Bringing Men on Board to Reduce Maternal and Child Mortality
By Mantoe Phakathi
Swazi men have very little involvement in caring for newborns and mothers, yet they are critical partners in ensuring their well being. "Getting men involved in maternal and child health care is a serious challenge because of cultural dynamics and practices," said Rejoice Nkambule, the health department’s deputy director of public health services. For example, custom prohibits a Swazi man from physical contact with his newborn baby and its mother for a minimum of six months.
A major grant from the Japan Social Development Fund (JDSF) is now trying to change this. In July,2009 the Japanese government awarded Swaziland $2.57 million over three years to improve maternal and child healthcare programmes in the country. The programme, which is expected to start later in 2009, will be chiefly rolled out in the poverty-stricken Lubombo region in the eastern part of the country.
A key part of the grant will be spent on community mobilisation initiatives aimed at getting men involved in caring for the health of their wives and children. Research has shown that lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare slows down the mother’s healing process after giving birth and hinders the development of the baby.
According to Zanele Dlamini, director of the Swaziland Infant Nutrition Action Network (SINAN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes maternal and infant health through breastfeeding, mothers need their partners’ assistance after giving birth because they are usually too weak to handle the baby on their own, and many mothers experience mood swings, hormonal imbalances, insecurity and emotional depression after giving birth.
"When the man shows his partner affection, her stress level goes down and, most importantly, the womb heals faster, reducing chances of developing cervical cancer," said Dlamini. She further explained that fathers also benefit from a close relationship with mother and baby. "For instance, when the father massages her when she is breastfeeding, love circulates among the three people, and the baby will have a strong bond with both parents," said Dlamini. She points out that because Swazi men generally do not participate in antenatal or postnatal care, women become vulnerable to pressure from in-laws to follow traditional practices that are often against health workers’ medical advice.
"What we’ve discovered is that, while we promote exclusive breastfeeding for six months, in-laws force mothers to give their babies traditional medicines and food against the doctor’s advice," said Dlamini. "Men fail to give the women support because they are ignorant about maternal and child health issues."
According to Nkambule, lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare contributes to the fact that Swaziland has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world.
The other main reason for the high mortality rate is HIV/AIDS, as 26 percent of the reproductive age group of 15 to 49 years is HIV-positive, she explains.
A 2009 State of the Swaziland Population report estimates maternal mortality at 589 deaths per 100,000 live births, far beyond the World Health Organisation’s target of 146 deaths per 100,000 live births. The report further puts infant mortality at 85 deaths per 1,000 live births. This is a dramatic increase from 1991 maternal mortality rates, which stood at 229 deaths per 100,000 live births, and 1997 child mortality rates of 78 deaths per 1,000 live births.
What further perpetuates the high numbers of maternal and child mortality – in addition to gender roles and HIV - is the lack of well-trained staff and modern equipment at public health institutions.
"Health issues are very dynamic, which is why we need a vigorous training of health personnel and also update our equipment," said Nkambule.
Health experts criticise the Swazi government for failing to fulfil the Abuja Declaration, signed by African leaders in 2001 in Nigeria, which demands countries to allocate 15 percent of their national budgets to health. Swaziland has currently only allocated 11.5 percent. Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) director, Dudu Simelane, noted that many women, especially in rural areas, die during childbirth because of the absence of emergency obstetric care. "Training of nurses and midwives should include the management of (emergencies)," she said.
Simelane hopes the Japanese grant money, which will also be used to increase the capacity and effectiveness of community health workers with regard to maternal and child healthcare, will help to change the situation. A number of mobile clinics will provide family planning, HIV counselling and testing, sexually transmitted infections care and treatment in rural area
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Getting Men On Board
Maternal and Child Mortality
By Mantoe Phakathi, Swaziland
Swazi men have very little involvement in caring for newborns and mothers, yet they are critical partners in ensuring their well being. "Getting men involved in maternal and child health care is a serious challenge because of cultural dynamics and practices," said Rejoice Nkambule, the health department’s deputy director of public health services. For example, custom prohibits a Swazi man from physical contact with his newborn baby and its mother for a minimum of six months.
A major grant from the Japan Social Development Fund (JDSF) is now trying to change this. In July,2009 the Japanese government awarded Swaziland $2.57 million over three years to improve maternal and child healthcare programmes in the country. The programme, which is expected to start later in 2009, will be chiefly rolled out in the poverty-stricken Lubombo region in the eastern part of the country.
A key part of the grant will be spent on community mobilisation initiatives aimed at getting men involved in caring for the health of their wives and children. Research has shown that lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare slows down the mother’s healing process after giving birth and hinders the development of the baby.
According to Zanele Dlamini, director of the Swaziland Infant Nutrition Action Network (SINAN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes maternal and infant health through breastfeeding, mothers need their partners’ assistance after giving birth because they are usually too weak to handle the baby on their own, and many mothers experience mood swings, hormonal imbalances, insecurity and emotional depression after giving birth.
"When the man shows his partner affection, her stress level goes down and, most importantly, the womb heals faster, reducing chances of developing cervical cancer," said Dlamini. She further explained that fathers also benefit from a close relationship with mother and baby. "For instance, when the father massages her when she is breastfeeding, love circulates among the three people, and the baby will have a strong bond with both parents," said Dlamini. She points out that because Swazi men generally do not participate in antenatal or postnatal care, women become vulnerable to pressure from in-laws to follow traditional practices that are often against health workers’ medical advice.
"What we’ve discovered is that, while we promote exclusive breastfeeding for six months, in-laws force mothers to give their babies traditional medicines and food against the doctor’s advice," said Dlamini. "Men fail to give the women support because they are ignorant about maternal and child health issues."
According to Nkambule, lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare contributes to the fact that Swaziland has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world.
The other main reason for the high mortality rate is HIV/AIDS, as 26 percent of the reproductive age group of 15 to 49 years is HIV-positive, she explains.
A 2009 State of the Swaziland Population report estimates maternal mortality at 589 deaths per 100,000 live births, far beyond the World Health Organisation’s target of 146 deaths per 100,000 live births. The report further puts infant mortality at 85 deaths per 1,000 live births. This is a dramatic increase from 1991 maternal mortality rates, which stood at 229 deaths per 100,000 live births, and 1997 child mortality rates of 78 deaths per 1,000 live births.
What further perpetuates the high numbers of maternal and child mortality – in addition to gender roles and HIV - is the lack of well-trained staff and modern equipment at public health institutions.
"Health issues are very dynamic, which is why we need a vigorous training of health personnel and also update our equipment," said Nkambule.
Health experts criticise the Swazi government for failing to fulfil the Abuja Declaration, signed by African leaders in 2001 in Nigeria, which demands countries to allocate 15 percent of their national budgets to health. Swaziland has currently only allocated 11.5 percent. Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) director, Dudu Simelane, noted that many women, especially in rural areas, die during childbirth because of the absence of emergency obstetric care. "Training of nurses and midwives should include the management of (emergencies)," she said.
