"Bringing Down Legal Barriers to Women’s Economic Empowerment:
An Economic and Business Imperative"

Executive Director Gonzalez,
Executive Director Mlambo-Ngcuka,
Executive Director Kingo,
Ambassador Hamamoto,
Ambassador Ellis,
Excellencies,
Dear Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen:

It is great to start the year with one of the topics on which we made significant progress last year: gender equality. Here in Geneva and beyond, the International Gender Champions initiative has helped improve the gender composition of expert panels across issues. We also saw progress on the more than 300 individual commitments by all Gender Champions including concrete action to create the right conditions for women to participate on an equal footing in the workplace. After the successful first year, the Gender Champions initiative will now focus more specifically on a number of key issues, including women and trade, through an Impact Group co-led by Ms. Gonzalez who is one of our most active Gender Champions.

But despite last year’s progress, obstacles to gender equality remain both in terms of perceptions and legal frameworks. For example, one in 25 women in paid employment globally is a domestic worker, and only 10 percent of them enjoy labour protections equal to those enjoyed by other workers. Gender equality is first and foremost a human right and legal frameworks have to reflect this.

“Ensuring legal protection and reforming discriminatory laws and regulations” has been identified as one of seven “proven and promising drivers to expand women’s economic opportunities” in the Report of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment in 2016, whose Co-Chair, Ms. Scarpaleggia, is with us today. As we are deepening the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we must bring down legal barriers to women’s economic empowerment and I thank Ms. Gonzalez, Ambassador Hamamoto, Ms. Kingo and Ms. Ellis for hosting this critical high-level meeting.

I am also very pleased to see the Executive Director of UN Women Ms. Mambo-Ngcuka again. She has now become a regular visitor to Geneva and was instrumental in establishing the new UN Women office here last year. International Geneva is at the forefront of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals both operationally and in terms of the important norms and regulations that are put in place here. Gender equality has to be mainstreamed in our efforts as a cross-cutting enabler for development and because the Goals are directly linked to indicators and targets on women’s access to productive resources and the implementation of non-discriminatory legislation [Target 5.a].

To achieve these goals and targets, we need to further deepen our horizontal collaboration across the public and private sectors. Many of you represented here today have decisive influence on legislation, policies and practices through your different networks and we need to leverage that. The Global Compact, for instance, is going to publish a joint Call to Action with the Gender Champions to thousands of leaders in the private sector to adopt the panel Parity Pledge. This initiative can build on and supplement the success of the Women's Empowerment Principles of UN Women and the UN Global Compact which have gathered support from more than 1300 business leaders. The International Gender Champions are currently also working with UN Women on a publication to highlight best practices to increase the number of women in delegations to governing bodies of international organizations, ensuring that the decisions taken by these bodies reflect the views, needs and aspirations of women and girls.

A lot of potential for human progress still remains to be unlocked through the full empowerment of women. We are on a good track with the International Gender Champions and the different partners in this room today, but we still have many barriers to remove. And I want to pay tribute to the Permanent Representative of the USA, Ambassador Hamamoto, for her leadership in launching the International Gender Champions initiative with me. Pamela, it has been great to cooperate with you and many thanks for all the work you invested in the International Gender Champions initiative which made it such a success. It has been a real pleasure working with you on this and many other issues, and I thank you for your friendship.

I wish you all success for this important meeting today and look forward to continue collaborating across stakeholders, here in Geneva and beyond.

Thank you very much.