Violence against women, child marriage, and discriminatory laws are ever-prevailing issues, and “we are failing to achieve gender equality goals as a global society,” Rathika Sitsabaiesan, founding member of the Canadian non-profit, Immigrant Women in Business (IWB), said last week at an event at Toronto City Hall.
The IWB event marked the end of Gender Equality Week and highlighted Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5), one of the 17 goals set by the United Nations in 2015. SDG 5’s aim is “to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.”
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According to the SDG 5 report for 2024, the world is still falling behind in achieving gender equality by 2030. Statistics show that within the last five years, only 56 legal reforms across 120 countries were implemented that focused on removing discriminatory laws and creating jurisdictions with gender equality in mind.
From legislature to executive boards, women continue to face major challenges in reaching leadership roles. The United Nations notes that, as of January 2024, women held 26.9 per cent of seats in national parliaments — an increase of only 4.6 per cent since 2015. Meanwhile, it estimates that, at the current rate, it will take another 176 years to achieve parity for women in management positions.
That’s an issue, Sitsabaeisan said at the event, as “women are the glue that holds societies together.”
“We live in a very patriarchal society where women’s voices are quashed,” she said. “Women don’t have as many rights as men do, even their own bodily autonomy.”
IWB CEO Svetlana Ratnikova said the organization was built with the goal of helping newcomers and women immigrating to Canada gain access to opportunities through networking events.
“For me, gender equality is the celebration of human rights, freedom and equal opportunities in every aspect of life,” said Ratnikova, who is herself an immigrant from Russia. It’s “the chance to execute [your] full potential and contribute the most possible.”
IWB has over 80 founding members representing over 80 countries.
“It’s important as a global society… that we have equal representation in public places, like our parliament or national houses of legislature,” said Sitsabaeisan, an ethnic Tamil who represents Canada within IWB. She said it’s important that women “have an equal voice in building and developing our societies.”
This marks the seventh annual IWB event since the passing of the Gender Equality Week Act, which became law in June 2018.
This was Seema Ali’s first time attending. As an international student from Trinidad and Tobago who immigrated to Toronto with her husband and two teenagers last year, Ali says these events are a great way for like-minded people, who share similar goals, to come together to inspire one another.
“[It’s about] women encouraging women, women encouraging girls,” she said.
Nicole is a Toronto-based reporter for On The Record.
