The parliamentary event at the 61st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status  of Women (CSW) will be held in New York on 17 March  2017. The event, entitled Empowering  parliaments to empower women; Making the economy work for women, is hosted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the United  Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).  
  The event will focus on the paramount role  parliaments can play in identifying and addressing obstacles to women’s  economic empowerment, in ensuring that social and economic policies answer men  and women’s needs, and in monitoring their implementation and actual impact.  
  The morning session will focus on measures to lift the  barriers to women’s economic empowerment.  It will look in particular at how discrimination in  customary and legal norms related to marriage, inheritance, land, property and  personal status, and the lack of measures to combat violence against women,  constitute major obstacles to women’s economic empowerment and how to tackle them. 
  Two sessions will take place in the afternoon. The  first, on empowering women at work, will focus, among other items, on what  policies have proven most useful in ensuring gender equality at work and addressing sexual harassment; what policies, laws and programmes can best contribute to  sharing unpaid care work more equally among men and women. The second  session will focus on parliaments’ role in promoting the financial inclusion of women, including but not limited to,  contributing to mapping out women’s needs; regulating the financial  sector and ensuring that a gender perspective is applied in the design and  implementation of fiscal and budget policies.  
  Finally, the meeting will provide an  opportunity to contribute to the debates at the CSW whose priority theme this  year is “Women’s  economic empowerment in the changing world of work”.  
  N.B.     The  ECOSOC Chamber has interpretation facilities and interpretation in Arabic,  English, French and Spanish will be provided. 
  In addition to the parliamentary meeting, the IPU is organizing in the following side events: 
  
  
  
  
 
  
  N.B.     The conference rooms do not have  interpretation facilities and these side events will be held in English only. 
  We are also launching the 2017 edition of the Women in Politics map at a press conference on 15 March, 12:15 to 12:45, at the News Conference Room, UN Secretariat Building, United Nations Headquarters, New York.  |