Yesterday was the first official day of the Commission for the Status of Women 58 (March 10th – 21st) where Member States gather at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to
evaluate progress on gender equality, identify challenges, set global
standards and formulate concrete policies to promote gender equality and
advancement of women worldwide.

Soroptimist International has its biggest ever delegation of over 50 representatives there lobbying for the rights of women and girls. Yesterday saw the first day of official talks and below are some highlights of the day:

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka highlighted the following:

• In this CSW we kick-off a year-long
  mobilization for the 20th anniversary and review of the landmark Beijing
  Platform for Action.  From May 2014 and
  over a 12-month period into 2015, we will review each
  of the 12 focus areas that are part of the Beijing Platform,
  together with Member States, UN agencies and civil society groups.  This will lead to national and regional
  reports culminating in a single
  global report on the progress made. The report will be ready by the
  General Assembly of 2015 for Heads of State.

• The challenge of gender equality and women’s
  empowerment is not just a women’s issue. This is an issue for humanity, which
  cannot leave out men and boys who
  are half of humanity.  That is why
  building up to Beijing+20, UN Women has launched the He for She campaign so
  that men and boys can raise their voices, take a stand and be on the right side
  of history. We urge men and boys to come out and embrace the campaign as well
  as take action in their own spaces.

• She emphasised UN Women’s three key areas for
  the Post-2015 Agenda: The first is freedom from violence for women and girls; the second is equality in capabilities – Access to opportunities and resources. This
  means recognizing, reducing and redistributing the burden of unpaid care work;
  ensuring equal access to assets and resources such as education, land and
  finance; equal pay and working conditions; and guaranteeing sexual and
  reproductive health and right and the third area is equality in agency, voice, participation and leadership across
  the full range of decision-making arenas in public and private institutions.

The First High-Level Panel on the Priority Theme
manifested the following trends:

·  
There is widespread support from governments for:

o  
a standalone
goal on gender equality whilst mainstreaming gender throughout the other
goals via targets and indicators. 

o  
specific attention to be paid to VAWG.

o  
increasing women’s participation in the labour market, which includes better
work-life balance policies, and increasing women’s participation in politics, with many vocally supporting
quotas. 

·  
There is some support for

o  
improving data
collection.

o  
improving accountability
mechanisms, though it has been noted that it is difficult to build such
mechanisms into a framework that is not legally binding.

 –  There is a growing group of governments who
specifically call attention to involving men and boys and looking at
occupational segregation, though still a minority. 

There was
LITTLE TO NO MENTION of gender-responsive budgets, gender audits, or financing
gender goals. SI must continue to lobby for this as outlined in our Post 2015 Key Asks.

Read more about SI’s participation at the CSW 58