This year, the United Nations 2015 International Women’s Day will highlight the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a historic roadmap signed by 189 governments 20 years ago that sets the agenda for realizing women’s rights.
MASHAV’s activities are closely linked to the areas laid out in the Beijing Platform for Action and, though proud of the progress that has been made and the achievements reached in the last decade, there is still an urgent need for constant and continuing action.
Women and girls experience multiple and intersecting inequalities. Structural barriers in the economic, social, political and environmental spheres produce and reinforce these inequalities. Obstacles to women’s economic and political empowerment and violence against women and girls are barriers to sustainable development and the achievement of human rights, gender equality, justice and peace.
Across much of the world, either by law or custom, women are still denied the right to own land or inherit property, obtain access to credit, attend school, earn income and progress in their profession free from job discrimination. Women are significantly under-represented in decision-making at all levels.
In the struggle to achieve sustainable development, the issues of women’s advancement and their role in poverty eradication have long been one of our main priorities. The ongoing dire condition of women and their low status in society in many developing countries, particularly in terms of their equal access to education, vocational training and employment, continue to give a sense of urgency to the need to change prevailing social attitudes towards women and to empower them to claim their rightful role in their nation’s progress.
To meet these needs MASHAV founded in 1961 the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center (MCTC), within the framework of its international development work. Long before the Declaration of the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995, the majority of its critical areas of concern were firmly in place as cross-cutting issues in MASHAV-MCTC’s training activities.
Professional programs regularly and consistently cover the topics of: Women and Poverty; Education and Training of Women; Women and Health; Violence against Women; Women and the Economy; Women in Power and Decision-Making; Human Rights of Women; Women and the Media; the Girl-Child.
MASHAV cooperates with partner organizations, whether international, governmental or non-governmental, and with UN’s specialized agencies such as UNICEF, UNESCO, UNHabitat, UNDP, UNIFEM, UNECE, UNWomen, and INSTRAW in developing joint programs in the spirit of the Beijing Platform of Action.
In addition, MASHAV-MCTC hold biennial International Conferences for Women Leaders, which provide a forum for dialogue between women at policy decision level, heads of women’s organizations and representatives of international aid agencies. Women are encouraged to overcome culturally-rooted constraints, to call for greater government/NGO collaboration on gender and development issues and to create a more favorable environment for women’s access to training, credit, marketing networks and technology.