UN Women, created in July 2010, is the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. As part of the UN reform agenda, UN Women brings resources and mandates for both normative and programmatic actions for women’s issues globally. UN Women aims to eliminate discriminatory norms and to set global standards for achieving gender equality. To implement these standards, UN Women works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programs, and services and launches many global campaigns that aim to energize women’s participation in all aspects of life. UN Women concentrates on five priority areas: increasing women’s leadership and participation; ending violence against women; engaging women in all aspects of peace and security processes; enhancing women’s economic empowerment; and making gender equality central to national development planning and budgeting.
How Does UN Women Work?
As part of its mandate, UN Women supports Member States in setting gender equality norms through conducting research and implementing country programs to inform intergovernmental debates and decisions. UN Women supports intergovernmental forums to debate and seeks agreement on gender equality and the empowerment of women at global, regional, and national levels. Together with Member States, UN Women provides impetus for adopting and enhancing laws, policies and programs that bring about equality between women and men.
UN Women helps strengthen effective UN action at all levels, bolstering capacities for gender equality central to programs and policies, advocating for greater resources, and implementing joint development programs.
Moreover, UN Women offers training courses for gender equality and women’s empowerment as an essential process to achieve individual and collective transformation towards gender equality. By raising awareness, encouraging learning and knowledge, and building skills and development, UN Women’s training for gender equality helps women and men to understand the gender roles and to acquire the knowledge necessary for advancing gender equality in their daily lives and work.
Another important component of UN Women is its program and technical assistance to government and non-governmental partners. Civil society organizations’ engagement with UN Women plays a vital role in promoting gender equality, women’s rights/empowerment, which UN Women helps, find additional opportunities for civil society to engage around key women’s issues on the global agenda. UN women supports civil society participation in a number of intergovernmental processes and major international conferences, as well as provides grants to fuel effective programs by civil society groups through UN Women Trust Funds – the Fund for Gender Equality and the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women.
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