Ensuring bodily autonomy is key for empowering women and girls, speakers say at regional UNFPA conference in Skopje

Ensuring bodily autonomy is key for achieving gender equality and for unlocking the full potential of women and girls in the region, speakers said at the opening of a high-level event organized by UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, together with the Spouse of the President of North Macedonia and under the auspices of the President.

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The Power of Choice: Realizing Bodily Autonomy for Women and Girls

The high-level region conference “The Power of Choice: Realizing Bodily Autonomy for Women and Girls” is organized by UNFPA and North Macedonia under the Action Coalition to offer a space for revisiting the commitments made in the region and developing a regional agenda for progress towards ensuring women’s bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

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Melting the ice of gender stereotypes in Georgia

Georgia decided to make engaging men a priority in efforts to achieve gender equality. Now, social norms around the roles of men and women in childcare and the household have begun to shift. “It may seem unbelievable that a single campaign has been able to achieve so much,” said Giorgi Liparishvili, a 37-year-old teacher from Georgia. “It started to melt the ice of gender stereotypes and warm the relationship between fathers and children.”

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Family-friendly workplace policies help parents in Moldova reconcile work and family duties

In the Republic of Moldova, the government and private sector have introduced a range of family-friendly policies to make it easier for women and men to reconcile career and family duties. Such policies are not only powerful tools to shift discriminatory gender norms and redistribute unpaid care work, they also make it easier to tackle the effects of demographic change.

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Regional Cervical Cancer Prevention Alliance Forum opens in Tbilisi with calls for greater progress in ending region’s second most deadly women’s cancer

TBILISI, 28 September 2023 – Greater efforts are needed to end cervical cancer in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, participants said today in Tbilisi at the opening of the 3rd Forum Meeting of the Regional Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention hosted by UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, and the Government of Georgia. Cervical cancer is the second most deadly cancer among women of reproductive age in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Although the disease is largely preventable, 32,000 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year, and 16,000 die. Cervical cancer takes a high emotional, social, and financial toll on women, their families, and national health systems.

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