Simelane hopes the Japanese grant money, which will also be used to increase the capacity and effectiveness of community health workers with regard to maternal and child healthcare, will help to change the situation. A number of mobile clinics will provide family planning, HIV counselling and testing, sexually transmitted infections care and treatment in rural area
By Mantoe Phakathi, Swaziland
Swazi men have very little involvement in caring for newborns and mothers, yet they are critical partners in ensuring their well being. "Getting men involved in maternal and child health care is a serious challenge because of cultural dynamics and practices," said Rejoice Nkambule, the health department’s deputy director of public health services. For example, custom prohibits a Swazi man from physical contact with his newborn baby and its mother for a minimum of six months.
A major grant from the Japan Social Development Fund (JDSF) is now trying to change this. In July,2009 the Japanese government awarded Swaziland $2.57 million over three years to improve maternal and child healthcare programmes in the country. The programme, which is expected to start later in 2009, will be chiefly rolled out in the poverty-stricken Lubombo region in the eastern part of the country.
A key part of the grant will be spent on community mobilisation initiatives aimed at getting men involved in caring for the health of their wives and children. Research has shown that lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare slows down the mother’s healing process after giving birth and hinders the development of the baby.
According to Zanele Dlamini, director of the Swaziland Infant Nutrition Action Network (SINAN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes maternal and infant health through breastfeeding, mothers need their partners’ assistance after giving birth because they are usually too weak to handle the baby on their own, and many mothers experience mood swings, hormonal imbalances, insecurity and emotional depression after giving birth.
"When the man shows his partner affection, her stress level goes down and, most importantly, the womb heals faster, reducing chances of developing cervical cancer," said Dlamini. She further explained that fathers also benefit from a close relationship with mother and baby. "For instance, when the father massages her when she is breastfeeding, love circulates among the three people, and the baby will have a strong bond with both parents," said Dlamini. She points out that because Swazi men generally do not participate in antenatal or postnatal care, women become vulnerable to pressure from in-laws to follow traditional practices that are often against health workers’ medical advice.
"What we’ve discovered is that, while we promote exclusive breastfeeding for six months, in-laws force mothers to give their babies traditional medicines and food against the doctor’s advice," said Dlamini. "Men fail to give the women support because they are ignorant about maternal and child health issues."
According to Nkambule, lack of male involvement in maternal and child healthcare contributes to the fact that Swaziland has one of the highest maternal and child mortality rates in the world.
The other main reason for the high mortality rate is HIV/AIDS, as 26 percent of the reproductive age group of 15 to 49 years is HIV-positive, she explains.
A 2009 State of the Swaziland Population report estimates maternal mortality at 589 deaths per 100,000 live births, far beyond the World Health Organisation’s target of 146 deaths per 100,000 live births. The report further puts infant mortality at 85 deaths per 1,000 live births. This is a dramatic increase from 1991 maternal mortality rates, which stood at 229 deaths per 100,000 live births, and 1997 child mortality rates of 78 deaths per 1,000 live births.
What further perpetuates the high numbers of maternal and child mortality – in addition to gender roles and HIV - is the lack of well-trained staff and modern equipment at public health institutions.
"Health issues are very dynamic, which is why we need a vigorous training of health personnel and also update our equipment," said Nkambule.
Health experts criticise the Swazi government for failing to fulfil the Abuja Declaration, signed by African leaders in 2001 in Nigeria, which demands countries to allocate 15 percent of their national budgets to health. Swaziland has currently only allocated 11.5 percent. Family Life Association of Swaziland (FLAS) director, Dudu Simelane, noted that many women, especially in rural areas, die during childbirth because of the absence of emergency obstetric care. "Training of nurses and midwives should include the management of (emergencies)," she said.
Simelane hopes the Japanese grant money, which will also be used to increase the capacity and effectiveness of community health workers with regard to maternal and child healthcare, will help to change the situation. A number of mobile clinics will provide family planning, HIV counselling and testing, sexually transmitted infections care and treatment in rural area
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Breastfeeding with Men’s Involvement
Rationale of Gender & Breastfeeding
By James Achanyi-Fontem, Cameroon Link
Introducing the issue of gender during the training in Delhi, India last July 2009, Renu khanna, talked about the rationale observing that it is increasingly being recognised that a gender perspective on social issues helps refine action strategies to bring about desired results for social change and equity.
The platform for action resulting from the 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing(1995) and the programme of action of the International Conference for Population and Development (Cairo 1994) legitimised the concerns of women’s movements world over that a woman’s perspective as well as gender perspective is essential in social sector policies and programmes.
Renu Khanna said, a gender approach takes full account of gender differences and responds appropriately to them in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of services in any sector. As such, the training was designed to help breastfeeding advocates to build strategies on gender and breastfeeding in their respective constituencies.
To better understand issues, it was revealed that gender is not sex and vice versa. Sex refers to the biological differences between men and women, while gender refers to roles (behavioural norms) that men and women play and the relations that arise out of these roles. These roles, it should be noted, are socially constructed, not physically determined.
Gender characteristics are relational, change over time, are institutional, vary with ethnicity, class, culture and so on. Gender sensitisation calls for male responsibilities and participation. It aims at promoting gender equality in all spheres of life, including family and community life, and to encourage and enable men to take responsibility for their sexual and reproductive behaviour and their social and family roles.
The importance of male involvement was further reaffirmed in the platform for action adopted at the UN World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, because gender issues are not the concern of women alone. Helping men understand hoe gender equality benefits them can help them become key allies in creating a more gender-equitable world.
This means that the achievement of gender equality will not be possible without the active involvement and support of men. Gender sensitisation for men is necessary so that interventions for women and girls are not derailed by male resistance.
It is important to make it clear in this contribution that promoting gender equality is not about granting privileges to women while disempowering men. It is all about creating integrated approaches that benefit all. It is about creating a gender equitable and just world.
The gender gap in many countries are so wide that a vast majority of women are poor, illiterate and suffer ill health and poor nutrition, with inadequate education and poor job opportunities. Their low social and economic status hampers their political participation and decision-making.
Very often, the current patterns of domination and inequality are so deeply embedded in cultures and institutions that we do not recognise them and thereby even accept them as the norm. Good examples are violence against women, giving boys more food than girls in a family, unequal pay for women, child care and housework being women’s responsibilities. Women will be empowered only when they enjoy equal treatment and have access to education, economic resources and enjoy good health.
The enhance men’s awareness, Paul Sinnapen emphasised that men have to be sensitised about the existing gender gaps and help them understand gender roles and their impact on social and economic disparity among women. Change in patriarchal mind set and attitudes of men are crucial in bringing about gender justice.
Addressing participants in Delhi, India as breastfeeding advocates, Sarah Amin, Co-Director of WABA, outlined that for a long time breastfeeding promotion has focused on the child, often to the absence of the mother, the woman. She added that breastfeeding is a symbiotic relationship between the mother and the child, and thus any analysis and response or interventions should take into account both persons involved in the act.
