Abstract:

VIDEO#14: This video looks at progress in achieving greater equality for women--five years after the Beijing Conference on Women. Government delegations in Beijing pledged themselves to tackle increasing violence against women. But in South Africa, the police and judiciary still don't regard rape and domestic violence as serious crimes--with only one in 20 rapists receiving a conviction, and the punishment for wife-killing equal to that of fraud. In Lithuania, violence takes a more subtle form, with economic hardship forcing many young women into the hands of unscrupulous traffickers who sell women into the sex industry in Europe and the Far East. This program also analyzes the soaring rate of teenage pregnancies in Scotland, while aging populations in Brazil and the UK mean that more and more old people live out the final years of their lives in poverty.