User:Claudialenz

Gender Equality

working defintion

TO BE DEVELOPED

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contemporary defintions/uses of the concept (examples)

Council of Europe,Committee of Ministers, 2009, result of a long consultation process and agreed upon by 47 Foreign Ministers: Recalling that gender equality means an equal visibility, empowerment, responsibility and participation of both women and men in all spheres of public and private life. Gender equality is the opposite of gender inequality, not of gender difference.

Declaration: Making gender equality a reality

Definition provided by the The Southern African Development Community (SADC), ca. 2000: [G.E.] is based on the idea that no individual should be less equal in opportunity, access to resources and benefits or in human rights than others. It is based on the notion that "all people are created equal therefore should have equal share of the worlds resources and benefits".

http://www.sadc.int/index/browse/page/115

Definition by Lotte Bailyn, Professor of Management at the Sloan School of Management, MIT: "A social order in which women and men share the same opportunities and the same constraints on full participation in both the economic and the domestic realm."

Source: Bailyn, Lotte (2006). Breaking the mold: Redesigning work for productive and satisfying lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell.

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historical defintions/understandings of the concept (examples)

The concept "gender equality" is a product of the 20th century - still, it's basic elements are to be found in the work of thinkers back in history:

I appeal to their [men's] understandings; and, as a fellow-creature, claim, in the name of my sex, some interest in their hearts. I entreat them to assist to emancipate their companion, to make her a help meet for them! Would men but generously snap our chains, and be content with rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience, they would find us more observant daughters, more affectionate sisters, more faithful wives, more reasonable mothers – in a word, better citizens

''Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindications: The Rights of Men and The Rights of Woman. 1792''

I deny that any one knows or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. Until conditions of equality exist, no one can possibly assess the natural differences between women and men, distorted as they have been. What is natural to the two sexes can only be found out by allowing both to develop and use their faculties freely."

John Stuart Mill, On the Subjection of Women, Chapter I. 1869).

Woman can be emancipated only when she can take part on a large social scale in production and is engaged in domestic work only to an insignificant degree. And this has become possible only in the big industry of modern times, which not only admits of female labour on a grand scale but even formally demands it...’

''Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 1884''

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Chart of speaker positions

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links to external definitions and glossaries

•	United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) 2004: Gender Equality http://lao.unfpa.org/defcon.htm

•	UNICEF: Gender Quality http://www.unicef.org/gender/

•	ABC of Women Worker’s Rights and Gender Equality, ILO, Geneva, 2000 +other definition on http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/conceptsandefinitions.htm) http://www.fao-ilo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fao_ilo/pdf/FAQs/Definitions__2_.pdf

•	Glossary of Gender Terms, World Bank; Trainers Manual http://info.worldbank.org/etools/docs/library/192862/introductorymaterials/Glossary.html Taken from Introductory Gender Analysis & Gender Planning Training Module for UNDP staff.

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