According to Sarah Amin, gender inequalities, including the inequalities in health status and access to and use of health services, not only make women’s lives more difficult, they also often make breastfeeding and other tasks, such as child care and nurturing very challenging. Breastfeeding advocates can better support women to breastfed when they understand the causes of gender inequality and know how to analyse and address such unequal conditions.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
SCANDINAVIAN GENDER ROLES
By Yvonne Bekeny in Finland
Gender equality in the Scandinavian countries is a given and manifest reality in almost all aspects of socio-political and economic life in that part of Europe. Family policies are gender sensitive oriented and parenthood policies are instituted such that gender relations are significant at least on the symbolic level. The extent to which this happens in actual sharing of tasks between mothers and fathers is still a question to be researched? Child rights including the rights to provision and care by both parents have been instituted. Scandinavian policies have undergone changes over the years to ensure fathers opportunities to take care of their families (Eydal, B. 2008). Although the mother is ‘the primary parent…the father can be a visiting care assistant’ (Lammi-Taskula in Ellingsater & Leira, 2006). Transferring part of parental leave is negotiated by the parents with no explicit suggestion to change the status-quo of gender relations. The mother’s primacy in childcare remains unchanged. Norway, Sweden and Iceland, have a more clear-cut orientation in promoting father care and roles sharing between women and men in infant care. Lammi-Taskula states tht ‘Finland and Denmark on the other hand have vague positions in striving for gender equality in promoting father care’ (Lammi-Taskula in Ellingsater & Leira, 2006). Fathers take only a small portion of the whole parental leave period in all Scandinavian countries. Nonetheless, these gender balanced duties seem to be conditioned by socio-economic factors in the countries rather than by policy claims. There is a variation within the countries themselves and within the nature of employees; white-collar, blue-collar, minority, well-educated parents all have different views about sharing of duties equally over childcare. Lammi-Taskula maintains that “for large numbers of Nordic parents, unverified assumptions…about economic consequences of equal sharing of parental leave as well as cultural conceptions of gender and parenthood, especially motherhood, hamper negotiations both in the family and in the work place. Unreflected, unequal gender relations are naturalised and remain unchallenged” (Lammi-Taskalu in Ellingsater 2006).
These observations raise questions of the nature and limits to gender equality that the Scandinavian countries can declare. This idea is even more illustrated in the Norwegian context where parental leave arrangements are usually classified as policies enhancing gender equality. However, parental leave can be ambiguous with regard to gender equality objective, both regarding policy rationale and policy impact (Ellingsater in Ellingsater & Leira 2006). National variations of parental leave arrangements actually reflect different purposes, and generally are geared towards encouraging women to stay at home and promoting gender equality by supporting mother’s employment rather than shared responsibility in childcare. This idea is further substantiated by Boje (2006) who posits that even if mothers in all Scandinavian countries have taken up employment in large numbers, the traditionally gendered pattern of responsibility for child care remains in the large majority of families. In his article, he observes that although Denmark and Sweden seem to have the most equal division of caring responsibilities, even ‘the strong political commitment to equality has not fundamentally changed the gendered division of childcare. ‘Progressive and women friendly policies concerning work and family might modify the prevailing gender order but more profound changes can only be accomplished through comprehensive changes in norms and values concerning gender roles ( Boje in Ellingsater & Leira, 2006). Hence, looking at the above analysis it can be said that the question of gender roles in childcare in the Scandinavia is almost still a myth and in as much as the state would want to achieve gender equality in almost all spheres of life, the issue of gender equality in childcare is still a challenge to these states. Eydal (2008) remarks that if this myth could become a reality pretty soon, the new generation of children born in the family where both parents take care of children, will be the ones to break the vicious cycle of gender inequality.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Gender Training Workshop 2009
By James Achanyi-Fontem
Coordinator-WABA Men’s Initiative
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
The 5th annual WABA-FIAN joint gender training workshop takes place in New Delhi, India from the 6th to 9th July 2009. The training will be delivered by two experts in gender promotion strategies from India and Malaysia, Renu Khanna and Paul Sinnappan.
The joint training workshop aims at enabling some 25 advocates from the breastfeeding and food rights networks to raise awareness and sensitivity on gender issues. Resource persons for lectures and conducting exchange sessions will focus on the gender challenges to breastfeeding and food rights issues. WABA and IBFAN have supported the participation of 12 persons involved in the breastfeeding protection, promotion and support movement.
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, WABA and the Food First Information and Action Network, FIAN, expect the participants to be well sensitized on the concept of gender and gender mainstreaming, after equipping them with tools and skills of gender analysis by the end of the course. The course participants should be able to enable others in their respective regions and countries to develop gender analysis of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food after the training.
This will be realized through the application of gender concepts and tools, and the development of gender sensitive strategies and work plans. Within the context of the training, participants are expected to be able to differentiate between sex and gender, recall dimensions of gender as a system, enumerate and list gender aspects of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food. The men and women should be able to list men’s role and responsibilities in appropriate infant feeding and promotion of rights to adequate food by the end of the training.
Themes to be treated within the week-long workshop include gender and sex, gender as a system, gender aspects of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food, gender analysis frameworks, economic and political contexts of women, men’s involvement, role and responsibilities, gender mainstreaming and gender indicators.
The participatory training methodologies include exercises, games, group discussions and presentations, role plays, experience sharing by participants and others. While Renu Khanna has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the faculty of management studies from Delhi University, India with over 25 years of experience in health care management and organization development in health organizations, Paul Sinnappan has for the past 10 years been involved in conducting gender training for men in the credit unions, cooperatives, micro credit programmes and non-governmental organizations, NGOs, in Malaysia and South East Asia.
The joint WABA-FIAN gender training workshop initiative began with the introduction of gender concerns by the donor agency, the Canadian Cooperative Association, CCA. Since then, the International Cooperative Association, ICA; the Asian Confederation of Credit Unions, ACCU, and the Asian Women in Cooperative Development Forum, AWCF have become partners in the process of integrating gender in cooperatives in Asia and Pacific region.
The joint WABA-FIAN gender workshop initiative started in 2004. Other resource persons for the training are Flavio Valente of FIAN International from Heldelberg, Germany and Laskshmi Menon from the Association for consumers’ Action on Safety and Health Centre, ACASH, in Mumbai, India. Lakshmi is a consultant to WABA and was also the former co-coordinator of WABA’s Gender Working Group.
WABA’s gender programme goals include:
1. The promotion of gender awareness among breastfeeding advocates and mainstreaming of the gender perspective in breastfeeding advocacy and programmes.
2. The promotion of collaboration between the breastfeeding movement and the women’s movement, in order to strengthen the common advocacy goals of both movements; and to undertake joint advocacy, education and training on women’s rights, health and breastfeeding.
3. To increase participation of men in domestic work, child care and provide breastfeeding support, to raise men’s awareness on women’s rights and reproductive health issues. For more information, click on www.waba.org.my
Coordinator-WABA Men’s Initiative
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
The 5th annual WABA-FIAN joint gender training workshop takes place in New Delhi, India from the 6th to 9th July 2009. The training will be delivered by two experts in gender promotion strategies from India and Malaysia, Renu Khanna and Paul Sinnappan.
The joint training workshop aims at enabling some 25 advocates from the breastfeeding and food rights networks to raise awareness and sensitivity on gender issues. Resource persons for lectures and conducting exchange sessions will focus on the gender challenges to breastfeeding and food rights issues. WABA and IBFAN have supported the participation of 12 persons involved in the breastfeeding protection, promotion and support movement.
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, WABA and the Food First Information and Action Network, FIAN, expect the participants to be well sensitized on the concept of gender and gender mainstreaming, after equipping them with tools and skills of gender analysis by the end of the course. The course participants should be able to enable others in their respective regions and countries to develop gender analysis of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food after the training.
