It was with excitement, humility and gratitude that I attended my first Commission at the United Nations and I was particularly delighted that it was the Commission on the Status of Women. I have been a member of the UN Advisory Committee for the Loretto/CJ Sisters NGO for the last 7 years and the focus of all the work of the NGO and the Sisters world-wide is to empower and educate women and girls.
As I listened to the many presentations, I found the statistics were overwhelming. Gender Equity will take 300 years to accomplish world-wide, women and girls are the most impacted by climate change and poverty, millions of girls are not in school as they are in war-torn countries or their cultures do not value education for girls as some examples.
They were overwhelming but that was not the message from the presenters and panelists. The message was one of progress and of hope! Hope in all the incredible stories, hope in progress noted by the voices on the ground, hope in the policies Governments were committed to changing to move down the path towards gender equity and hope in the realistic solutions that were being discussed.
One of the stories that was most powerful for me was one told by an Indian woman who worked in several rural Indian Communities. The women she worked with were farmers and they wanted/needed a bank account. However, because they were illiterate the bank was not allowing it. She talked about their courage, persistence and creative solutions like the use of biometrics (fingerprints) that eventually allowed them access to a banking card as “they could do numbers”. These communities are prospering as the bank card has created so many opportunities and has made the women feel so empowered. “Women do not prosper alone, they take their children with them”.
One of the key message I kept hearing was about the value, the critical importance of education in the role of making gender equity possible and to help women break out of the cycle of poverty. That is what our Sisters do world wide – educate and empower girls!!
There was a particular emphasis on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Education and especially for girls. As a Science teacher in all female schools, I know that we have always needed women to embrace Science, but now it is critical. 80% of the engineers/scientists in the world are men and as one speaker quoted “oranges can’t design products for lemons”.
One of the most disturbing examples I heard was the need for women in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I believed that most of the issues with AI were how AI is being used to deceive women, stalk them, cheat, doctor documents and/or smear campaigns. However, a researcher that works in partnership with UNESCO stated that it is critical that we women are designing the programs and algorithms as presently there is a bias against women and girls even in common applications such as Chat GPT. Women must be the engineers who change the algorithms to fairly include women and girls. We will never be able to change the systems without being the designers of these systems!
I am so grateful to Janet Palafox and the Loretto Sisters for giving me this incredible opportunity. I am grateful to my companions from across the world who shared this journey with me. I am grateful to all the Loretto and CJ Sisters who work tirelessly to empower women and girls so that systems, cultural norms and equal opportunities will change.
Author: Mary-Eileen Donovan, IBVM/CJ UN NGO Advisory Committee
