Gender equality still '300 years away:' UN chief

• Published date: 07 March 2023
• Publication title: The Korea Times

Global progress on women's rights is "vanishing before our eyes," U.N. boss Antonio Guterres warned Monday, saying the increasingly distant goal of gender equality will take another three centuries to achieve.

"Gender equality is growing more distant. On the current track, U.N. Women puts it 300 years away," the United Nations secretary-general said in a General Assembly speech ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, as he launched two weeks of discussions led by the Commission on the Status of Women.

"Women's rights are being abused, threatened, and violated around the world," he added, as he ticked off a litany of crises: maternal mortality, girls ousted from school, caregivers denied work and children forced into early marriage.

"Progress won over decades is vanishing before our eyes," Guterres said.

He highlighted the particularly dire conditions in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, where "women and girls have been erased from public life."

He did not name other specific countries, but Guterres stressed that "in many places, women's sexual and reproductive rights are being rolled back (and) in some countries, girls going to school risk kidnapping and assault."

Also left unmentioned was Iran, which was expelled late last year from the Commission on the Status of Women due to the country's repression of a female-led revolt since...