Dear colleagues,
I¡¯d like to welcome you all DESA staff members to the latest meeting of the DESA Editorial Board Online Training Series.
The purpose of this training series is to further strengthen the impact of UN DESA publications by providing opportunities for DESA colleagues to engage with experts and professionals to learn from their expertise on subject matters as well as to acquire skills and tips to communicate DESA publications and analytical products to a wider audience more effectively and with greater impact.
The topic of today¡¯s training is that of gender mainstreaming in the analytical work of DESA.
Let me set the scene.
DESA places great emphasis on the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women as a driver of development progress. This emphasis is embedded in our analytical work, support to intergovernmental bodies and capacity development activities. Since 2016 the Department¡¯s work on gender mainstreaming has been guided by its Policy on Gender Equality and Women¡¯s Empowerment. In implementing that policy, DESA sub-programmes are committed to ensuring that all its knowledge products, especially its flagship publications, reflect the current data and debate on gender equality and women's empowerment.
Additionally, at the Deputies Committee Gender Retreat hosted in January 2020, I made a personal and institutional commitment to engage with the UN Statistical Commission and Regional Economic Commissions to push for a new approach to data collection and analysis that promotes gender equality. The Department¡¯s gender-focused initiatives since then have given particular attention to the areas of data, policy analysis, and innovation for mainstreaming gender.
February to March 2020, the pandemic strikes!
The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has brought home how important a gender perspective is to our work on sustainable development. Surveys indicate that since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the unpaid workload among women¡ªalready higher than men before the pandemic¡ªhas soared to new heights, with negative consequences for women¡¯s mental and physical health. In addition, emerging data show an increase in violence against women in many countries, with UN Women warning about a shadow pandemic of domestic violence.
Despite these challenges, the responses to COVID-19 from the family and gender perspectives have been uneven. Governments mostly focused on gender-related responses to the pandemic on preventing or responding to violence against women. Only one third of surveyed countries took measures to support unpaid care and strengthen care services for children, with most social protection, care and job responses not taking into account the needs of women. Let me give you an anticipation. The upcoming Secretary-General¡¯s Common Agenda will ask us to focus more than before on these social protection aspects.
Now, our Department and its sub-programmes have been incorporating the gender perspective in their work. Notable, are continued efforts to promote disaggregated statistics by sex, and to give special attention to intersectionality of gender with other socioeconomic characteristics in promoting inclusion of marginalized social groups. So, if we as DESA do so well on gender why are we here today?
Well there is always margin to improve ourselves. In addition, sometimes while the product is excellent, the communication of its gender-related content was less well prepared -almost an after thought! Hence, to support us to further strengthen the mainstreaming of gender across the Department¡¯s research, analysis and communication efforts, our speakers today will share the latest on the Secretary-General¡¯s initiatives towards gender equality and showcase good practices for systematically applying gender considerations in analytical work.
This should inspire us and help us to achieve better results.
Thank you for joining us today.
I now give the floor [back] to the moderator, Wenyan Yang of the Division for Inclusive Development and DESA¡¯s gender focal point, to introduce today¡¯s guests.