This year’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is focused on ‘the empowerment of rural women and girls’. It is the first time Ireland has chaired the Commission and it presents an opportunity not only to help forge a more ambitious plan of action to support the empowerment of women and girls in rural contexts, but to do so with knowledge gained from a very broad range of experience in this area.
The Consortium believes that understanding the relationship between addressing GBV and the empowerment of rural women and girls must be central to the outcomes of this year’s CSW session and consortium members’ experience of programming in rural areas provides crucial insight and learning in this area.
The Consortium worked with Dr. Aising Swaine, Assistant Professor of Gender and Security at the Department of Gender Studies on the development of a policy brief which explores these issues GBV in relation to rural women and girls overall inequality. The policy brief describes key approaches and learning for addressing GBV through empowerment programming in rural areas, through examples from the work of members of the ICGBV. It shows that the theme of this year’s CSW is fitting and timely as the rural context often puts women and girls at an increased risk of GBV.
