Achieving gender equality and women’s rights in Africa
The ILO attended a high-level brainstorming meeting on women and girls empowerment in Africa in the presence of H.E.M Åsa Regnér, Swedish Minister for Children, The Elderly and Gender Equality, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
24 March 2015
ADDIS ABABA (ILO News) – The Swedish Embassy in Addis Ababa, in partnership with the UNECA, organized a High-Level event themed “Visible Change in the lives of African women and girls” at UN headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This brainstorming meeting was attended by representatives of the African Union Commission, key UN agencies and regional civil society organisations at the United Nations Conference Centre while the African Union Assembly of 2015 recently declared 2015 as the Year of “Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063”.
“Women are entering the labour market in unprecedented numbers”, said Mwila Chigaga, ILO Senior Gender Specialist for Africa with 48% of all international migrants being women, who are increasingly migrating for work.
The purpose of this meeting was to generate concrete recommendations on women’s empowerment; sexual and reproductive health and rights; labour migration; and women in politics and decision-making positions.
“Improving decent work for women to give them a choice” for free movement is one way forward, underlined Ms Chigaga.
One of the key objectives of this meeting was to explore opportunities for strategic partnerships with Swedish development cooperation in the area of gender equality in light of its recently launched Feminist Foreign Policy. In the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, Sweden is named as a world leader in equality.
The discussions highlighted the progress, challenges as well as emerging trends and new priorities for advancing women empowerment in Africa.
The African Union recently adopted a Joint AUC/ILO/IOM/ECA Labour Migration Programme (JLMP) in Africa.
This brainstorming meeting was attended by representatives of the African Union Commission, key UN agencies and regional civil society organisations at the United Nations Conference Centre while the African Union Assembly of 2015 recently declared 2015 as the Year of “Women’s Empowerment and Development towards Africa’s Agenda 2063”.
“Women are entering the labour market in unprecedented numbers”, said Mwila Chigaga, ILO Senior Gender Specialist for Africa with 48% of all international migrants being women, who are increasingly migrating for work.
The purpose of this meeting was to generate concrete recommendations on women’s empowerment; sexual and reproductive health and rights; labour migration; and women in politics and decision-making positions.
“Improving decent work for women to give them a choice” for free movement is one way forward, underlined Ms Chigaga.
One of the key objectives of this meeting was to explore opportunities for strategic partnerships with Swedish development cooperation in the area of gender equality in light of its recently launched Feminist Foreign Policy. In the Global Gender Gap Report 2013, Sweden is named as a world leader in equality.
The discussions highlighted the progress, challenges as well as emerging trends and new priorities for advancing women empowerment in Africa.
The African Union recently adopted a Joint AUC/ILO/IOM/ECA Labour Migration Programme (JLMP) in Africa.