On March 8, at the Alliance Française in Bangkok (The French cultural institute), supermodel and UN Women Regional Goodwill Ambassador Sirinya "Cindy" Bishop addressed a seminar leading to the Generation Equality Forum held on the occasion of International Women's Day. She repeated to the young Thai women in the audience that "Women don't need to be stronger. It is the world that needs to change the way it perceives women's strength."
She was right. Women in Thailand are strong, determined, hard-working and committed in their work environment. They have achieved so much that, in today's Thailand, women hold a greater percentage of senior leadership positions than the average in both the Asia-Pacific region and the world. In Thailand, 24% of CEOs or managing directors are women, compared to 20% worldwide, and only 13% in Asia-Pacific.
In 2015, Thailand adopted the Gender Equality Act to advance legal policies and battle gender discrimination -- just before inscribing gender equality principles in its 2017 Constitution, which clearly states that "men and women shall enjoy equal rights".
However, these indicators cannot hide the fact that in Thailand -- as in the rest of the world, and especially in rural areas -- women remain the segment most affected by poverty, discrimination and exploitation, as well as by the insecurity and vulnerability of working in the informal sector. Gender equality and women's empowerment challenges remain, particularly for women from ethnic minority groups, migrant communities and conflict areas.
According to the United Nations Development Programme gender inequality index, Thailand is ranked 79 out of 189 countries. As an upper-middle income country, Thailand has a great opportunity to improve the conditions for women and to keep modernising its legal framework to promote gender equality. Evidence demonstrates a clear link between gender and poverty, as well as issues such as a lack of access to energy, water, food and social protections in many regions.
Millions of women and girls have been disproportionately burdened by the Covid-19 epidemic and its economic and social consequences, which reflects an exacerbation of structural barriers to gender equality worldwide. If these underlying inequalities are not addressed, they will only deepen. It is time we addressed these issues openly.
That is exactly the goal of the Generation Equality Forum, which will take place in Mexico City from Monday to Wednesday and in Paris from June 30 to July 2: to promote bold, ambitious and concrete commitments for gender equality.
In Thailand, the Embassy of France, the Embassy of Mexico and UN Women Asia-Pacific have joined hands with outstanding feminists to hold a number of activities from January to June 2021, to promote the Generation Equality Forum (GEF) and raise awareness and action for gender equality.
The upcoming Generation Equality Forum poses a unique opportunity to accelerate efforts for the full implementation of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, adopted during the Fourth World Conference on Women 26 years ago. The forum, which will mainly take place through virtual platforms, will be a collective and innovative partnership to achieve gender equality. All stakeholders and advocates, including governments, civil society, feminist movements, the private sector and academia, will come together in a public conversation to design common efforts to be jointly implemented.
One of the main objectives of the forum is to support the feminist movements and the grassroots organisations, having youth at the core. Also, the GEF will deliver on six Action Coalitions, which are global, innovative multi-stakeholder partnerships on: gender-based violence; economic justice and rights; bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights; feminist action for climate justice; feminist movements and leadership, and technology and innovation for gender equality. The available data makes it clear: all of these issues are inextricably linked.
The GEF is a key moment for global mobilisation, and it can be a major inflexion point for gender equality, bringing together governments, corporations, civil society and change-makers from around the world to define and announce ambitious investments and policies, triggering a permanent acceleration in equality, leadership and opportunity for women and girls around the globe.
Women and leaders in the GEF are working to strengthen the capacities of political institutions to integrate their needs and for the enjoyment of their human rights and liberties.
Anybody can be involved and participate in the GEF through its online platforms -- either from home, from the workplace or through a group of friends, as well as through social media platforms. Every small step towards gender equality counts. Together, with enough political and social willpower, we can make brave, unprecedented and irreversible change for gender equality for the benefit of this generation and the ones to come. Let's start today.
Thierry Mathou, Ambassador of France; Bernardo Cordova; Ambassador of Mexico; Mohammad Naciri, Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.