Gender Inequity Hurting Kids

by Michael Doyle

Poverty, violence and discrimination affect women worldwide and undermine their children's futures, a U.N. agency concludes in a report being issued today.

Women in developing countries work longer hours for lower pay, the United Nations Children's Fund has found. Girls are less likely to get past elementary school. In many countries, women are shut out of household decisions.

"Where you see extreme discrimination against women, you see more problems for children," said UNICEF's executive director, Ann Veneman.

In its data-packed State of the World's Children report, UNICEF spells out the problems nation by nation. The microscope can be painfully acute. In Nigeria, 1 million children younger than 5 die annually. Half of Azerbaijan's residents lack adequate sanitation. A third of the young pregnant women in Botswana's capital are HIV-positive.

This year, the organization also identifies potential solutions. Some raise eyebrows, if not hackles.

Gender quotas can be a "potentially effective vehicle for bolstering women's representation" in legislatures, UNICEF notes as one example. More women can lead to better policies, the agency suggests.

The 160-page report favorably cites, as well, the international United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

"When you empower women," Veneman said, "you benefit children."

A native of Modesto, Calif., Veneman has her own experience as a gender trailblazer. She was the first female head of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and, between 2001 and 2005, she served as the nation's first female secretary of agriculture.

The Bush administration in which she served, though, has steadfastly argued against quotas in this country.

The United States is also the world's only industrialized nation not to ratify the U.N. treaty on discrimination against women.

Drafted in 1979 and since ratified by 185 nations, including Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.N. treaty is criticized by conservatives as inciting lawsuits, family planning or interference in parenting.

Quotas, likewise, get mixed reviews.

UNICEF notes approvingly a fourfold increase, since 1995, in the number of countries where women make up at least 30 percent of the national legislatures. These include such male bastions as Afghanistan, Burundi and the newly established Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.

"The levels of representation in all three countries are examples of the successful introduction of quotas during their political transitions," states the report, which will be formally released today in a news conference in New York.