This will be realized through the application of gender concepts and tools, and the development of gender sensitive strategies and work plans. Within the context of the training, participants are expected to be able to differentiate between sex and gender, recall dimensions of gender as a system, enumerate and list gender aspects of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food. The men and women should be able to list men’s role and responsibilities in appropriate infant feeding and promotion of rights to adequate food by the end of the training.
Themes to be treated within the week-long workshop include gender and sex, gender as a system, gender aspects of breastfeeding and rights to adequate food, gender analysis frameworks, economic and political contexts of women, men’s involvement, role and responsibilities, gender mainstreaming and gender indicators.
The participatory training methodologies include exercises, games, group discussions and presentations, role plays, experience sharing by participants and others. While Renu Khanna has a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the faculty of management studies from Delhi University, India with over 25 years of experience in health care management and organization development in health organizations, Paul Sinnappan has for the past 10 years been involved in conducting gender training for men in the credit unions, cooperatives, micro credit programmes and non-governmental organizations, NGOs, in Malaysia and South East Asia.
The joint WABA-FIAN gender training workshop initiative began with the introduction of gender concerns by the donor agency, the Canadian Cooperative Association, CCA. Since then, the International Cooperative Association, ICA; the Asian Confederation of Credit Unions, ACCU, and the Asian Women in Cooperative Development Forum, AWCF have become partners in the process of integrating gender in cooperatives in Asia and Pacific region.
The joint WABA-FIAN gender workshop initiative started in 2004. Other resource persons for the training are Flavio Valente of FIAN International from Heldelberg, Germany and Laskshmi Menon from the Association for consumers’ Action on Safety and Health Centre, ACASH, in Mumbai, India. Lakshmi is a consultant to WABA and was also the former co-coordinator of WABA’s Gender Working Group.
WABA’s gender programme goals include:
1. The promotion of gender awareness among breastfeeding advocates and mainstreaming of the gender perspective in breastfeeding advocacy and programmes.
2. The promotion of collaboration between the breastfeeding movement and the women’s movement, in order to strengthen the common advocacy goals of both movements; and to undertake joint advocacy, education and training on women’s rights, health and breastfeeding.
3. To increase participation of men in domestic work, child care and provide breastfeeding support, to raise men’s awareness on women’s rights and reproductive health issues. For more information, click on www.waba.org.my
Monday, June 15, 2009
Gender Equality Promotion
Strategies for Promoting Gender Equity in Developing Countries:
Lessons, Challenges and Opportunities
By James Achanyi-Fontem, Director of Publication, Cameroon Link,
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
Gender Equality Situation Analysis
Women are key to the development challenge. Throughout the developing world, women are at a disadvantage at household, community and societal levels. Within the household, women have less access to and control over resources and limited influence over household decisions. Beyond the household, women have limited access to communal resources, are under-represented in public decision-making bodies; have limited bargaining power in markets and often lack opportunities to improve their socioeconomic position. Therefore, efforts to reduce gender inequality are required on multiple fronts.
Gender mainstreaming has been associated with more failures than successes. While there have been some positive gains to gender equity in the thirteen years since the adoption of the Beijing platform of action, a number of factors - including the challenging policy environment within which gender mainstreaming processes operate, inadequate resources allocated to this work, institutional features that have blocked change, and the way in which gender mainstreaming processes have been implemented contributed to the overall failure of gender mainstreaming,
While advocates of gender mainstreaming envisioned both institutional and social transformation, in practice, bureaucracies have not proven to be effective agents of social transformation, Gender equity should be pursued in creative ways through the elimination ongoing feminization of poverty in the global economy as women workers constitute the driving labour behind export production and rural-urban migration.
The next step will be the scaling up of transformative programming to create a larger global movement, involving non-governmental, multi-lateral bodies, and donors, in order to create a forum for sharing knowledge of male-oriented programming and gender equality. Several remaining challenges include extreme poverty, lack of interest in fighting for gender equality, and bureaucratic hurdles to participating in the political process.
A larger conceptual frame work is needed, which links empowerment, rights and mainstreaming in all social spaces in order to advance the discourse on gender relations and achieve greater gender equality. Considering the realities of women’s , men’s and children’s daily lives in a developing country context, where gender relations are influenced by poverty, insecurity, impunity and patriarchy is also important.
Setting the context
The evolution of the main approaches to confront gender inequality is similar when women in development (WID) with gender and development (GAD) are compared, especially as each approach arose in a different historical context. How development strategies in general and strategies to promote gender equality in particular have evolved depend very much on the limitations and opportunities available at different points in time.
At one time, there was a desire among development practitioners to find a different model for promoting gender equity that encompass a broader, more multicultural approach and one that took men into account. At the same time from 1975 to 1985, women’s organizational capacity around the globe had increased dramatically, bringing a new set of voices from the developing world into the debate. Women’s groups developed their own projects, and were backed by various international donor agencies, including many private foundations. This explains how GAD came about as women’s activism was becoming an international force in response to a very different set of challenges and opportunities.
The projects and programs initiated under the GAD label were not all that different from earlier WID efforts. Women-specific projects usually seen as WID inspired, remained following the shift to GAD, in part because many cultures separate women’s and men’s activities. Gender mainstreaming was promoted as likely to be much more effective than the women-specific projects and WID offices associated with the WID approach.
Some advocates felt that mainstreaming could marginalize women’s programs and that disbanding gender units within donor agencies risked losing the ability to keep a focus on gender within aid bureaucracies. Moving beyond the WID-GAD enabled advocates to devise creative ways to promote gender equity, instead of simply responding to current trends.
Whether private firms can be influenced by gender equity considerations depends on local contexts and the particular role of civil society organizations and increasingly gender-sensitive legal systems. Unfortunately, civil society organizations are no longer perceived as representing grassroots energies.
In the major trend, it is believed that the new emphasis on climate change may create opportunities for environmental feminism to advance, while third trend has been the shift from the redistribution politics to identity politics, which has caused academic feminists, pays less attention to equality.
Grounded in feminist theoretical frameworks and intended to make mainstream institutions agents of social change, gender mainstreaming, refers to a wide set of strategies and processes. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) defines gender mainstreaming as the process of accessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs in any areas and at all levels. The strategies of making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programs in all political, economical and societal spheres, so that men and women benefit equally, but that the goal of gender mainstreaming is gender equality.
Gender mainstreaming is neither a clear agenda for institutional transformation nor a clear agenda for gender transformation and social change. In practice, gender mainstreaming has often involved adopting a gender policy, creating a gender unit to work on organizational programs, mandatory gender training and increasing the number of women staff and managers. In the worst case, gender mainstreaming has been used to stop funding for women’s empowerment work, and to dismantle many of the institutional mechanisms such as women’s units and advisors created to promote women in development in the name of integration.
In some regions like Africa, women have made striking gains in elections to local and national government bodies, as well as in entering public institutions. Girls’ access to primary education has improved and women are increasingly entering the labour force. Access to contraception has also become much more widespread and violence against women has been recognized as a human rights issue and has been made a crime in many countries.
Decreased government spending on social sectors, tightened macroeconomic and fiscal policies, privatization of state owned enterprises and basic services, and liberalized trade are some aspects of the policy environment that have had harmful effects on women. Government reform efforts have focused on administrative and fiscal reforms while neglecting to consider ways in which institutions can better support poor women and address accountability failures. With regard to resources, investment in women has been the lowest priority.
