United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres expressed regret that “equality” between women and men in the world is a distant goal, expecting it to be impossible to achieve at least 300 years ago.
Two days before International Women’s Day, Guterres said at the opening of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, “In the context of these circumstances, the achievement of gender equality is becoming more and more off,” noting that the United Nations expects women that this equality will be achieved. In 300 years, if current rates continue,” according to what was reported on the United Nations website.
In the General Assembly Hall, the UN Secretary-General emphasized that “decades of progress are disappearing before our eyes” and said: “In too many places, women’s sexual and reproductive rights are being violated. In some countries, girls attending school are abducted and assaulted. Elsewhere, vulnerable women are being targeted by police sworn to protect them.”
Referring to the situation in Afghanistan, where the Taliban took power in August 2021, Guterres said: “In Afghanistan, women and girls are excluded from public life.”
In his speech, Guterres did not mention Iran, which was expelled on December 14, 2022 from the Commission on the Status of Women with immediate effect during the vote in the United Nations Economic and Social Council under pressure from the United States amid the Iranian authorities’ crackdown on a women-led uprising in Iran since September.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations denounced the decades-long system of “patriarchy, discrimination and stereotyping” in the “science and technology” sectors, where only “three percent of Nobel Prize winners” are women.
The Secretary General welcomed the two French researchers, “Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American Jennifer Doudna, who formed the first women’s team to win the Nobel Prize in Science three years ago”, referring to their 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Guterres noted that “men’s teams have received the award 172 times.”
The Secretary-General stressed the need to confront the patriarchal system, saying: “I’m here to make it clear and strong that the United Nations stands by women and girls everywhere.”
