Gender, citizenship and inequalities

The Beijing Platform for Action and the CEDAW represent an important step in the affirmation of common values and of a shared opinion about gender equality for all human societies, regardless of their cultural and religious traditions. However, strong gender inequalities persist practically all over the world, as the four basic parameters -work, education, politics and health, which are used for the measurement of Gender Gap, the gender imbalance- indicate. The paper analyses the issue of gender equality versus persisting social and economic inequalities, taking into account an historical perspective, and focusing present problems. The paper raises a crucial question: is the persistence of sexism, discrimination, violence against women, the culmination of the resistances of religious institutions and conservative forces, undemocratic and authoritarian, or is it a consequence of the present World system, shaped by the dominating Western countries and their ideologies (namely market-centered ideologies) with their formal acceptation of democracy and of human rights