In terms of implementation, gender mainstreaming efforts such as gender training, organizational development efforts and planning for gender equality often have no clear connection to change that is meant to occur on the ground. Until now, strategies to promote gender have accommodated to institutional cultures and agendas, which are uneasy with notions of social transformation.
Some instrumentalized strategies are gender equality objectives broken down into advocacy for girls’ education due to the link with fertility reduction and micro-credit schemes targeted towards women due to the high development payoff. During the execution these programs, the fundamental feminist vision of social transformation is not very clear. It is necessary that gender advocates should frame mainstreaming objectives in practical terms in consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of particular kinds of bureaucracies. Another challenge is measuring progress. Tracking relative contributions to different goals within the same project is difficult, and it requires social impact analysis during the design phase of the project and sophisticated tracking mechanisms and gender disaggregated data to examine program impact. The way forward is to get a range of diverse strategies all termed gender mainstreaming including policy reform, advocacy, capacity building, analytical frameworks, and program development and monitoring systems to be disaggregated and analyzed in terms of their particular gains and failures. This would facilitate strategic thinking about what particular institutions are well positioned to accomplish and what they can be held accountable for. Civil society including women’s organizations and networks should be motivated to work for change, if commitments have to be achieved.
New Avenues for Change
The global economy has produced not only the feminization of poverty, but the “feminization of working poverty“. Though more women participate in today’s workforce, the great majority occupies low-status jobs and is unable to lift themselves out of poverty. More women take jobs in the informal economy that lacks job security, benefits or protection. Around the globe, women are working in export processing sites, as domestic workers, as street vendors or as suppliers at the bottom of a multinational supply chain.
With this situation, grassroots strategies are needed to address problems related to the fact that women are used as a source of cheap labour as part of an economic development strategy, while labour standards around the world are declining. International migration is another economic development strategy that has implications for women. Offering cheap labour as an anti-poverty strategy is insufficient to generate economic growth.
Women often leave their families to become domestic workers abroad, leading to the breakdown of the family and other social problems. International migration can also be detrimental for the women who migrate. This can be addressed by encouraging them to become part of the labour movement, because this allows women workers to monitor the conditions of their own workplaces and make sure people are being treated fairly.
Global networks give women more power to negotiate contracts with their employers. It is important to include men when addressing concerns of women in the global labour markets. In particular, men can play an important role in addressing the sexual exploitation of women. Truck drivers in Cameroon are taught about HIV/AIDS in conjunction with groups like the Women’s Gender Empowerment Councils in Bonaberi-Douala. These truck drivers drive across the Chad and Central Africa Republic borders, have different sexual partners or engage in other risky behaviour.
An alternative solution is the engagement of men around issues of reproductive health and gender equality. Men as Partners (MAP) works as increase men’s awareness of reproductive health issues and increase men’s support for their partner’s reproductive health decision. This can also stimulate men to take active stand for gender equality and against gender=based violence.
This is because there is a clear mandate around the need to work with men and boys to achieve gender equality that has been recognized by numerous international conferences and declarations and supported by women’s organisations and the women’s movement. One of the main driving factors of this mandate is the recognition of how gender inequalities fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Men are conceived of in some positive ways as financially independent, providers, husbands and fathers, but there are also negative and harmful messages about what it means to be a man. These include withholding emotions, exerting power, using violence, not asking for help, having multiple sexual partners, risking taking, substance abuse, violence, misogyny and homophobia.
Increased political, economic and religious fundamentalism has lead to the development of rigid norms of expected male and female behaviour. The concept of working with men and boys is to question some of the more detrimental constructs of masculinity and explore alternative attitudes and actions.
Men with more traditional concepts of masculinity are shown to be more likely to report physical violence towards female partners, to be involved in delinquency, to have a higher number of sexual partners, to experience sexually transmitted infections and to use and abuse alcohol and drug.
However, these traditional and harmful constructs of masculinity can be challenged and replaced with alternative models, which promote equality and lead to improvements in health for both men and women.
Another angle is the gender-neutral programming, which is common in large-scale HIV prevention programs. These programs promote HIV prevention, but unfortunately make no room for a discussion of how abstinence, monogamy and safe sex are experienced differently by men and women and the realities of men and women’s lives in a cultural context.
On the other hand, gender-sensitive programming, takes into account that men and women have different realities and that different strategies are often required reaching men and women. Gender-sensitive programming often includes design features that make services more male-friendly.
Transformative programming takes on negative societal messages about what it means to be male and female, and challenges those in an attempt to create a more equitable society, which supports healthier behaviours in the future. Challenging the direct cause of gender inequality, harmful gender socialization, makes it possible to address the spectrum of health issues, including gender-based violence, HIV, reproductive health, family planning, men’s role in maternal health, issues of fatherhood and care-giving, and issues of violence.
MAP’s programs consistently ask men to talk about equitable relationships and men’s role in promoting gender equality and challenge men to create a new masculinity that involves taking a stand against gender based violence in the community. Most programs have focused on reaching out to men individually or in small, intensive group settings, forcing them to consider what it means to be male and how notions of masculinity may have a negative impact on their societies. These strategies have been successful in changing individual attitudes, knowledge and behaviours and the next step would be to expand to the societal level, where there can be a greater, more sustainable impact on gender socialization.
Transformative programs on gender equality should move beyond the workshop approach to support men when they return to a patriarchal society where there is often not sufficient support for new concepts and constructions of masculinity. Community action teams led by men who have been through the workshops should be put in place to go out and communicate and engage in community activism around gender issues.
A clear challenge of taking this work to scale is building the capacity of organizations and social institutions in order tom attain sustainability. Individuals must confront their own issues concerning gender and identity before they can challenge the broader social situation. This requires significant time, effort and support.
Gender programming at the health level is focused on improving the quality of services and making them more accessible to men. This requires large scale media campaigns and new or reformed policies and legislation. The public sector should be engaged with increased funding to promote gender equality.
It is through the involvement of the public sector that more work will be done to address the broad socioeconomic conditions that can influence men and their behaviours. If men are unable to provide for their families, they may feel disempowered in their role as men and resort to some of the more harmful constructs of masculinity, which include dominance over women, use of violence and risk-taking behaviours.
Many men who have gone through critical reflections of gender have come out on the other side espousing more gender progressive attitudes, and engaging in more protective behaviours. Networks that bring together various organizations, such as non governmental, multi-lateral bodies, and donors create a forum for sharing knowledge of male-oriented programming and gender equality.
Action plans should be conceived which incorporate elements like women’s empowerment, strengthening productive capacity of women and supporting women’s psychological, social and reproductive health. These efforts get women feel more encouraged to speak and voice their opinions.
Previously, women were engaged in domestic activities, which were unremunerated. Women’s productive activities have generated new sources of income, which have increased women’s economic autonomy. Cameroon Link has trained women to speak out against domestic violence and assisted women who suffered from abuse.
Before this training, women were less interested in the politics of the community than in having their basic needs met. Only after women’s basic needs are addressed does the organization introduce other themes such as community participation. Productive activities of women are done with respect to the cultural identity of Cameroon, which is Africa in miniature, drawing on indigenous knowledge.
