Women leaders, UN call for full gender equality

SANTIAGO, Feb. 28-- More than 60 global women leaders Saturday called for stronger measures to achieve full gender equality by 2030 at a UN women meeting closed in Santiago, Chile's capital.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon concluded the two-day gathering by signing a document entitled "Call to Action."

"Women and men are called to speed up the changes to achieve full equality, not in seven or eight decades, but sooner," said Bachelet in her closing remarks at the high-level conference on "Women in Power and Decision-making."

The conference was aimed to find ways to speed up progress on the goals defined at the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. Ban said that the world will never fulfill 100 percent of its potential by excluding 50 percent of its population, adding that "now is the time to take a stand to close gaps, to remove obstacles" and "to invest in women and girls."

The "Call to Action" called on renewed political commitment to close remaining gaps and fully implement the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action by 2020.

It also called for empowerment of women, the realization of human rights of women and girls, the expiry of gender inequality by 2030, and an end to the "funding gap" of gender inequality.

The signed document also pointed out that at the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, more than 75 years to reach equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value, and more than 30 years to reach gender balance in decision-making.