Gender equality has been a pretty hot topic for the last couple of years. You may have heard about it at school or in the news and I’m sure you have questions about it. How come that people treat women differently than men?
Around the world, we see lots of different cultures, nationalities, religions and in a lot of them, women tend to have a secondary or an unequal position compared to men.
There are different examples of this inequality. Let’s take the job market for example. Oftentimes women are getting paid less for the same or a similar job type in comparison to men. Also, women tend to reach a certain level in their careers that is difficult to overcome. This is called the “glass ceiling” and it is about the overrepresentation of men at the highest positions at a certain job.
Nowadays, women are underappreciated and all of you reading this should show some more appreciation to all women and girls around you. But, despite the improvements that were made, full gender
equality remains unreached.
The UN is aiming at full gender equality, but the COVID-19 pandemic has created circumstances that counteract this. The crisis allowed women and girls to be in a vulnerable position and a lot of the progress that has been made could have been undermined. For example, the risk of domestic violence during the worldwide lockdown was greater than before.
The issue with the child marriage has been declining, but during the COVID-19 pandemic there was emergance of those types of cases. In order to meet their set goals by 2030 ,the progress in child marriage needs to accelerate by a factor of 10!