UNESCO - Mainstreaming the Needs of Women - Brochure

 
"In every walk of life and in the boards, committees and councils where policy decisions are made, women encounter a glass ceiling when they reach the levels at which influence and authority are wielded. Until women are fully reprensented at the leadership level of public, professional and economic life, we cannot say that they enjoy full and equal rights.

UNESCO will continue its task of assisting the educational path of girls as the first and most important step in this direction. Helping to give women and grils access to education, knowledge and skills, employment and decent living conditions is one component of UNESCO's action in the eradication of poverty, on of the Organization's cross-cutting themes in the Medium-Term Strategy for 2002-2007.

Gender equity should not be seen narrowly as a "women's" issue, for it is an issue that raises fundamental questions about the nature of our social relationships. It is an issue that requires men and women to work together in search of solutions that are both practical and based on principle. Increasingly, those solutions will be neither acceptable nor sustainable if the equal rights, dignity and worth of men and women are not respected."

Preface of the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura