Equality for Economic Progress

Head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New Zealander Helen Clark, said the UN must not backtrack on women’s reproductive rights and that women must have access to health services. Speaking in New York at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March, Clark said: “The thing is not to go backwards on the language reached at [1994’s International Conference on Population and Development in] Cairo.” “The thing is for women to be able to have choices over their lives. They need what is specifically in millennium goal 5b: access to reproductive health [services] … Without that we won’t see women enjoying equal status.” “Inequality drags a whole society down,” she said. “Inequality is bad for economic progress.”