Challenging the margin: Gender equality and the UN reform process

Abstract

In 2006 the Secretary General's High-Level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence called for a dynamic new gender entity led by an Under-Secretary General. The follow-up to this recommendation is still ongoing, leaving the UN gender machinery in its current fragmented and weakened state. This enduring dilemma has its origins in bureaucratic incoherence, lack of senior management support for UN gender equality efforts, the failure of member states to support the Beijing Platform for Action, the impact of conservative regimes, and recent US dominance over the UN reform process. Is a new women's agency, with increased authority, new staffing and significantly increased resources possible, or should transnational feminists seek to establish an autonomous women's agency outside the UN system to provide better leadership for gender equality efforts world-wide?