“Poverty globally has a woman’s face,” remembers António Guterres

The secretary general of the UN, Antonio Guterresrecalled this Monday that “the poverty “They generally have the face of a woman.”while among those in charge of combating it there is an overwhelming male majority: 8 out of 10 finance ministers and more than 9 out of 10 central bank governors are men.

Guterres thus drew attention to the situation of women in the world in the opening speech of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), this year in its 68th edition, which for two weeks brings together civil society organizations around the world to advance feminist causes.

The secretary general recalled that when talking about women’s rights “This is fundamentally a question of power,” and in that aspect he sees two worrying trends: first, that patriarchy is once again gaining ground at the hands of “autocrats and populists who attack women’s freedoms and reproductive rights in the name of a supposed tradition.”

And in parallel, digital technologies are creating “a worrying trend”, because these technologies are dominated by men at the executive and technical level, and “When systems are designed by men, they result in biased algorithms: women’s needs, their bodies and their basic rights are ignored,” Guterres warned.

“The Silicon Valleys of the world,” said the Secretary General graphically, “must make a massive effort to bridge the gender gap and guarantee the presence of women at the decision-making level,” he pointed out, referring to the centers where digital entrepreneurship is concentrated.

In order not to fall into the most absolute pessimism, Guterres said that the United Nations has ‘done its homework’ and that the presence of women in professional and executive categories has reached a historic high. 49.5%.

And “if the United Nations can do it, governments can too, banks can too, and everyone must do it,” he concluded.

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