The 25-year anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPFA) will be celebrated in 2020. It provides an opportunity for feminists across the globe to review state action and compliance in the implementation of the BPFA. It also provides an opportunity for governments and NGOs to exchange and report the status of fender equality, in particular the effects on women’s human rights under the context of uneven development, economic exploitation, gender-based violence, sex work and sexual minorities.
We attended the CSO Forum and Asia-Pacific Intergovernmental Ministerial Conference between 24 and 29 November 2019. We were able to conduct a workshop on carers and shared the situation of carers in Hong Kong to the international community. In fact, the situation of unpaid care work has received raising international attention, especially in developing countries, lots of women become unpaid caress or cheap labour. Due to traditional norms and gender stereotypes, women shoulder the majority of unpaid care work than men do and their contribution is not recognized. Representatives of organizations attending our workshop agreed that the contribution of unpaid care work should be recognized, and their work value should be counted in GDP as one of the economic contributions. The CSO Forum ended the meeting by calling for governments to act immediately to reduce, redistribute and recognize unpaid care work. Moreover, social security, public services, education, research and institutional reform should be introduced to improve the current situation of carers.
In the future, we will be more active in the international and regional community in order to facilitate changes in Hong Kong for the advancement of women.