ipsnews.net - ROME, Jan 31 2017 (IPS) - “Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work” will provide concrete, practical and action-oriented recommendations that will cover significant new ground, on overcoming structural barriers to gender equality, gender-based discrimination and violence against women at work, a senior United Nations official stressed. Speaking at a consultation in preparation for the Commission on the Status of Women, a body exclusively dedicated to promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment, Lakshmi Puri, Deputy Executive Director of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), on Jan. 30 called for sustained commitment and leadership to ensure a successful outcome of the Commission.

“We are at an important [juncture] in the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment and women’s human rights,” she said.

Recalling the recent adoption of a number of far-reaching global commitments, such as Beijing+20 (the 20-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on climate change, the New Urban Agenda, and the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants, Puri added: