UN: A feminist United Nations?
In January 2020, the Feminist UN Campaign, a coalition of women’s rights and human rights organisations, issued its third annual report card on current UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in which it assessed his work to build a more feminist UN, including by promoting feminist leadership, enabling transparent and accountable financing for gender equality and strengthening women’s rights institutions and forums. The awarded grade, B-, recognised the UN chief’s feminist commitment while highlighting the limited progress achieved.
Most advances so far have been piecemeal. They have been important and have achieved significant progress, but also face limitations due to the fact that not so much effort has been put into targeting the multidimensional and intersecting nature of the forms of discrimination that affect women. Moving forward, all efforts towards gender equality and social change must be built upon understandings of intersectionality, transformation and power-shifting.
Lyric Thompson
