A/HRC/26/39 Access to resources13 3. 77. Secure rights over resources, including property, land, housing, food, water and sanitation, are essential to women’s equality and well-being, and to their economic independence and autonomy. 78. In some countries, discriminatory legislation or implementation of legislation results in the negation of women’s rights to land and other productive resources. These issues have been examined by a UN-Women/OHCHR expert group meeting, in which a member of the Working Group participated, and have been documented in an in-depth report. 79. Furthermore, failure to provide access to housing, food and water has disproportionately burdened women as vulnerable members of communities, as childbearers and as primary carers. These issues have been gender-mainstreamed in reports by, for example, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; the Special Rapporteur on the right to food; the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation; and Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights. 80. These issues, though flagged as crucial, will not be dealt with in this report, due to space limitations. The impact of parenthood and care functions14 4. 81. Reproduction and care functions are the very basis of human life and society. These functions, whether paid or unpaid, are performed either solely or largely by women. The fact that these functions are performed by women creates a major barrier to women’s equality of opportunity in the labour market or in business, finance and entrepreneurship. Women’s maternity rights have been widely recognized in formal employment, but not extended to either other spheres of economic activity or care functions. There has been a systemic failure to properly integrate the biological function of reproduction and the gendered function of unpaid caring into macroeconomic policy in a holistic, effective and coherent way, to ensure that reproduction and caring go hand-in-hand with the overall economic empowerment of women. This policy failure in effect endorses a major structural barrier to the equality of economic opportunity for women. 82. It is crucial to recognize both the right to maternity benefits and also the right to an equal and fair distribution of care functions as fully-fledged economic and social rights. These rights are a prerequisite for the equal right of women to the enjoyment of all economic social and cultural rights and, in particular: the right to work; the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work; an adequate standard of living; freedom from hunger; enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; and the right to take part in cultural life. 83. Barriers to women’s economic opportunities resulting from reproduction and care functions must be removed in order to permit choice by women and men as to how they allocate economic and caring duties. Three possible patterns of allocation have been 13 14 16 For more information, see the background paper by Mayra Gomez. See also UN–Women and OHCHR, Realizing Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources (2013). This section draws upon the background paper by Sharon Offenberger. See also the bibliography for this section.