Explainer: Commission on the Status of Women and why it matters

ONU - 09/03
Ever since former US First Lady and human rights champion Eleanor Roosevelt inspired the first UN sub-commission on the status of women in the 1940s, thousands of women around the world meet at UN Headquarters in New York every March to take the pulse of the planet and make their voices heard.

The annual UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meets to address the widespread inequalities, violence and discrimination women continue to face around the world.

This year, the commission will gather at UN Headquarters in New York from 10 to 21 March.

Here are five things you need to know:

1. 80 years of changemakers

Days after the UN General Assembly’s inaugural meetings in 1946 heard Ms. Roosevelt read an open letter addressed to “the women of the world”, the work of the Commission began.

Ms. Roosevelt had called “on the Governments of the world to encourage women everywhere to take a more active part in national and international affairs and on women who are conscious of their opportunities to come forward and share in the work of peace and reconstruction as they did in war and resistance”.

The UN’s Economic and Social Affairs Commission (ECOSOC) promptly established a sub-commission. Its six members – China, Denmark, Dominican Republic, France, India, Lebanon and Poland – were tasked with assessing “problems relating to the status...
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