PUTRAJAYA, May 20 — The Associated Country Women of the World (ACWW), with a unanimous vote, has passed several resolutions today on its second day of the 30th triennial conference, including urging all governments to establish rural women’s employment action plans.
Rural Women New Zealand president Gill Naylor, who proposed the motion on the employment action plans, said the resolution aims to improve women’s situations at work, who may have faced working practice issues throughout their career, including not being fairly paid for what they do.
“To implement the action plan, one must focus on their long-term strategy, including how to improve women’s resilience in the face of future economic and social shocks.
“We also must know how to identify opportunities within the current frameworks or existing funding that can be detected to reduce inequalities faced by one another,” she said in front of about 500 delegates that attended the nine-day ACWW conference.
ACWW, which was founded in 1929 to bring together rural women and their organisations across the globe, seeks to address the challenges they face because of their communities’ isolation, discrimination against women, and their lack of standing in political processes.
ACWW’s membership spans 82 countries, and since 1947, the association had passed over 180 policy resolutions by popular vote.
Apart from the employment action plans, the ACWW members have also passed resolutions addressing food waste and rural gender impact analysis.
As food waste is estimated to cost the global economy about US$940 billion each year, the members urge all governments to partner with local grocery stores in creating educational programmes on food wastage.
While on the rural gender impact analysis, they hope it would benefit many countries over the decision-making processes, to ensure no bias policies towards women’s communities.
— Bernama
