Governments too slow to scrap laws biased against women, report says

Governments too slow to scrap laws biased against women, report says

Advocacy group Equality Now says that despite progress many discriminatory laws remain 20 years after a call to repeal them – and more are being passed



In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, women must obey their husbands. In Cuba, girls can be married at 14, while boys have to be 16. In Japan, women are required to wait six months after a divorce before they can remarry, while men are not under such obligation. In Russia, women are not allowed to work in jobs considered too physical. And in Malta, the law allows a man to escape prosecution for abducting a woman if he later marries her.

Twenty years after a landmark global agreement on gender equality that included a call for governments to repeal discriminatory laws, many remain on the statute books and more have been passed, according to a report by the advocacy group Equality Now.
Using a sample of more than 40 countries, the organisation has conducted five-yearly reviews of progress against the commitment, which was made in 1995 at the fourth world conference on women, held in Beijing. The specific article states that governments must “revoke any remaining laws that discriminate on the basis of sex”.
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In its report, Words and Deeds - holding governments accountable in the Beijing review process, published on Saturday, Equality Now said more than half the discriminatory laws related to marital, personal and economic status, and violence against women – all of which it had highlighted in previous years – had been repealed, or partially repealed.
However, it said many remained in force and that new discriminatory laws had been passed since its last review in 2010. The latter include a law in Burundi stating that men are the head of the family, while in Indonesia a man can now have more than one wife. Despite amendments to the law in India in 2013, a man who rapes his wife will not face prosecution if she is over 15.

“The global trend is there has been some progress, which is good, but it is often two steps forward, one back,” said Jacqui Hunt, London director of Equality Now. “We’ve seen new laws, and governments not taking the opportunity, when reviewing laws, to change them. We have seen some progress, but there’s still a long way to go.”

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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/feb/14/governments-too-slow-to-scrap-laws-biased-against-women-report-says