Topic: 2024-Gender Equality in Rural Areas
Country: Thailand
Delegate Name: Tess Kelkar
UN Women
Gender Equality in Rural Areas
Kingdom of Thailand
Tess Kelkar
Forest Hills Northern
Gender equality is the fundamental idea that the wants and needs of both women and men are important and should be taken into consideration. In rural areas, gender equality is not a priority due to a strict patriarchal society. People in rural areas enforce a stigma when women are treated equally as men. Gender equality or lack thereof, not only affects a woman’s social life, but also her career, education, and even their wellbeing. In 1948, Gender Equality was made part of the international human rights law by the UN General Assembly. In 1979, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), this helped set laws that helped target issues facing women. In its 30 articles, the Convention defines discrimination against women and sets up an agenda for national action to end such discrimination. The Convention targets culture and tradition as influential forces shaping gender roles and family relations. The Kingdom of Thailand has made significant strides in uplifting gender equality such as ratifying CEDAW, endorsing CEDAW’s optional protocol, endorsing Bejing Platform for Action (BPFA), and even committing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Although this is the case, we still request support from the UN to be able to further ensure gender equality in the rural areas of our country.
This topic is an issue in the Kingdom of Thailand. Although we have made significant progress, in both policy wise and socially, persistent gaps continue to impede development and socio-economic growth. The labor force participation rate for women is only 59% compared to 75% for men. We have joined with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), and the International Labour Organization (ILO), in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) who are implementing the United Nations Joint Programme (UNJP) accelerating progress towards an integrated and modernized social protection system for everyone in Thailand. We have also ratified CEDAW, endorsed CEDAW’s optional protocol, endorsed Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA), and even committed to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 as previously mentioned. The issues that affect women the most is social stigma, and lack of job opportunities due to COVID-19. Our nation has implemented some strategies to help alleviate some of this pressure. On March 8th of 2015, Thailand passed the Gender Equality Act aimed at providing legal protections against gender discrimination. The Kingdom of Thailand requests support from the UN to be able to help fund policies that will help substantially decrease the amount of gender inequality.
The Kingdom of Thailand proposes a step solution that targets the main issues that affect women the most; lack of job opportunities due to COVID-19, and social stigma as previously stated. We propose to implement an educational program for the youth that teaches them about women and their contributions to our societies, create government funded programs that provide child-care and elderly-care for households with women who are qualified to participate in the workforce which will provide women more opportunities to work, have free primary and secondary education programs for women which will give women a better chance of getting better jobs and opportunities, and create policies that decrease the taxes for multinational companies that support women in the workforce. The Kingdom of Thailand requests the UN committee to help fund these programs nationally. With the committees support, we will be able to help women from every area of our country.
Sources
https://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/conceptsandefinitions.htm#:~:text=Gender%20equality%20implies%20that%20the,men%20as%20well%20as%20women.
https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/gender-equality
https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-elimination-all-forms-discrimination-against-women
https://asiapacific.unwomen.org/en/countries/thailand#:~:text=Thailand%20has%20legally%20advanced%20women’s,and%20committed%20to%20the%20Sustainable
https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/thailand/brief/thailand-gender-and-inclusion-knowledge-management-notes
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/09/21/thailand-gender-equality-act
https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2023-03/UNDP_domesticwork_draft14_EN_without_Bleed_0.pdf
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