UN Women is the United Nations entity created in July, 2010 dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women.
Objective
UN Women supports UN Member States as they set global standards for achieving gender equality, and works with governments and civil society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to ensure that the standards are effectively implemented and truly benefit women and girls worldwide.
Focus Areas
Basically it focuses on 4 strategic areas - ensuring women participation in governance system, ensuring decent income and work security to women, ending all forms of violence against women and ensuring women involvement in preventing natural/manmade disasters.
Functions
It could be categorized into as following-
To support inter-governmental bodies, such as the Commission on the Status of Women, in their formulation of policies, global standards and norms.
To help Member States implement these standards, standing ready to provide suitable technical and financial support to those countries that request it, and to forge effective partnerships with civil society.
To lead and coordinate the UN system’s work on gender equality, as well as promote accountability, including through regular monitoring of system-wide progress.
UN Women office in New Delhi looks after the co-ordination and addressing women issues in 4 countries – India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka.
It publishes Women in Politics report, which ranks countries on the basis of women participation in national parliament. As per latest report (2019), with 12.6 % women participation in parliament India is ranked 149th/191 countries.
