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An international team of IPS-TerraViva journalists is at the 54th session of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), reporting on global efforts toward democracy and human development through the empowerment of women.

The Beijing +15 daily electronic IPS-TerraViva includes analyses of the latest developments from our team in New York, as well as gender stories from the global IPS Gender Wire. Fifteen years after the Beijing World Conference on Women, IPS remains committed to daily in-depth reporting on progress achieved and challenges facing women and girls.

Promoting Women Is Simply Good Business
By Sabina Zaccaro
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9 (IPS/TerraViva) Companies with women in leadership positions are reporting a measurable boost to their bottom lines, but they are still a minority in the world’s business community.

RIGHTS: Fewer Jobs, Less Money, Same Old Story
By Haider Rizvi
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – ‘What do I get from them? Nothing but bullsh*t, says Nupur Acharya, reflecting about how she is treated by her husband and two grown sons on daily basis.

CAMBODIA: Rape Victims Need Better Protection from New Penal Code
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – Cambodia’s new penal code, which comes into force later this year, should be accompanied by stronger law enforcement measures if the country’s women and girls are to be better protected from rape, says the global rights lobby Amnesty International (AI).

DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Water Woes Fall on Women’s Shoulders
By Feizal Samath
COLOMBO, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – As a wife of a rice farmer and mother of two children aged nine and two, Sanjeevani Bandara’s days are packed with chores. Yet while she used to be able to keep up with all she has to do in a day, this Sri Lankan mother now finds herself struggling to accomplish even the most basic tasks.

Should Motherhood Mean No Family Planning?
By Armin Rosen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 8 (IPS/TerraViva) On Monday, the Commission on the Status of Women took a two-hour break from the Secretariat Building’s main conference room while the Iranian, Syrian, Nigerian, Qatari and Saint Lucian delegations used the cavernous meeting hall for a parallel event on Recognising the Critical Role of Mothers in Society – an event that has turned out to be one of the more controversial meetings related to the two-week-long Commission.

MALAWI: Patrilineal Inheritance Prevents Women’s Access to Land
By Claire Ngozo
LILONGWE, Mar 9, 2010 (IPS) – Mercy Gondwe, 51, from Rumphi in northern Malawi, was married for 34 years. When her husband died in 2008, she assumed she would inherit the land they had been cultivating together since they got married. But this was not the case.

From our blog – Gender Masala

Gender Matters! Can the UN bring change?
Guest Blogger Wendy Harcourt on Beijing +15
Well, two predictions of mine are bearing out. First, the chaos of organising such a large meeting led to some people queuing for five to eight hours to register for the official CSW meeting. On the bright side, such long waiting times did mean unplanned networking and a sense of solidarity among the thousands of participants despite the indignity of it all. It also led to the absurdity of one of the key speakers of an official opening panel failing to get in to speak because she was stuck in a queue.

TerraViva is the family of independent periodicals published by IPS-Inter Press Service – Global News Agency. The TerraViva Beijing +15 is part of the IPS programme Communicating for Change: Getting Voice, Visibility and Impact for Gender Equality (http://www.ips.org/mdg3). The IPS cast of stories includes independent coverage financed through the Dutch Government’s MDG3 Fund: Investing in Equality, and through the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).