INTERNATIONAL: For World's Women, Some Highs and Many Lows

The practice of female genital mutilation is declining, but violence against women is still rampant across the world. More women are taking up work traditionally done by men, but they still don't have access to jobs of status and power.

Two U.N. reports, out this week, describe some progress for women in areas such as poverty, education, health and work. But on the whole women still far short of men in many measures of success.

"In some areas such as primary education the gaps are almost nonexistent," said Srdjan Mrkic, a senior U.N. official behind the report, noting that global enrollment for boys and girls in primary schools is now equal.

"When it comes to other areas, the gap is significant and in some cases formidable," he said. "In some countries, the salaries of women are always lower than that of men for exactly the same occupation."

World's Women 2010, a version of a report that comes out every five years, was released Wednesday to mark World Statistics Day with the message that the availability of comprehensive data is key to changing policy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, another senior U.N. official, said that in 2005 it was found that 41 percent of countries in sub-Saharan Africa had not conducted a census for more than three decades.

"The information that we really have is quite weak and quite poor," he said.

On the work front, this year's report finds that from 1990 to 2010, women's participation in the labor market has steadily increased but declined for men, leading to a slight narrowing of the gender gap.

"Relative to their overall share of total employment, women are significantly underrepresented among legislators, senior officials and managers, craft and related trades work. ... They are heavily overrepresented among clerks, professionals, and service and sale workers," it said.

Although women have overtaken men in higher education, according to the study, women account for two-thirds of the world's 774 million illiterate adults, a proportion unchanged for the past two decades.

The goal of the U.N. is to achieve equality between women and men in all the social and economic spheres, but Sundaram pointed out that some problems are standalone challenges for women, such as reducing maternal mortality.

While women remain poorer and less educated than men, the report also contained some positive developments. Female genital mutilation, for instance, viewed as "the most harmful mass perpetration of violence against women," is declining.

But at the same time, in many regions of the world, customs force a high percentage of women to accept being beaten by their husbands for the most trivial reasons, the U.N. said, citing examples like not cooking the food well, going out without the husband's permission or arguing with him.

A second report, also released Wednesday, tells the stories of women impacted by rape and violence in regions that have endured some of the deadliest conflicts and natural disasters.

The objective behind compiling these stories, from different parts of the world including Liberia, Nepal, Uganda and Haiti, is to call for concerted action to protect women against sexual violence and empower women to deal with it.

"The report also shows that when women and girls suffer deep discrimination, they are more vulnerable to sexual violence and less likely to contribute to peace-building, potentially undermining long-term recovery," said Richard Kollodge, editor of the report.

One story shows a woman who was raped in the town of Foca in Bosnia, where Serbian forces carried out ethnic cleansing and mass rapes targeting Muslims and Croats in 1992.

"The horror that humans can inflict ... [is] unimaginable," Enisa Salcinovic said. "The agony that women suffer is unbelievable."

Salcinovic, a 37-year-old with two children at the time, was held in a rape camp. A video shows her returning to the scene of the crime where she breaks down and recalls, "There were mats laid out ... here there were hundreds of women. ... I remember it, I was with three women inside that room."

Nearly two decades after the atrocities against them were committed, 80 percent of wartime rape victims suffer psychological and physical symptoms, according to the report.

"Even as time goes by, I have more and more of an ache in my heart," said Salcinovic, who now heads the Association of Concentration Camp Torture Survivors in Bosnia, which provides support to victims and monitors their health.

Barbara Crossette, author of the report, told journalists that Bosnia stood out because of the "persistence of the distress and the trauma ... 15 years after many of these women were assaulted."

"It is interesting that in Europe in the 21st century they haven't dealt with this problem yet," she said.