PARIS, France (AFP) – Despite gains in women’s rights and the increasing role of women in the workplace, female social and economic equality remained an elusive dream in many countries as the world marked international Women’s Day yesterday.

But US first lady Laura Bush said in Washington that even in the Middle East, where women’s freedoms by Western standards are among the most curtailed in the world, there was hope of a better future.

“All people who love freedom hope that we are witnessing the start of a new era of expanding liberty and growing opportunity for women worldwide,” she said at a meeting with leaders from 15 Muslim nations.

Several thousand women, who began a symbolic march in the Brazialian city of Sao Paulo in support of a charter of equal rights, argued however that the gender revolution has passed many women by, leaving them trapped by exploitation, oppression and violence.

The march was expected to proceed in relays through 50 countries before reaching Burkina Faso, a poor African country that offers minimal protection for women.

Throughout the world, women run the risk of becoming domestic punching bags. But they are also “primary victims of war crimes”, said Iran’s Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi.

In many regions they face a huge danger of torture and rape, according to the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), and then are denied justice or are even blamed for the crimes committed against them.

After reporting rape and other violence against women and girls in Bangladesh, Colombia, Greece, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Sudan last year, the Geneva-based organisation said yesterday: “In none of these documented cases, were the perpetrators punished. In most of these cases, the perpetrators were not even arrested and in many cases no inquiry was opened.”

At the same time, Human Rights Watch said government troops and rebel fighters have raped tens of thousands of women and girls in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Sexual violence has shattered tens of thousands of lives in Congo, but fewer than a dozen victims have seen their assailants prosecuted,” said Alison Des Forges of HRW’s Africa division.

In Kinshasa, a leading lawyer said the country’s decrepit judicial system is unable to afford any protection and actually discourages women from pressing charges against their attackers. Sylvestre Bisimwa, who runs an association offering free legal advice to rape victims, denounced what he called a culture of impunity in the country.

The World Organisation Against Torture said many victims of sexual abuse do not report the crimes due to shame and fear of reprisals. In some societies the victims of sexual violence are threatened with expulsion from their home and community, or even risk being killed or subjected to further violence by members of their own family or community, it said.

Penalties including flogging and stoning, particularly prevalent under religious law systems, are applied in a disproportionate manner against women, principally under laws outlawing adultery and sexual relations outside marriage, according to the report.

Even where women’s rights are theoretically enshrined in formal texts, they are seldom equal in deed. In Egypt, for example, the ever-growing number of veiled women and the rise of conservative Islamic value belie the equality provided by the constitution.

Many laws continue to discriminate against women, while in movies “women are cast as either submissive mothers or debauched”, said Cairo University professor Sahar al-Mugui. “A single working woman is rarely portrayed positively.”

At the Washington meeting, Laura Bush said her husband’s administration had made women’s rights a global policy priority. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the meeting sent “a clear message to the women of the world who are not yet free: As you stand for your rights and for your liberty, America stands with you.”

In Brussels, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions stressed the increasingly important economic role played by women. More of them work than ever before. They hold down 39 per cent of the world’s 2.8 billion jobs but, the confederation said, “the best-paid jobs are overwhelmingly reserved for men”.