The Way Forward Gender Equality Promotion
The way forward is to work out a larger conceptual frame that includes empowerment, rights and mainstreaming in all social spaces, putting into consideration the realities of women’s, men’s and children’s daily lives. It should be noted that, in the developing country context like Cameroon, gender relations are influenced by poverty, insecurity, impunity and patriarchy. As such, achieving gender equity requires a stronger and diverse but unified voice for change; greater accountability and increased, targeted resources.
Currently, the accountability framework consists of several agreements at the global level, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Other the other hand, gender equality is not just related to human rights, but also women’s empowerment and specific measures are needed to respond to existing inequality and to champion the empowerment of women in order to increase women’s opportunities and capabilities. Women’s empowerment also requires mainstreaming the gender equality agenda in institutions and processes in a way that transforms social values that have sustained gender inequality.
Challenges
Development Approaches
This tends to separate development issues from concerns over investment, foreign policy and security. Current development approaches are increasingly top-down, focusing on policies, institutions, and processes, without an adequate focus on community empowerment and social movements and as such do not have a large impact on people’s everyday lives. The centralization of power and resources has negative implications with respect to gender equality, because in the parliament, government cabinet, chief courts or among elders of the clan, where power is defined and decisions are made, there is a dearth of women’s participation.
Limited access to resources
Gender equality requires equal access to services and infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water, and communication tools. Without access to such resources, women with tremendous knowledge and skills, expertise and passion are not given an outlet to use their knowledge and skills, keeping them at a disadvantage. Technological tools enable women to use their time, energy and expertise more efficiently.
Poverty, Violence, Disease & Patriarchy
Gender equality cannot be achieved as long as women live in insecure environments, whether due to an abusive partner, militia or a threatening neighbour. It is important that development practitioners should shift focus from poverty reduction to wealth creation. By focusing on poverty reduction, women are viewed as subjects of poverty rather than as producers and generators of wealth. Women’s arts and crafts should be adequately valued as a reflection of their knowledge and skill.
The governments should offer support to women for their role as caregivers and nurturer, rather than treating them as subsidy providers for basic social services such as health. All women, whether rich, poor, working or housewives should participate in decision making spaces, academic and research institutions, advocacy and public awareness initiatives, political debates, the private sector and within households as a collective voice for change.
The voice of leadership at international and national level is also needed to call for greater investment in gender equality and women’s empowerment. Advocates of gender equality must seek greater accountability through legislative and policy strengthening; reform and harmonization, resources and an end to impunity; political governance and greater private sector investment and responsibility.
More public resources are needed to make strategies to promote gender equality successful. Mobilizing greater resources for gender equality requires a system of taxation that does not overburden the poor and gender-responsive budgeting. From all that has been said, it is understood that the fight for greater gender equality is strong and women simply need proper mechanisms for financing their initiatives for equality and rights.
Lessons, Challenges and Opportunities
By James Achanyi-Fontem, Director of Publication, Cameroon Link,
Email: camlink99@gmail.com
Gender Equality Situation Analysis
Women are key to the development challenge. Throughout the developing world, women are at a disadvantage at household, community and societal levels. Within the household, women have less access to and control over resources and limited influence over household decisions. Beyond the household, women have limited access to communal resources, are under-represented in public decision-making bodies; have limited bargaining power in markets and often lack opportunities to improve their socioeconomic position. Therefore, efforts to reduce gender inequality are required on multiple fronts.
Gender mainstreaming has been associated with more failures than successes. While there have been some positive gains to gender equity in the thirteen years since the adoption of the Beijing platform of action, a number of factors - including the challenging policy environment within which gender mainstreaming processes operate, inadequate resources allocated to this work, institutional features that have blocked change, and the way in which gender mainstreaming processes have been implemented contributed to the overall failure of gender mainstreaming,
While advocates of gender mainstreaming envisioned both institutional and social transformation, in practice, bureaucracies have not proven to be effective agents of social transformation, Gender equity should be pursued in creative ways through the elimination ongoing feminization of poverty in the global economy as women workers constitute the driving labour behind export production and rural-urban migration.
The next step will be the scaling up of transformative programming to create a larger global movement, involving non-governmental, multi-lateral bodies, and donors, in order to create a forum for sharing knowledge of male-oriented programming and gender equality. Several remaining challenges include extreme poverty, lack of interest in fighting for gender equality, and bureaucratic hurdles to participating in the political process.
A larger conceptual frame work is needed, which links empowerment, rights and mainstreaming in all social spaces in order to advance the discourse on gender relations and achieve greater gender equality. Considering the realities of women’s , men’s and children’s daily lives in a developing country context, where gender relations are influenced by poverty, insecurity, impunity and patriarchy is also important.
Setting the context
The evolution of the main approaches to confront gender inequality is similar when women in development (WID) with gender and development (GAD) are compared, especially as each approach arose in a different historical context. How development strategies in general and strategies to promote gender equality in particular have evolved depend very much on the limitations and opportunities available at different points in time.
At one time, there was a desire among development practitioners to find a different model for promoting gender equity that encompass a broader, more multicultural approach and one that took men into account. At the same time from 1975 to 1985, women’s organizational capacity around the globe had increased dramatically, bringing a new set of voices from the developing world into the debate. Women’s groups developed their own projects, and were backed by various international donor agencies, including many private foundations. This explains how GAD came about as women’s activism was becoming an international force in response to a very different set of challenges and opportunities.
The projects and programs initiated under the GAD label were not all that different from earlier WID efforts. Women-specific projects usually seen as WID inspired, remained following the shift to GAD, in part because many cultures separate women’s and men’s activities. Gender mainstreaming was promoted as likely to be much more effective than the women-specific projects and WID offices associated with the WID approach.
Some advocates felt that mainstreaming could marginalize women’s programs and that disbanding gender units within donor agencies risked losing the ability to keep a focus on gender within aid bureaucracies. Moving beyond the WID-GAD enabled advocates to devise creative ways to promote gender equity, instead of simply responding to current trends.
Whether private firms can be influenced by gender equity considerations depends on local contexts and the particular role of civil society organizations and increasingly gender-sensitive legal systems. Unfortunately, civil society organizations are no longer perceived as representing grassroots energies.
In the major trend, it is believed that the new emphasis on climate change may create opportunities for environmental feminism to advance, while third trend has been the shift from the redistribution politics to identity politics, which has caused academic feminists, pays less attention to equality.
Grounded in feminist theoretical frameworks and intended to make mainstream institutions agents of social change, gender mainstreaming, refers to a wide set of strategies and processes. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) defines gender mainstreaming as the process of accessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs in any areas and at all levels. The strategies of making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the policies and programs in all political, economical and societal spheres, so that men and women benefit equally, but that the goal of gender mainstreaming is gender equality.
Gender mainstreaming is neither a clear agenda for institutional transformation nor a clear agenda for gender transformation and social change. In practice, gender mainstreaming has often involved adopting a gender policy, creating a gender unit to work on organizational programs, mandatory gender training and increasing the number of women staff and managers. In the worst case, gender mainstreaming has been used to stop funding for women’s empowerment work, and to dismantle many of the institutional mechanisms such as women’s units and advisors created to promote women in development in the name of integration.
In some regions like Africa, women have made striking gains in elections to local and national government bodies, as well as in entering public institutions. Girls’ access to primary education has improved and women are increasingly entering the labour force. Access to contraception has also become much more widespread and violence against women has been recognized as a human rights issue and has been made a crime in many countries.
