NEW YORK, USA, 4 March 2010 – A UNICEF-organized event in New York marked the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. Adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, the Beijing Platform is the world’s most comprehensive framework for achieving gender equality.
A UNICEF Division of Policy and Practice paper, prepared for the anniversary, highlighted two factors that can cause gender gaps to grow. First, other forms of exclusion – such as poverty, ethnicity or minority status – can affect girls more negatively and compound gender discrimination. And second, gender gaps can grow as girls reach adolescence, thereby reducing the gains already made for girls in their early childhoods. Read more about the event and UNICEF’s work with gender equality here.