Women's Health and Sustainable Development
Women's Health and Sustainable Development
As the UN welcomed in 2015, they announced some ambitious goals. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said that “the empowerment and rights of girls and women must be at the heart of everything we do”; a statement that resonates with the goals that the UN has come up with.
However, as these plans are starting to be implemented, there is one very obvious concern: in all seventeen draft goals, women’s health is barely mentioned. The problem with this is that gender equality, education equality, and women’s reproductive rights are very central topics that arise when implementing these, now seemingly idealistic, goals. Even though it seems as though a lot of progress has been made, 74 million unplanned pregnancies and 20 million unsafe abortions still occur each year. It took me by surprise that these UN senators couldn’t realize that women’s health was at the center of it all, that they seemingly chose not to acknowledge the fact that women’s rights should and need to be a priority. People should know that in order to achieve broad goals like, “ending poverty”, the UN has to achieve smaller tasks like ensuring equitable education and accomplishing reproductive rights for every woman. Obtaining “rights” for women entails complete reproductive rights, education equity, and defeating obstacles such as gender mutilation, oppressive behavior, and other crises.
It seems that until the UN recognizes the strides for women’s rights that still have to be achieved, there won’t be much to say regarding all these broad, visionary-eque goals. Until all the women in the world have been able to obtain their rights, there really isn’t any further progress that can be made, it needs to be understood that women are entitled to fundamental human rights.
Prathusha Yeruva hails from the Great Lake state and is currently a sophomore at Troy Athens High School. She has an interest in biology and journalism, as well as in female empowerment. She founded a She's the First chapter at her high school (an organization that sponsors girls' education in the developing world), and that opportunity has definitely given her a more developed lens on women's issues globally. In addition to writing for Her Culture, she also writes for the women's issues column at She Speaks Media. She challenges herself academically with AP classes, participates in a wide variety of clubs, and values her Indian culture. In her free time, Prathusha drinks an abundance of coffee, listens to indie bands, and uses ampersands & parentheses excessively. She's so excited to be writing for Her Culture!