UN Women: Feminist Strategies for Global Gender Equality

Introduction and Origins of UN Women

UN Women (UNW) was created in 2010 by the United Nations General Assembly, which simultaneously established the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UNEGEEW). The creation of these two bodies was intended to accelerate the rate at which the UN and its Member States were working toward the empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equality, making this an historic step. The UN itself was undergoing significant change, with a reform agenda directed at unifying mandates and resources in order to achieve a greater collective impact. The overall UN organization combined four separate, older bodies to create UN Women: the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women (OSAGI), and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) (About UN Women, n.d.).

Historical Background of Feminist Political Movements

Feminism in the United States can be traced back to 1848 and the Seneca Falls Convention in New York. This was the nation's first convention on women's rights and attracted over 300 attendees. Elizabeth Cady Stanton outlined the natural equality of women in what became the Seneca Falls Declaration, widely regarded as the origin of the suffrage movement (Krolokke, 2006). Many dedicated women worked tirelessly to win the vote for women—among them Anna Howard Shaw, Alice Paul, and Carrie Chapman Catt—but women's suffrage did not become law in the United States until 1920. In its first wave, American feminism employed a wide variety of approaches to resistance and societal intervention, providing inspiration that endures to the present day.

Ideas concerning gender equality and the means to achieve it—collectively known as feminism—belong to a broad social and political movement that first emerged in Western society. The foundation of this movement was the growing recognition that economic, cultural, political, and social contexts in many, if not all, countries devalued women relative to men and placed them in a secondary category at best. Huang (2005) notes that Western feminist societies worked through at least three distinct thresholds of political action in their efforts to transform society and bring about gender equality.

A political movement can range from relatively placid to highly confrontational, varying from sit-in protests and conventional petitioning to violent blockades and revolutionary activities. Organizations often develop in stages through several "thresholds": (1) signing petitions (conventional politics) escalates to unconventional politics; (2) the level of action shifts toward measures such as boycotts or marches ("direct action"); (3) unofficial, legally unauthorized strikes represent the third threshold, in which political action shifts to non-violent yet illegal activity; and (4) once political activity shifts to direct and violent actions against property or persons, it is said to have reached the fourth threshold. When social movements are focused on political system change, they may use confrontation or negotiation, sometimes in forms that are extreme and counter-cultural. By contrast, when social movements are focused on value system change, the strategy is more likely to be expressed in a moderate, sub-cultural form (Huang, 2005).

Strategies of Resistance and Global Programs

The United Nations has developed a "system-wide common understanding," founded on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as well as other documents addressing human rights on a global basis. This approach directs technical assistance, policies, and development cooperation work toward human rights. One guiding principle stipulates that development efforts should assist "rights holders" in claiming these rights and "duty bearers" in achieving their full capacity to fulfill obligations (UNW, 2011).

A gender perspective across the affairs of all its Member States is central to the work of UN Women, ensuring that national evaluation, planning, monitoring, and budgeting focus on and include women's access to services. The Gender Budget programs of UN Women are presently working toward practices that address and strengthen gender equality accountability, as well as improving service access for women. These programs operate at the country, regional, cross-regional, and local levels, addressing gender equality through the development of capacity, technical resources, and political support. The Gender Budget programs garner increasing support through partnerships with development organizations and UN agencies. The OECD, the European Commission, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and various UN agencies are among the Gender Budget stakeholders with whom UN Women has built supporting relationships; the organization is now also recognized at top-level forums for global policy (UNW, 2012).

Budgetary processes in Member Nations and UN programs have been the focus of sustainable and strategic operational changes by the Gender Budget Committee of UN Women. The budgeting process has been strengthened through the inclusion of parliamentarians, advocates for gender equality, and key individuals who are committed to gender equality (UN Women, 2012). The Gender Budget Committee has worked with Member Nations to educate and assist budgeting and planning officers in the application of gender-responsive policies that lead to gender-appropriate outcomes. It has also aided governments in evaluating public finance management systems to ensure that gender considerations are incorporated.

UN Women employs several strategic approaches: (1) leveraging and mobilizing increased resources for women's empowerment and gender equality; (2) fully supporting the Commission on the Status of Women, an inter-governmental body, in formulating global norms, policies, and standards; (3) acting as a knowledge resource for women's empowerment and gender equality while directing efficient and effective partnerships and coordination across United Nations systems; (4) monitoring system-wide progress within the United Nations itself in terms of gender equality commitments and accountability; (5) optimizing corporate, country, and regional effectiveness; (6) pursuing evaluation, reporting, knowledge management, and results-based action directed toward building a robust culture of learning; and (7) assisting Member States in their efforts to implement gender equality and women's empowerment, creating societal partnerships and providing financial and technical support where requested (UNW, 2013).

A major priority for UN Women is to achieve results through coordination of its programs with the United Nations while simultaneously delivering high-quality intergovernmental support. Achieving program priorities requires fundamental-level coordination in order to secure the full participation and leadership of women in global sectors such as humanitarian affairs and security and peace. While many UN Women programs are ongoing, others require longer-term commitment, and the groundwork for these is in progress. Significant proposed future goals include: (a) examining, upgrading, and restructuring UN Women's local, regional, and national presence and effectiveness as the highest-priority task; (b) collecting and generating information on gender equality in crucial areas through analysis, data, evidence, and statistics gathered in cooperation with partner countries and Member States; and (c) addressing entrenched gender stereotypes through mobilization and enhancement of partnerships with faith-based organizations, men and boys, and community and religious leaders. This effort must also enlist communications partners—including social and conventional media—to encourage behaviors and attitudes that foster an understanding of gender equality. UN Women is making considerable forward progress in each of these areas, but further effort is required, particularly in terms of addressing the needs of UN Member States, regional organizations, and in-country UN teams (UNW, 2013).

The manner in which these goals will be tracked includes grants provided by the Fund for Gender Equality, technical support to civil society and governments, and inter-agency partnerships, all directed by UN Women to improve and expand women's participation in the political arena (Executive Board of UN Entity, 2011).