By Heather Halbach, AWC Berlin
I am humbled and immensely grateful for my experience at CSW65. Watching COVID tear through the world with such devastation, ripping bare the inequality in our societies and breeding much fear was a source of personal pain over the past year, but witnessing so many compassionate, wise, dedicated and powerful people come together to advocate for women and a better global future renewed my belief in humanity. There were many outstanding programs, but I will focus here on an event hosted by OMEP, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education: "Achieving Women's Empowerment, Early Childhood Development and Care; A Two-Generational Win-Win."
Jessica Essary, PhD and Associate Professor of Education at Cazenovia College, moderated a panel discussion with Dr. Rima Salah, PhD, Yale school of Medicine; Mercedes Mayol Lassalle, OMEP World President; Raul Mercer, author and member of ISSOP (International Society of Social Pediatrics); and Anne-Claire de Leidekerke, President of Make Mothers Matter. The panel discussed “actions that people all over the world could take to achieve gender equality, empower women and girls and reap positive values of early childhood education and support.”
Dr. Rima Salah discussed the crushing blow of war, Covid and domestic violence to the protection, education and empowerment of women and children. According to UNESCO, Covid-related school closures kept 1.5 billion children out of school in 2020 and the fear is that many girls won´t go back. UNICEF expects that an additional 10 million child marriages may occur before the end of the decade. We have seen an uptick in domestic violence, and even without extenuating circumstances, the instability created by Covid- related job losses and other psycho-social conditions makes it increasingly difficult for care givers to provide for their children.
Mercedes Mayol Lassalle spoke to the importance of equal access to education, noting how 16 million girls will never go to school and how children witness gender inequalities at home, in society and in the media. She explained that lifetime behavior patterns are set in the first years of life and are largely determined by families and schools. She believes educators should be familiar with the UN Decade of Women, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Beijing Platform for Action. Educators, along with involved parents, can support children by encouraging role changing and addressing questions about culture, gender, privilege and politics.
Raul Mercer followed with a conversation about women and children´s health agendas being one and the same. He made a particularly good point about how children are viewed as passive and under the control of adults. Importantly, he addressed patterns of inequality and the life course approach to health, as well as how adversity happens at the individual level and at the community level as well.
Anne-Claire de Leidekerke discussed how nurturing care, often provided by mothers, is an investment and essential to the world’s economies. Care is work that requires many skills and when not provided within the family, is outsourced and included in the GDP. When mothers provide this type of care, it generally goes unrecognized. Mothers who leave the workplace for childcare purposes face costly penalties that go by various names and descriptions; namely the motherhood penalty, dependence, lack of bargaining power within the couple, gender pay gap, disempowerment, pension gap and a lack of leadership positions. She impressed the importance of measuring unpaid labor if we are to tackle it and gave an account of how some organizations are working to provide these measures.
This impressive panel brought home the impact of childhood events across lifetimes. By caring for our children, and this starts with caring for mothers, we greatly impact the future health and wellness of our societies or as Nurturing Care put it “If we change the beginning of the story, we change the whole story.” The presentation can be viewed on the OMEP World Youtube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgWYAfvT_IA&t=665s.