Equality Commission NI travels to Geneva to discuss women's issues

Q Newsdesk

The Equality Commission says the UK Government needs to be held to account over the lack of progress on women's rights in Northern Ireland.

Delegates will be in Geneva for the next two days discussing the issue with the UN Committee for the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

It comes ahead of a formal examination on how Westminster is meeting its responsibilities under the convention.

Roisin Mallon is a Senior Policy Officer at the Commission:

She continued:

“We have been talking to women across Northern Ireland over the past year,”

“We have been listening to their views on issues which affect their lives most directly, and on which they want urgent action taken."

"A number of issues of concern have come through strongly and we are stressing them in our submission to the Committee,”

These include :

·The lower level of legal protection against sex discrimination for women in Northern Ireland, compared with elsewhere in the United Kingdom. These significant gaps and weaknesses in our gender equality laws need to be urgently addressed.

·The potential negative impact on women’s equality following Brexit. There must be commitments to no regression in women’s equality rights, to keep pace with any future enhancement of those rights and to mitigate the impact of any loss of EU funding.

·The under-representation of women in political life - at Westminster, the Assembly and local government - as well as in public life and economic decision-making roles generally. We need effective targeted action plans to deal with this. 

·Major inequalities experienced by women in the workplace. Sex discrimination and harassment and unfair treatment of pregnant workers and mothers persists. Gender pay gap legislation has still not been implemented and there is still a lack of affordable childcare in Northern Ireland. 

·Issues within education, where Government must take action to tackle gender stereotypes, address the under-representation of girls in STEM subjects and prevent gender based bullying.

(Roisin Mallon)

“These are just some of the urgent issues which women from all sectors of life and all regions in Northern Ireland have been telling us about over the past year,”

"I will be pressing the members of the UN Committee to put searching questions to the UK Government about how it intends to tackle them."

"The UN Committee’s role is to hold Governments to account for the commitments they have made under the Convention. We believe that urgent action is needed on all of the issues we will be raising in Geneva."