Worldwatch Institute to Release Report on Women's Welfare and the Environment

For more information or to request an embargoed copy of "Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women's Welfare, and the Environment," please contact Susan Finkelpearl, Media Coordinator, at 202.452.1992 x517 or sfinkelpearl@worldwatch.org.

At international conferences throughout the 1990s—in Rio de Janeiro, Vienna, Cairo, and Beijing—a new vision of women's health, welfare, and rights was created. This vision acknowledged that better lives for women means higher rates of child survival, lower fertility, lower (and declining) rates of population growth, and more efficient use of natural resources.

As we approach the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) this vision has yet to be fully realized for millions of women around the world.

• More than 350 million worldwide lack any access to family planning services.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, where AIDS is spreading faster than anywhere else on the planet, women account for 55 percent of all new cases of HIV.
• One in three women worldwide has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.
• Only about half of girls in the least developed nations stay in school after grade 4.
• Globally women earn on average two thirds to three fourths as much as men for the same work (Figure 1).

And perhaps most striking as the world prepares for the WSSD,

• In 2000 women held only 14 percent of seats in parliaments worldwide. At the United Nations, women make up only 34 percent of professional positions (Figure 2).

These are some of the issues touched upon in an upcoming report titled, "Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women's Welfare, and the Environment," by Worldwatch Institute Staff Researcher, Danielle Nierenberg.

Click here to view a policy brief by Ms. Nierenberg titled, "From Rio to Johannesburg: What's Good for Women is Good for the World."

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