Somersfield Academy Students Join UN Conference on Gender Equality

April 10, 2024

Eight DP1 students headed to the UN in March for the UNIS UN Conference on Gender Equality. The conferences took place over three days from the 18 – 20 of March in Manhattan at the UN General Assembly and at the United Nations International School. Over 30 schools from around the world including Japan, China, France, Mexico, Peru, Australia and South Korea participated in the conference adding a truly global flair to the events. Somersfield students participated in interactive workshops, debates, panel discussions and got the chance to listen to high-ranking diplomats speak about the efforts their countries are making to ensure greater gender equality. This included the Ambassador of Sweden, the Ambassador of Iceland, and the Ambassador of Malta.

Students in attendance from left to right: Javion Laws, Joshua Mildenhall, Ben Crofton, Carina Bortoli, Luc Campbell, Kennedy Kowalski, Nishika Bisht and Gabriella Teteina. Not shown: Kim Rose and Angus Shillitoe - chaperones.

Q&A question 1: How is your country working to advance gender equality?

Ambassador of Sweden: Sweden is one of the most equal countries in the world but despite this there is still a lot of work to be done. The focus for gender equality in Sweden is aimed at five specific areas, equal division of power and influence, economic equality for example we still see that there is a gap in salary in Sweden, equal education mainly when you look at higher up positions at universities, equal health, men’s violence against women as this is also an issue that several countries are trying to fix worldwide and not just in Sweden.

Ambassador of Iceland: Iceland is proud to be at the top of the list when it comes to fairness in terms of the gender pay gap however, us being at the top of that list doesn’t make up great let alone perfect. It means that nobody is doing better than us in this regard and the fact of the matter is that we all have to do better when it comes to the pay gap. Globally we know that we should be there in about six years but as we know given the current trajectory, we are reaching equal pay between men and women in about 300 years. This certainly needs to change locally and globally. I also would like to mention gender-based violence, this is an issue that needs to be taken care of. Especially during the Covid 19 pandemic there was a significant increase in domestic violence. To counter this challenge the Iceland government and introduced certain legislations and tried to raise awareness about it to our communities. We are really trying to engage men and boys in this fight against gender-based violence for obvious reasons but we really need all hands-on deck when it comes to this.

Based on the responses from the two countries’ respective representatives, the issue is supposed to be solved in six years. However, as stated the current trajectory means that countries globally are nowhere near close to hitting that goal. Even in Iceland where gender pay gap is at its smallest globally there is still a 10% difference between how much men are paid and between how much women are paid. That doesn’t even consider other countries that aren’t doing as well as Iceland in this regard. For example, in the USA the gender pay gap is a whopping 20%.

Q&A Question 2: How does your country support women’s participation in politics and decision-making roles?

Ambassador of Malta: Malta has done a lot. For quite a while now, we’ve had a legislation which has encouraged women to enter the work force. What we did was we passed laws for any woman who return to the work force after having taken a break to raise children would get one year tax holiday for every child they have had. We found that it was very successful. In meantime we have built up on this and we have free universal childcare in Malta, and we have free school transport in Malta. We have done this because we would prefer children to take school transport to school as opposed to using their actual cars. Because these things are now free it means parents are able to work more. For us when it comes to parental leave it doesn’t matter, either of the parents can take parental leave which is equal amongst themselves. It's not just for women, the parents can also divide the paternity leave should they wish to. The government has led by example to this and has a number of initiatives for it.

When it comes to politics, we have a huge problem when it comes to women and politics in Malta and in that regard have been very underrepresented. Because of that we introduced a law and because of this we now have more women in parliament and more women who are ministers. Were also very proud to say that two thirds of the parliamentarians in the European parliament are women.

By these laws with maternity leave being implemented in Malta it can potentially prevent stereotypes that after the birth of the baby the mother isn’t the one that has to stay home. Especially since in the majority of countries around the world fathers account for less than one in five of those taking paternity leave.

In terms of women being implemented further in Malta it sounds like they have had significant success with attempting to make government positions equal between men and women despite struggling with this for a significant period of time. Especially in the European parliament and not just in their own country.

Q&A question 3: How does Sweden’s maternity leave policies help promote women’s workforce participation?

Ambassador of Sweden: In 1974 Sweden was the first country in the world that changed maternity leave to parental leave, I think that goes for all three of our countries as we call it parental leave as opposed to maternity leave. In Sweden it's up to the parents. If one parent wants to take half of the leave, then it also has to be agreed upon by the other parent.

In Sweden we have a very generous parental leave, it is 420 days in total so its 210 days for each parent should they choose to split it equally.

When we started to agree on legislation for women’s empowerment in Sweden in the 70’s it was heavily built on economic incentive for the government to get women out on the labor market. We also needed to have more people on the labor market so the Swedish government decided to do two things, they decided to make both parents eligible for paternity leave and the second thing was up until 1974 if the woman worked her salary would be put above her husbands.

The main key point taken from the conference was that women need to be considered the same as men, as proven by the conference this is slowly becoming reality. However, it has also showed how the current trajectory is still not enough come six years from now especially in terms of the pay gap between the two genders. In six years from now the aim is that women should have the same salary as men but as stated by the minister of Iceland, the amount of progress currently being made is enough for that to be the case in about 300 years.

Even in Iceland where this issue is at its best there is still a significant 10% gap between how much the genders get paid. This was the key taking point of the conference as it shows that a difference is beginning to be made, however, it still isn’t enough given the current trajectory.

Students also had the opportunity to take in the sights of New York, by attending a Broadway show, the spy museum and got the chance to see a Brooklyn Nets game. Each day was jammed packed with activities and lots of walking!