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From women to gender - a new plan of action
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Sissel Ekaas, Director of FAO's Gender and Population Division |
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Sissel Ekaas, Director of FAO's Gender and Population Division, talks about the achievements made so far, the key issues affecting gender and development now and the new plan.
What do you think are the most important achievements
made from 1996 to 2001, the period of FAO's previous Plan of
Action for women in development?
I will point first to the growing awareness within FAO
and among member states of the importance of including
gender and socioeconomic considerations when dealing with
agricultural and rural development.
Over the past six years, we have made considerable progress in training and developing guidelines for staff of FAO and member states to help them integrate a gender perspective in their work. For example, more than 1 500 people in 50 member states have been trained under the Socio-economic And Gender Analysis Programme (SEAGA), and together with World Food Programme we prepared guidelines on gender in emergencies.
We have also raised the visibility of the different roles, needs and priorities of rural women and men -- through research and better collection and handling of information disaggregated by sex. The knowledge and understanding of gender relations has increased. Before, for example, the rural household was looked at as a whole, but now we know more about the division of labour within the family, differences between men and women's nutritional needs and differences in access to resources such as land, inputs and credits.
Awareness and recognition of women's role and
responsibilities in relation to men is important in working
towards gender equality. But without understanding the
underlying structural causes of inequality, we cannot
achieve gender equality -- nor, therefore, sustainable
agricultural and rural development. We have to continue
documenting and disseminating information about gender
issues related to nutrition and agriculture and rural
development.
Could you point to some important events that have taken
place during the previous Plan of Action?
Some of the milestones were the 1998 celebration of World
Food Day under the theme of "Women feed the world", the
launching of the Gender and Food Security Web site on
International Women's Day 1999 and the High-level
Consultation on Rural Women and Information in Rome in
October 1999. These events, together with a series of
regional workshops, have been important steps in the effort
to mobilize policy makers and other development
practitioners to action.
What is FAO doing differently now?
We now have specific guidelines for incorporating gender
considerations in all stages of FAO's programming,
monitoring and evaluation processes. Promotion of gender
equality and equity is one of six fundamental principles
necessary for approval of all projects and programmes.
Although these important achievements might seem invisible,
they send a strong signal to all staff about the importance
of gender considerations in development work. If we follow
up with more training and information, we will succeed in
raising gender issues with the member governments and
influencing future agricultural and rural development
policies.
Right now we are at what I call the 'how-to' stage. How
do we translate greater awareness of gender issues into
action, both within FAO and in member states? Now we have to
develop ways of turning the lessons learned into action at
all levels -- within FAO and government and in concrete
projects around the world.
The previous Plan of Action referred to 'women in
development', while this one uses the term 'gender and
development'. Why this change?
The new title signals a conceptual shift. This change --
focusing on gender and gender relations instead of solely on
women -- reflects the approach taken by most United Nations
agencies since the Beijing Women's Conference in 1995. It
also reflects the gradual change that has occurred within
FAO over the past decade. Earlier we focused almost
exclusively on women and on improving women's conditions,
and with some success. However, we did not analyse the
underlying causes of inequality -- social, political,
economic -- between women and men. Such considerations are
more explicitly addressed in the new Plan of Action.
The Plan points to some key emerging trends that can
affect FAO's work. Which of these do you consider the most
crucial?
It is very important to address globalization, including
agricultural trade liberalization, the growth of modern
information and communication technology and the rapid
spread of HIV/AIDS in rural areas.
Globalization has benefited some people and intensified the social exclusion and marginalization of others. The different impacts on men and women have been apparent, particularly in rural areas. Globalization and liberalization policies tend to favour large-scale commercial farming and export-oriented cash cropping over household subsistence production. In general, this will hurt small-scale farmers in low-income food-deficit countries. The majority of these farmers are women, and they already have limited access to markets, training and decision-making opportunities. We must address this in our conversations with governments and other development partners.
The information revolution is both a threat and an opportunity. FAO is concerned not only about the growing rural-urban digital divide, but also about the fact that rural women and girls usually have less access than men to information and new technologies. And if you don't have information, you can't make informed choices about what to produce, when to sell your products and so forth. Nor do you have influence within your community.
On the other hand, the new technologies also represent a
chance to increase educational opportunities for women --
such as through distance education. Also, access to these
communication tools provides a channel for better
networking.
How does AIDS affect rural women?
The sickness and death of working adults in rural areas
affects the supply of labour and the division of labour
within families. When rural women, for example, have to take
care of family members sick with AIDS, they can't work in
the fields. And when the adults die, children are left to
tend the fields. This not only affects current agricultural
productivity, but also results in the loss of agricultural
knowledge, which no longer gets transferred from one
generation to the next. Further worsening the situation is
the frequent exclusion of women from land ownership -- if
her husband dies, the woman can't inherit the land and might
have to move away. So, the AIDS pandemic calls for a
re-examination of issues such as agricultural education and
unequal access to and control over land and property.
We also have to take into consideration the increasing number of natural and man-made emergencies, which interrupts agricultural activity, increases pressure on natural resources and accelerates migration. Unfortunately, it will still take time and resources to achieve genuine gender equality in rural development.
I believe that no enduring solution can be found to world
hunger if men and women can't equally participate in and
benefit from agricultural and rural development. I hope the
new Plan of Action will serve as a powerful mandate for FAO
and its member states to redouble commitments and
efforts.
05 November 2001
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