By IANS,
New York : Brazilian football star Marta Vieira da Silva, a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has said women not only play lead roles on the field but also in families, schools and the workplace.
On the sidelines of the ongoing FIFA Women’s World Cup, Marta said women’s participation in public and private life can help the UN achieve its Millennium Development Goals (MDG).
The UNDP campaign aims to raise awareness and support for achieving the MDGs, eight internationally agreed targets set 10 years ago and aimed at reducing poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation by 2015.
Despite high profile advances, women still make up only 19 percent of legislators and less than 10 percent of world leaders. They continue to earn less than men when they do the same work and, in many countries, have unequal access to land and inheritance rights.
“The strength, industry and wisdom of women remain humanity’s greatest untapped resource. Only through women’s full and equal participation in public and private life can we hope to break poverty cycles and achieve the MDGs,” said Marta in a statement.
Marta, winner of FIFA’s annual Women’s World Player award for the five years between 2006 and 2010, will also reach out to individuals and communities around the world through UNDP Twitter and Facebook networks to call for advances in women’s empowerment.
Marta was appointed a UNDP goodwill ambassador in October 2010 to promote the MDGs with a special emphasis on the gender dimension of poverty. She joined an elite group of UNDP Goodwill Ambassadors, which includes soccer stars Ronaldo, Zidane and Didier Drogba, Japanese actress Misako Konno, Crown Prince Haakon Magnus of Norway, Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova, Spanish football goalkeeper Iker Casillas, and Spanish actor Antonio Banderas.