WSSD: FROM RIO TO JOHANNESBURG: WHAT’S GOOD FOR WOMEN IS GOOD FOR THE WORLD

Throughout the 1990s, several major United Nations conferences stressed the importance of including women in sustainable development. But despite these commitments on paper, there has been far too little action. Gender myopia—or blindness to women’s issues—still distorts environmental, economic, and health policies. Today, a full decade after the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, governments, development agencies, and even some NGOs remain resolutely patriarchal. Despite the widespread belief that women “have come a long way” in achieving improved social and economic status, they continue to face many of the same obstacles they did ten years ago. And in some cases, these problems have become even more formidable.