Femme globale: gender perspectives in the 21st century women contesting the information society: from Beijing to Geneva, Tunis and beyond

The information society and African women

By: Wanyeki LM
Published by: African Women's Development & Communication Network, 2007
Via: Eldis

How successful were the strategies for improving the gender-responsiveness of the media with respect to the content of the media and representation within the media, outlined in the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action? This paper examines why, ten years on, the coverage and representation of African women remains a concern. The author finds that the need for free, independent and pluralistic media at the service of development and social change and the need for self-regulation by the media, with women's full participation in the development of codes of conduct and self-regulatory mechanisms remain relevant objectives today.

(http://www.femnet.or.ke/documents/femme%20globale%20women.pdf)

Commission on the Status of Women

Report on the fifty-first session

Published by: United Nations, Economic and Social Council
Via: UNPulse

The report of the 51st session of the Commission on the Status of Women is now available (E/2007/29-E/CN.6/2007/9)

(http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=E/2007/27%20(SUPP))

Holliday Season!

Dear Readers

Yet another year has flown by. And it was a busy year indeed! I am going to take a well-deserved break, and will start posting again at breakneck speed in the New Year.

I hope that Gender Focus and its sister blogs have been of some help to you, and will continue to do so in the future. So look forward to a bumper crop of posts early in January 2007, as I will endeavor to bring you all up to speed with what has been happening over the holiday season.

Have a great time, and a Happy New Year!

Beijing plus 10

An ambivalent record on gender justice

By: Molyneux M & Razavi S
Published by: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD),
Via: UNRISD

This paper, drawing on research undertaken for the UNRISD report, Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World, reflects on the ambivalent record of progress achieved by women over the last decades and considers how the policy environment has changed over the period since the high point of the global women’s movements.

Drawing on a number of commonly employed indicators of “women’s progress”, the paper argues that the record of achievement regarding gender equality is more ambivalent, and the causal influences more diverse and less unidirectional than is sometimes assumed. It also argues that development policies have an important role to play in securing outcomes, and that the first phase of the structural reforms (dating from the early 1980s) was in many respects negative for women. In the ten years since the Beijing Conference there have been some significant shifts in international development policy along with a growing appreciation of the need to develop gender aware policies. By the end of the 1980s, “market fundamentalism” and shock therapy had lost much of their appeal, opening up a space for new ideas and approaches in development policy and practice.

Improving women's lives

The World Bank actions since Beijing

Published by: World Bank, 2005
Via: Siyanda

The World Bank is committed to helping member countries fulfil the Beijing Platform for Action and recognises that gender equality is critical to development and poverty reduction. The World Bank's emphasis on gender increased after the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women. This document discusses the Bank's contribution to implementing the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) - linking the BPfA with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Failure to achieve the Beijing objectives hinders achievement not only of the third MDG — on gender equality - but other MDGs too. The relationship between gender equality and economic growth means equality is essential for progress on MDG one - to eradicate poverty. Meeting MDG two on universal access to education requires addressing the conditions specific to girls or boys that prevent them from attending or completing primary school. In The Gambia, the World Bank supports government efforts to reduce gender inequalities in education. They aim to increase girls' school enrolment by increasing public expenditure on education. Funding is being provided to the 'Girl Friendly Schools Initiative,' which has improved the physical conditions in schools where girls' attendance was low, in return for community commitments to increase female enrolments, and to the 'Girls' Scholarship Trust Fund' in secondary schools, which subsidises girls' enrolment fees.

Did the Beijing Platform for Action accelerate progress?

How has the Dutch government fared in implementing Beijing platform for Action?

By: van der Tol W & Koekebakker W
Published by: Hivos , 2005
Via: Eldis

This paper critically looks at efforts by the Netherlands to implement the actions and objectives of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA). The paper examines both the Dutch national and international gender equality policies. The paper makes several conclusions including the following:

Regarding the Dutch national gender equity policy:

• the Dutch government took steps to revitalise its gender equality policy in 2000, but its actions only partly conformed with the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action
• the Dutch Multi-Year Plan for Gender equality, which was established with clear objectives and ambitious benchmarks failed to be implemented, when in 2002 a new government was installed
• the government seldom takes into account the results of in-depth studies on gender issues, and also fails to revise its policy in accordance to recommendations made in these studies. The Netherlands does not implement its gender budget analysis
• the current Dutch subsidy policy is endangering the secure infrastructure of women’s organisations supporting the gender equality process in the Netherlands
• there is a lack of political commitment to actively implement the Beijing Platform for Action, with assistance from the women’s organisations, social partners and other experts
• the process of bringing about gender equality in the Netherlands is not yet complete.

