Chris Stephen: Women of the world unite – one tiny step at a time

The Women's Agency will have an under-secretary as its chief, second only to the secretary-general in terms of political seniority, and a hefty budget to fight against the myriad forms of discrimination that affects one-half of the human race.

But, this being the UN, there is a small problem: this new agency has been born without teeth.

There is no shortage of discrimination around the world; women and girls go without every right you care to mention across great swaths of the planet. Despite big strides in equality in recent years, half a million women a year die in childbirth, and of those states that allow parliaments, fewer than a fifth of the members are female.

But the new agency, in a sop to the tyrannies among the UN membership, has no brief to shame offending states. Even a more timid option, a simple check-list of which states infringe which rights, is conspicuously absent from the agency's agenda.

Instead, it will concentrate on providing advice and assistance to women trying to better themselves. In the words of Harriet Harman, UK minister for women and equality, visiting the UN this week, "its main ability will be to empower the women, for the UN to be on their side".

That is fine as far as it goes, which, in the case of many oppressor states, is not very far at all.

In fact, this brave new initiative risks going the way of the Human Rights Council, supposedly the guardian of the UN's most important document, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The council was formed in 2005, but has failed even to consider most of the world's human rights violators – for the simple reason that many of them are among its membership.

This same problem hovers over the Women's Agency. Yes, all manner of goodies and advice will be available to women's groups around the world wanting to "empower" themselves – but not if their own governments say no.

Rights groups are well aware of the problem. "Progress is going to depend on political will," says Marianne Mollmann, of Human Rights Watch. "There are cases where you are banging your head against the wall because a particular government doesn't care what other countries think."

And there's the rub. If the Afghan government insists on its women wearing burkas, or certain other regimes are comfortable with women adulterers being stoned to death, the under-secretary will be powerless to help – and disinclined to do so, for fear of offending the member states who pay her wages.

Does that make the whole exercise an expensive waste of time? Not entirely. For one thing, the agency will be able to pool resources, and programmes, that were in the past spread around four separate UN agencies.

This, perhaps, explains the optimism that hovers around the UN this week as it holds a session of its Commission on the Status of Women. Rights activists remember that it has taken 15 years to turn the promise of this agency, made at a conference in Beijing, into tangible reality. To say process has been glacial is a disservice to glaciers.

But these groups know also that glass ceilings are best tackled not by trying to smash them with a sledgehammer but by chipping away, one tiny piece at a time.

And while the new under-secretary will have no fangs, she will at least have a voice. If the right candidate is chosen (by no means a certainty, this being the UN), she will have the chance to roar, turning the spotlight of publicity on to some of the more egregious examples of sexual discrimination.

So perhaps it is time, if not for fireworks, then at least to raise a glass to the UN, which has finally decided to take seriously the world's most widespread form of discrimination. Progress may be slow, but at least it is heading in the right direction.

Chris Stephen is a New York-based correspondent for The Scotsman.