New Delhi, March 7 (PTI): Female foeticide, illiteracy and discrimination against women are some of the gender issues that need urgent attention, the UPA Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, said on Tuesday.

"Women may have more opportunities now. But we still have a long way to go," she said after unfurling a multi-coloured flag to mark the International Women's Day celebrations titled 'Ananya' (The Incomparable) here.

"Our constitution entitles women to equal opportunities and rights...But in some parts of the land the rate of female foeticide is high and the gender ratio is terribly skewed. Girls are not being sent to school in many places and women face prejudice and discrimination at the workplace," she said.

Sonia Gandhi said these issues should get focused upon in Women's Day celebrations even as she asserted the government was giving top priority to the welfare of women and children.

Sonia Gandhi pointed out Panchayati Raj system, a brainchild of her husband, former Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi, as a movement that has brought women to positions of responsibility.

The Congress president, who shared the stage with Veena Singh, a panchayat leader from Bihar, said women in panchayats, that now number 12 lakh, have disproved the scepticism that they would just be proxies for men or mere rubber stamps.

Sonia Gandhi unfurled a flag on women's empowerment designed by Farook Ambalapurathe of United Nations Population Fund at the function in National Stadium in the presence of Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury and Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar.