‘Not one country has gender equality,’ says Head Of UN Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

While the U.N. women’s conference in Beijing 20 years ago strove to end discrimination, the executive director of UN Women laments that not a single country has achieved gender parity or equality. In the week before the 2015 International Women’s Day, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says that the issue of sexual and reproductive rights is still the biggest controversy.  She references the resistance to women’s rights, as shown by the Boko Haram kidnapping and selling of school girls.  According the Mlambo-Ngcuka, gender equality must become a top priority.

It’s been 20 years since 189 countries signed up to a plan for parity between the genders, but Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka says none have yet achieved it. During the conference, in Beijing in 1995, then-US First Lady Hilary Clinton said: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”

There has been progress, Mlambo-Ngcuka says, but the world hasn’t reached “tipping point” with more work needed.

Mlambo-Ngcuka told Associated Press that a girl born today would be an 81-year-old grandmother before she had the same opportunity as a man to be CEO of a company. She would also have to wait until she is 50 before she had an equal chance of leading a country.

Mlambo-Ngcuka pointed out that there were fewer than 20 female heads of state and government and the number of women lawmakers had increased from 11% to just 22% since the Beijing conference.

“We just don’t have critical mass to say that post-Beijing women have reached a tipping point in their representation,” she said.