, Waikato Law School; President of the New Zealand Labour Party.
At the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) hosted by Malta, the first Commonwealth Women’s Forum was held along with other forums related to young people, business, NGOs and civil society. Many of the over 500 women attending wondered why it had taken so long for women to have their own forum at which to discuss issues relevant to them and countries from which they had come. Malta is to be congratulated on hosting the Forum. As the President of Malta Her Excellency Marie- Louise Coleiro Preca said her welcome: “The time is ripe to move from rhetoric to action. May the Women’s Forum move beyond discussions to entice the Heads of Government present to act to ensure the wellbeing of women and mark an end to the atrocities women and girls are experiencing today. The Commonwealth can effectively be an inspiration to the world in bringing about change in the lives of women and girls.” The Forum followed the
Commonwealth Women Affairs Ministerial Meeting (10WAMM) that took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2013 and among other matters observed the under-representation of women leaders and decision- makers in politics, public sector, and corporate boards and in
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communities with the result of a negative impact on democracy and development. Following 10WAMM, the members of the Commonwealth Gender Plan of Action Monitoring Group agreed that in order to affirm high-level support and direct top-level politics equality and human rights, there was an urgent need for women to be given the opportunity to interact with the heads of government and for the Commonwealth’s gender equality commitments to be higher on the agenda for Heads of Government.
As a participant to various national and international conferences and workshops over the past 40 years, one could only agree that the time was overdue to move the equality agenda for women forward to directly engage with those decision-makers who have the authority and capacity to include women and their interests in their decision- making. The Commonwealth Women’s Forum provided that opportunity and with the support of the Maltese Government, the Forum was formally included within the CHOGM agenda and in the future will become a permanent feature of the CHOGM programmes. The theme of the Forum: Women Ahead: Be All That We Can Be captured the reality
that the empowerment of women benefits not only women themselves but the social and economic development of their communities. The theme of the empowerment of women reflected and supported United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 that includes the target to ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life.
The link with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals was reinforced in the main address of the Forum delivered by Dr Lakshmi Puri, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of UN Women who set out the Global context for the advancement of women. The participation of UN Women, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association- UK, and the Commonwealth Local Government Forum enhanced the breath and quality of the presentations as well as the smooth running of the various sessions. The relationship between the global and the local was a consistent theme of the Forum with the various presentations in the
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