Globalization is with us and has an impact on our daily life at home and at work. Some new opportunities have opened up but also new challenges. Progress has remained uneven and patchy, and far from sustained. For many ordinary men and women globalization is experienced as heightened insecurity, uncertainty and marginalization. The magnitude of poverty remains staggering and income inequalities have widened both within and between countries.
Women continue to represent the majority of the world's poor.
All women are working women but much of their work is more commonly unpaid than men's, or is not even considered as work at all and therefore is not valued and remains invisible in official statistics. Women are over-represented in the more precarious categories of employment, as well as among the unemployed. They bear the brunt of the social costs and human sufferings at time of economic crisis and armed conflict. So, Madam Chair, addressing all these multi-faceted inequalities and accelerate the implementation of the Beijing PFA in today's rapidly globalizing economy is indeed a daunting task. But together we must make it.