Welcome remarks of UN Resident Coordinator in Georgia, Louisa Vinton, at the celebration of International Women's Day 2019 in the Parliament of Georgia

8 March 2019

Parliament of Georgia 

Dear Madame Deputy Speaker

Dear Head of the National Democratic Institute

Members of Parliament, civil society representatives, ladies and gentlemen

• I’d like to thank the organizers – the Gender Equality Council, NDI, UKaid and the British Embassy – for the kind invitation to speak in this distinguished venue on this important day.

• And let me start by salute the First Deputy Speaker for her decision to focus the work of the Gender Equality Council this year on the issue of women’s empowerment.

• To me this issue is arguably the core challenge of gender equality, and also its key solution.

• I’d also like to welcome this use of Parliament’s new powers to launch inquiries as a powerful tool that can amplify the voices of those demanding swifter progress on the gender equality agenda.

• At the UN, as you know, gender equality is a top priority. We are proud that one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals – #5 – is devoted to this quest.

• And we are delighted that Georgia has, along with all the other UN member states, committed to the ambitious goal of “achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls” by the year 2030.

• The Gender Equality Council, the Parliament and all our many other partners can count on the unstinting support of the entire UN family in this effort, whether through advocacy, research and analysis, policy advice or hands-on implementation.

• At UNDP we are particularly pleased with the results of our vocational training programs in Kakheti and Samegrelo-Zemo Svaneti, where 68 percent of the 4,000 women we trained went on to find jobs. But clearly there is still a lot to be done.

• Although Georgia has made admirable legislative progress towards equality and empowerment – thanks in large part to the determination and skill of the Gender Equality Council and its Chairperson – we all know we have a long way to go to translate equality on paper into equality in practice.

• We also know that Georgia is a country bursting with female talent, female potential, female ingenuity.

• At the “Tech4Equality” event that we helped to organize on Tuesday we heard inspiring success stories from the field of science, technology, engineering and math, from the astrophysicist who heads the country’s observatory at Abastumani, to the banker who created a web-based business selling home-delivered fresh farm products, to the microbiologist who paints dazzling pictures with bacteria.

• These are great individual stories, but we all know that, if we look at averages, it’s not so encouraging.

• What are the economic realities that women in Georgia face?

• First, a gender wage gap of 36 percent, if you compare average monthly salaries. This means that, on average, women have to work five months longer to earn what men do, again on average, in a year.

• Second, stereotypes and prejudices that lead to rigid segregation by occupation.

• For example, only 12 percent of those employed in the STEM fields – again, that’s science, technology, engineering and math – in Georgia are women.

• And third, radical disparity in the share of the homework and childcare that is performed for free.

• The net results are discouraging: an 18-percentage-point gap in economic participation rates; a 14-percentage-point gap in employment rates; and a big gap in terms of disposable income.

• It is not much consolation that Georgia is by no means the only country in this position.

• A new ILO study released today shows that women have made only tiny, marginal advances in the global labor market over the past three decades.

• Even though – as is the case here in Georgia – they tend to be better educated than their male counterparts, they receive no economic dividend for that seeming advantage.

• Moreover, the pace of change at home is glacial.

• In the last 20 years, ILO reports, the amount of time women spent on unpaid care and domestic work has hardly fallen, while men’s participation has increased by just eight minutes a day.

• At this rate it will take more than 200 years to achieve equality in time spent in unpaid care work.

• This is a shame, and we have every right to feel discouraged.

• But I think we should also be feeling angry and militant.

• Science is on our side here, since there is a host of new evidence to demonstrate that gender equality is not just the right thing to do, but also a very, very smart thing.

• Study after study shows that empowering women is a sure-fire recipe for both economic growth and profitable business.

• Expanding women’s participation, quite simply, delivers huge dividends.

• According to the IMF, for example, closing gender gaps in the labor force could lift some economies by as much as 35 percent of GDP.

• The estimated gain for Georgia stands at 11.3 percent. This is a rich dividend, indeed.

• This is not just simple arithmetic, of driving growth by adding more people to the economy, but rather about the abundant benefits of drawing on the new and different skills that women bring.

• There is also ample evidence that a more diverse workplace – and a more diverse boardroom – makes for a more profitable company.

• The flip side of this argument is also powerful.

• By failing to advance on gender equality in the economy, we are losing a competitive edge.

• We are wasting potential on a massive scale.

• So on this special day and on every day, let’s pledge to stop selling women short and instead work together to build a society that draws on 100 percent of its brains and 100 percent of its heart.

Thank you for your attention, and happy International Women’s Day!