PANEL

Gender and equality
in policies and planning

Nature and scope

The moderator, Ms M. Winberg, with panel members Ms L. Reinhardt, Ms A. Quisumbing and Ms M. Buvinic

- FAO/11873K-0A

Margareta Winberg, Moderator, Minister for Agriculture and Equal Opportunities, Sweden

The goal must always be to empower women .... Networking is a key word here. By facilitating networking among women and combining this with information and training related to human rights and democracy, as well as literacy and other crucially important knowledge, local women will gain the knowledge they themselves need ...

Maurice Albarka, Communication Adviser, Development Innovations and Networks (IRED), the Niger

Women are liberated not only by texts, but also by the quality of who they are and the power of what they do.

Linda Reinhardt, Chair of the Standing Committee on Women in Agriculture, International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)

Women's equal participation in developing and implementation of policy is not only a demand for simple justice or democracy but a necessary condition for women's interests to be taken into account.

Agnes Quisumbing, Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Many policy-makers are now convinced that policy and legal reforms to strengthen women's access to land are an essential ingredient for their empowerment. This is where the use and generation of new information on women's land rights will be crucial.

Johan Pottier, Senior Social Anthropologist, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, United Kingdom

Three priority areas for research and policy attention (should) be reviewed: women's resourcefulness in agriculture; women's multistranded approach to achieving food security; male impoverishment and women's right to access land and inheritance.

Mayra Buvinic, Chief of the Social Development Division, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)

The plea for better, more reliable and valid statistics is nothing new but needs to be made once again. It is important to underline that we need statistics that measure both rural women's work and well-being; we need to be able to disaggregate indicators by sex, age and ethnicity; we need to measure family structure and conditions.

Dissemination of
gender-specific information

Methodologies and approaches

The moderator, Ms A. King, with panel members Ms S. Ly and Mr B. Cassen

Angela King, Moderator, Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women

We need to set up new policies for gender-specific information flows from bottom up and top down. We need to involve rural women in data gathering at the community level and in developing channels for passing the information gathered to planners and decision-makers, thus establishing a link between the two groups.

Govind Kelkar, Coordinator of the Gender and Development Programme, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand

The new information and communication technologies are able to recognize the conditions needed for the development of women's autonomy and liberty, to challenge gender stereotypes and undo hierarchy and power between women and men, to achieve basic individual capabilities, to promote democratic processes of homes and local communities and to improve opportunities for skill development, employment and participation in political life.

Sophie Ly, Secretary-General, World Association of Community Broadcasters

If information and knowledge are recognized as a source of wealth today, those of us who are working for the rights of communities must ensure that these can circulate and get through to the very places that are in greatest need of them, using whatever means are appropriate.

Ruth Ojiambo Ochieng, Executive Director, ISIS Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange (WICCE), Uganda

... recommendations are: 1) integration of available sources of information to enhance accessibility and visibility of information needs of the rural women; 2) coordination of information generated and disseminated by key stakeholders in the agricultural sector; and 3) every development policy should include an information and communication component.

Bernard Cassen, Managing Editor, Le Monde Diplomatique, France

The task of keeping the general public briefed on rural development and food security ... is virtually a "mission impossible" in the international media system .... The media like confrontation. It is our responsibility to find the "right" areas for this engagement, the ones which possess the most didactic virtues, and there are many of them ....

Manuel Calvelo, Communication Professor, University of Tucumán, Argentina

Information, as a basic input for sensitization and for facilitating sound decision-making, is not something static; it is a process .... The processing of information must guarantee: a) timeliness and a certain predictive capacity; b) reliability or an indication of the margin of error; c) intelligibility by the recipients; d) accessibility by the user; and e) usefulness to the receiver.

- FAO/87106