Regarding their international gender equity policy:

• the Dutch International Gender Equality Policy does not conform with the five preconditions for gender mainstreaming
• the Women and Development policy has not been put down in writing and therefore, is not institutionally anchored
• there is no budgetary allocation for gender equality activities
• some Dutch embassies and some departments in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are implementing beneficial work for the support of women
• after an initially promising start, attention for the implementation of the BPfA has progressively waned to the point where it has now become completely invisible.

Gender mainstreaming since Beijing

A review of success and limitations in international institutions

By: Moser A & Moser C
Published by: Oxfam , 2005
Via: Eldis

This article assesses progress made by international development institutions in gender mainstreaming since the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. It categorises progress into three stages:

• Adopting the terminology of gender equality and mainstreaming
• Putting a gender mainstreaming policy into place
• Implementing gender mainstreaming in practice.

It is at the level of implementation that significant challenges remain. Policy commitments to gender mainstreaming frequently evaporate in planning and implementation processes – due to lack of staff capacity, organisational culture and attitudes, and staff “simplification” of the gender issue. The impacts of gender mainstreaming in terms of gender equality also remain largely unknown due to a lack of effective monitoring and evaluation of gender mainstreaming outcomes.

The article concludes that there is a pressing need to link strategies with concrete outcomes through the development of more robust and systematic monitoring and evaluation of the effects of gender mainstreaming on people’s lives.

Gendered spaces in Party Politics in Southern Africa

Progress and Regress since Beijing 1995

By: Onalenna Doo Selolwane
Published by: UNRISD, 2006
Via: UNRISD

This paper was written as a contribution to the review of progress toward gender equality since the 1995 Beijing Conference with specific reference to the southern African region. It recognizes that in the African context, a review of this nature is necessarily also an assessment of how far institutions and processes of accountable governance, reestablished in the 1990s in most African states, are taking sufficient root to enable the realization of declared commitments to enhance the quality of life for any segment of the citizenry. The stocktaking focuses on political parties both as possible instruments and as sites of negotiated power, against a historical background where they have also been instruments of coercion and exclusion. They have thus embodied tension, as on the one hand products of repression, and on the other, symbols of a breakthrough to a future promising the African citizenry liberties and democratic rights coupled with improvements in material well-being.

Gender mainstremaing since Beijing

A review of success and limitations in international institutions

By: Msoer A & Moser C
Published by: Oxfam, 2005
Via: Eldis

This article assesses progress made by international development institutions in gender mainstreaming since the Beijing Platform for Action in 1995. It categorises progress into three stages:

• Adopting the terminology of gender equality and mainstreaming
• Putting a gender mainstreaming policy into place
• Implementing gender mainstreaming in practice.

It is at the level of implementation that significant challenges remain. Policy commitments to gender mainstreaming frequently evaporate in planning and implementation processes – due to lack of staff capacity, organisational culture and attitudes, and staff “simplification” of the gender issue. The impacts of gender mainstreaming in terms of gender equality also remain largely unknown due to a lack of effective monitoring and evaluation of gender mainstreaming outcomes.

Beijing betrayed

Assessing the progress of the Beijing Platform

Published by: Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) , 2005
Via: Eldis

This document assesses governments’ progress in implementing the commitments they made to the world’s women at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women that met in Beijing in 1995. It consists of reports from women in 150 countries representing every region of the world. Their realities often contrast sharply with the official reports of their governments.
The main critique of the document is that governments worldwide have adopted a piecemeal and incremental approach to implementation that cannot achieve the economic, social and political transformation underlying the promises and vision of Beijing. The document considers the main recommendations of the Beijing Platform and assesses progress made in the following areas:

• human rights
• power and decision-making
• peace and security
• natural resources and environmental security.

The report concludes that the rhetoric of governments at Beijing has failed to play out in the reality of women’s lives. Governments have displayed a lack of will in turning their commitments to women’s rights into decisive action, instead adopting a piecemeal and incremental approach that cannot achieve the economic, social and political transformation underlying the promises of Beijing