Decreased government spending on social sectors, tightened macroeconomic and fiscal policies, privatization of state owned enterprises and basic services, and liberalized trade are some aspects of the policy environment that have had harmful effects on women. Government reform efforts have focused on administrative and fiscal reforms while neglecting to consider ways in which institutions can better support poor women and address accountability failures. With regard to resources, investment in women has been the lowest priority.
In terms of implementation, gender mainstreaming efforts such as gender training, organizational development efforts and planning for gender equality often have no clear connection to change that is meant to occur on the ground. Until now, strategies to promote gender have accommodated to institutional cultures and agendas, which are uneasy with notions of social transformation.
Some instrumentalized strategies are gender equality objectives broken down into advocacy for girls’ education due to the link with fertility reduction and micro-credit schemes targeted towards women due to the high development payoff. During the execution these programs, the fundamental feminist vision of social transformation is not very clear. It is necessary that gender advocates should frame mainstreaming objectives in practical terms in consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of particular kinds of bureaucracies. Another challenge is measuring progress. Tracking relative contributions to different goals within the same project is difficult, and it requires social impact analysis during the design phase of the project and sophisticated tracking mechanisms and gender disaggregated data to examine program impact. The way forward is to get a range of diverse strategies all termed gender mainstreaming including policy reform, advocacy, capacity building, analytical frameworks, and program development and monitoring systems to be disaggregated and analyzed in terms of their particular gains and failures. This would facilitate strategic thinking about what particular institutions are well positioned to accomplish and what they can be held accountable for. Civil society including women’s organizations and networks should be motivated to work for change, if commitments have to be achieved.
New Avenues for Change
The global economy has produced not only the feminization of poverty, but the “feminization of working poverty“. Though more women participate in today’s workforce, the great majority occupies low-status jobs and is unable to lift themselves out of poverty. More women take jobs in the informal economy that lacks job security, benefits or protection. Around the globe, women are working in export processing sites, as domestic workers, as street vendors or as suppliers at the bottom of a multinational supply chain.
With this situation, grassroots strategies are needed to address problems related to the fact that women are used as a source of cheap labour as part of an economic development strategy, while labour standards around the world are declining. International migration is another economic development strategy that has implications for women. Offering cheap labour as an anti-poverty strategy is insufficient to generate economic growth.
Women often leave their families to become domestic workers abroad, leading to the breakdown of the family and other social problems. International migration can also be detrimental for the women who migrate. This can be addressed by encouraging them to become part of the labour movement, because this allows women workers to monitor the conditions of their own workplaces and make sure people are being treated fairly.
Global networks give women more power to negotiate contracts with their employers. It is important to include men when addressing concerns of women in the global labour markets. In particular, men can play an important role in addressing the sexual exploitation of women. Truck drivers in Cameroon are taught about HIV/AIDS in conjunction with groups like the Women’s Gender Empowerment Councils in Bonaberi-Douala. These truck drivers drive across the Chad and Central Africa Republic borders, have different sexual partners or engage in other risky behaviour.
An alternative solution is the engagement of men around issues of reproductive health and gender equality. Men as Partners (MAP) works as increase men’s awareness of reproductive health issues and increase men’s support for their partner’s reproductive health decision. This can also stimulate men to take active stand for gender equality and against gender=based violence.
This is because there is a clear mandate around the need to work with men and boys to achieve gender equality that has been recognized by numerous international conferences and declarations and supported by women’s organisations and the women’s movement. One of the main driving factors of this mandate is the recognition of how gender inequalities fuel the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Men are conceived of in some positive ways as financially independent, providers, husbands and fathers, but there are also negative and harmful messages about what it means to be a man. These include withholding emotions, exerting power, using violence, not asking for help, having multiple sexual partners, risking taking, substance abuse, violence, misogyny and homophobia.
Increased political, economic and religious fundamentalism has lead to the development of rigid norms of expected male and female behaviour. The concept of working with men and boys is to question some of the more detrimental constructs of masculinity and explore alternative attitudes and actions.
Men with more traditional concepts of masculinity are shown to be more likely to report physical violence towards female partners, to be involved in delinquency, to have a higher number of sexual partners, to experience sexually transmitted infections and to use and abuse alcohol and drug.
However, these traditional and harmful constructs of masculinity can be challenged and replaced with alternative models, which promote equality and lead to improvements in health for both men and women.
Another angle is the gender-neutral programming, which is common in large-scale HIV prevention programs. These programs promote HIV prevention, but unfortunately make no room for a discussion of how abstinence, monogamy and safe sex are experienced differently by men and women and the realities of men and women’s lives in a cultural context.
On the other hand, gender-sensitive programming, takes into account that men and women have different realities and that different strategies are often required reaching men and women. Gender-sensitive programming often includes design features that make services more male-friendly.
Transformative programming takes on negative societal messages about what it means to be male and female, and challenges those in an attempt to create a more equitable society, which supports healthier behaviours in the future. Challenging the direct cause of gender inequality, harmful gender socialization, makes it possible to address the spectrum of health issues, including gender-based violence, HIV, reproductive health, family planning, men’s role in maternal health, issues of fatherhood and care-giving, and issues of violence.
MAP’s programs consistently ask men to talk about equitable relationships and men’s role in promoting gender equality and challenge men to create a new masculinity that involves taking a stand against gender based violence in the community. Most programs have focused on reaching out to men individually or in small, intensive group settings, forcing them to consider what it means to be male and how notions of masculinity may have a negative impact on their societies. These strategies have been successful in changing individual attitudes, knowledge and behaviours and the next step would be to expand to the societal level, where there can be a greater, more sustainable impact on gender socialization.
Transformative programs on gender equality should move beyond the workshop approach to support men when they return to a patriarchal society where there is often not sufficient support for new concepts and constructions of masculinity. Community action teams led by men who have been through the workshops should be put in place to go out and communicate and engage in community activism around gender issues.
A clear challenge of taking this work to scale is building the capacity of organizations and social institutions in order tom attain sustainability. Individuals must confront their own issues concerning gender and identity before they can challenge the broader social situation. This requires significant time, effort and support.
Gender programming at the health level is focused on improving the quality of services and making them more accessible to men. This requires large scale media campaigns and new or reformed policies and legislation. The public sector should be engaged with increased funding to promote gender equality.
It is through the involvement of the public sector that more work will be done to address the broad socioeconomic conditions that can influence men and their behaviours. If men are unable to provide for their families, they may feel disempowered in their role as men and resort to some of the more harmful constructs of masculinity, which include dominance over women, use of violence and risk-taking behaviours.
Many men who have gone through critical reflections of gender have come out on the other side espousing more gender progressive attitudes, and engaging in more protective behaviours. Networks that bring together various organizations, such as non governmental, multi-lateral bodies, and donors create a forum for sharing knowledge of male-oriented programming and gender equality.
Action plans should be conceived which incorporate elements like women’s empowerment, strengthening productive capacity of women and supporting women’s psychological, social and reproductive health. These efforts get women feel more encouraged to speak and voice their opinions.
Previously, women were engaged in domestic activities, which were unremunerated. Women’s productive activities have generated new sources of income, which have increased women’s economic autonomy. Cameroon Link has trained women to speak out against domestic violence and assisted women who suffered from abuse.
