Zohreh Khatami: Great Deal of Harm Inflicted on Rural Women in Developing Countries
September 27, 2000 - 0:0
TEHRAN -- A group of first ladies from several Asia-Pacific nations opened on Tuesday a three-day meeting in Kuala Lumpur, where they will discuss and reviews efforts on how to empower poor rural women, who they say, face greater discrimination than urban women.
The wives of leaders of Asia-Pacific countries urged governments to do more to reduce poverty and protect the rights of rural women in the region.
Iran's Zohreh Sadeqi Khatami said a great deal of harm was inflicted on rural women in developing countries because state authorities focused more on economic development, than on the legal, political and social changes to society.
The rights of women were often treated as a "secondary issue," she said, adding that rural women, who lacked basic education and the use of modern technology such as telephones, and who were preoccupied with the feeding their malnourished children, would be left behind by rapid globalization.
Siti Hasmah Mohamed Ali, the wife of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said, "Our primary concern is to improve the lives of the unfortunate, the exploited, the hard-to-reach and often forgotten groups of society, that is the poor rural and island women." She is chairing the second meeting of the 17-nation regional steering committee for the advancement of rural and island women in the Asia-Pacific. The committee was set up following the 1995 world women's conference in Beijing.
A total of eight first ladies are attending the meeting.
They are from Malaysia, Iran, India, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Krygyzstan.
India's Usha Nurayanan urged governments to ensure "gender equality" which, she said, was crucial to ensure the improvement of women.
"The issue here is not just political participation by women but their access to funds and resources, and the feeling of empowerment that they have by exercising control over such resources," she said.
Thelma Kay, of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said, "Formidable obstacles" continued to block efforts to improve the lot of rural women in the region.
Asia was home to 75 percent of the world's poor who live on one U.S. dollar a day, while two-thirds of Asia's rural poor were women, she said when speaking at the conference.
Despite a proliferation of national policies, programs and projects to help poor women in the past decade, the poverty gap between men and women has widened, she said, with women earning only half of men's wages.
Among the problems still plaguing rural Asian women were a lack of land ownership, micro-credit funds to start small businesses, schooling, technology including knowledge of computers, and getting well-paid jobs.
Kay urged governments to drop laws that discriminate against women and to sign international conventions that protect women's rights, such as the Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Also attending the conference are representatives of first ladies from the Maldives, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Australia and Tonga.
The wives of leaders of Asia-Pacific countries urged governments to do more to reduce poverty and protect the rights of rural women in the region.
Iran's Zohreh Sadeqi Khatami said a great deal of harm was inflicted on rural women in developing countries because state authorities focused more on economic development, than on the legal, political and social changes to society.
The rights of women were often treated as a "secondary issue," she said, adding that rural women, who lacked basic education and the use of modern technology such as telephones, and who were preoccupied with the feeding their malnourished children, would be left behind by rapid globalization.
Siti Hasmah Mohamed Ali, the wife of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said, "Our primary concern is to improve the lives of the unfortunate, the exploited, the hard-to-reach and often forgotten groups of society, that is the poor rural and island women." She is chairing the second meeting of the 17-nation regional steering committee for the advancement of rural and island women in the Asia-Pacific. The committee was set up following the 1995 world women's conference in Beijing.
A total of eight first ladies are attending the meeting.
They are from Malaysia, Iran, India, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Laos and Krygyzstan.
India's Usha Nurayanan urged governments to ensure "gender equality" which, she said, was crucial to ensure the improvement of women.
"The issue here is not just political participation by women but their access to funds and resources, and the feeling of empowerment that they have by exercising control over such resources," she said.
Thelma Kay, of the UN's Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), said, "Formidable obstacles" continued to block efforts to improve the lot of rural women in the region.
Asia was home to 75 percent of the world's poor who live on one U.S. dollar a day, while two-thirds of Asia's rural poor were women, she said when speaking at the conference.
Despite a proliferation of national policies, programs and projects to help poor women in the past decade, the poverty gap between men and women has widened, she said, with women earning only half of men's wages.
Among the problems still plaguing rural Asian women were a lack of land ownership, micro-credit funds to start small businesses, schooling, technology including knowledge of computers, and getting well-paid jobs.
Kay urged governments to drop laws that discriminate against women and to sign international conventions that protect women's rights, such as the Convention of the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
Also attending the conference are representatives of first ladies from the Maldives, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Australia and Tonga.