Before this training, women were less interested in the politics of the community than in having their basic needs met. Only after women’s basic needs are addressed does the organization introduce other themes such as community participation. Productive activities of women are done with respect to the cultural identity of Cameroon, which is Africa in miniature, drawing on indigenous knowledge.
The Way Forward Gender Equality Promotion
The way forward is to work out a larger conceptual frame that includes empowerment, rights and mainstreaming in all social spaces, putting into consideration the realities of women’s, men’s and children’s daily lives. It should be noted that, in the developing country context like Cameroon, gender relations are influenced by poverty, insecurity, impunity and patriarchy. As such, achieving gender equity requires a stronger and diverse but unified voice for change; greater accountability and increased, targeted resources.
Currently, the accountability framework consists of several agreements at the global level, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Other the other hand, gender equality is not just related to human rights, but also women’s empowerment and specific measures are needed to respond to existing inequality and to champion the empowerment of women in order to increase women’s opportunities and capabilities. Women’s empowerment also requires mainstreaming the gender equality agenda in institutions and processes in a way that transforms social values that have sustained gender inequality.
Challenges
Development Approaches
This tends to separate development issues from concerns over investment, foreign policy and security. Current development approaches are increasingly top-down, focusing on policies, institutions, and processes, without an adequate focus on community empowerment and social movements and as such do not have a large impact on people’s everyday lives. The centralization of power and resources has negative implications with respect to gender equality, because in the parliament, government cabinet, chief courts or among elders of the clan, where power is defined and decisions are made, there is a dearth of women’s participation.
Limited access to resources
Gender equality requires equal access to services and infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water, and communication tools. Without access to such resources, women with tremendous knowledge and skills, expertise and passion are not given an outlet to use their knowledge and skills, keeping them at a disadvantage. Technological tools enable women to use their time, energy and expertise more efficiently.
Poverty, Violence, Disease & Patriarchy
Gender equality cannot be achieved as long as women live in insecure environments, whether due to an abusive partner, militia or a threatening neighbour. It is important that development practitioners should shift focus from poverty reduction to wealth creation. By focusing on poverty reduction, women are viewed as subjects of poverty rather than as producers and generators of wealth. Women’s arts and crafts should be adequately valued as a reflection of their knowledge and skill.
The governments should offer support to women for their role as caregivers and nurturer, rather than treating them as subsidy providers for basic social services such as health. All women, whether rich, poor, working or housewives should participate in decision making spaces, academic and research institutions, advocacy and public awareness initiatives, political debates, the private sector and within households as a collective voice for change.
The voice of leadership at international and national level is also needed to call for greater investment in gender equality and women’s empowerment. Advocates of gender equality must seek greater accountability through legislative and policy strengthening; reform and harmonization, resources and an end to impunity; political governance and greater private sector investment and responsibility.
More public resources are needed to make strategies to promote gender equality successful. Mobilizing greater resources for gender equality requires a system of taxation that does not overburden the poor and gender-responsive budgeting. From all that has been said, it is understood that the fight for greater gender equality is strong and women simply need proper mechanisms for financing their initiatives for equality and rights.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Gender Sensitivity Guidelines
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, WABA has designed guidelines for Gender sensitive materials, that can be used for advocacy and communications. Make use of them and give us your feedback.
1. Statements/recommendations should be broad to cover all women, whenever relevant. Use the term "woman" rather "mother", unless the context is specific to a mother. Eg. All women are entitled to good nutrition. Unless you want to make a specific point that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in particular need additional nutrition and support.
2. Use gender neutral terms like "humankind" or "humanity" rather than "mankind." Avoid references to bis. Use s/he, for example. This point is even more relevant in Latin based languages as most nouns are gendered, masculine and feminine. Use the plural form when it is ungendered.
3. The content should always respect women's basic rights to food, health, security, development, personal integrity, informed decisions and other rights spelt out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international instruments. There can be cultural sensitivities to issues around women's right to sexuality and reproductive rights, although W ABA ' s Gender WG stand is that aIl women' s rights in CEDAW, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and Beijing Platform of Action should be protected and supported.
4. Consider the woman's situation (context, background) when "making demands on her" –eg. avoid using words like "should", "must", "ought to". General remarks like "Women should breastfeed" can be seen as insensitive if their situation, which prevents them from breastfeeding, is not considered. Rather talk about supporting women to breastfeed.
5. Avoid stereotypical portrayal of men and women in terms of social beliefs, norms of expected behaviour, sexual division of labour, access and control to resources decision making and power differentials. Note this especially in illustrations (images, photographs, etc).
6. Are the messages in the materials directed only to women or also to men? Where relevant, ensure that the messages also address men as a means to ensure their involvement and to recognize their rights and responsibilities. Being gender sensitive means that you recognize the entitlements, roIes and responsibilities ofboth men and women.
7. Ensure that we don't only talk about the father when we refer to men's role in chld care and domestic work. With changing family structures, the men involved can be a partner, friend, brother, etc. and not just the husband or father of the child.
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) is a global network of individuals and organisations concerned with the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding worldwide based on the Innocenti Declaration, the Ten Links for Nurturing the Future and the WHO/UNICEF Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. Its core partners are IBFAN, LLLI, ILCA, Wellstart International and ABM. WABA is in consultative status with UNICEF and an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).
1. Statements/recommendations should be broad to cover all women, whenever relevant. Use the term "woman" rather "mother", unless the context is specific to a mother. Eg. All women are entitled to good nutrition. Unless you want to make a specific point that pregnant and breastfeeding mothers in particular need additional nutrition and support.
2. Use gender neutral terms like "humankind" or "humanity" rather than "mankind." Avoid references to bis. Use s/he, for example. This point is even more relevant in Latin based languages as most nouns are gendered, masculine and feminine. Use the plural form when it is ungendered.
3. The content should always respect women's basic rights to food, health, security, development, personal integrity, informed decisions and other rights spelt out in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and other international instruments. There can be cultural sensitivities to issues around women's right to sexuality and reproductive rights, although W ABA ' s Gender WG stand is that aIl women' s rights in CEDAW, the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and Beijing Platform of Action should be protected and supported.
4. Consider the woman's situation (context, background) when "making demands on her" –eg. avoid using words like "should", "must", "ought to". General remarks like "Women should breastfeed" can be seen as insensitive if their situation, which prevents them from breastfeeding, is not considered. Rather talk about supporting women to breastfeed.
5. Avoid stereotypical portrayal of men and women in terms of social beliefs, norms of expected behaviour, sexual division of labour, access and control to resources decision making and power differentials. Note this especially in illustrations (images, photographs, etc).
6. Are the messages in the materials directed only to women or also to men? Where relevant, ensure that the messages also address men as a means to ensure their involvement and to recognize their rights and responsibilities. Being gender sensitive means that you recognize the entitlements, roIes and responsibilities ofboth men and women.
7. Ensure that we don't only talk about the father when we refer to men's role in chld care and domestic work. With changing family structures, the men involved can be a partner, friend, brother, etc. and not just the husband or father of the child.
The World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA) is a global network of individuals and organisations concerned with the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding worldwide based on the Innocenti Declaration, the Ten Links for Nurturing the Future and the WHO/UNICEF Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding. Its core partners are IBFAN, LLLI, ILCA, Wellstart International and ABM. WABA is in consultative status with UNICEF and an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).
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