Review and appraisal of international support

Review and appraisal of international support

During the past decade, the Philippines received bilateral and multilateral funding as well as technical assistance for projects that were designed to involve women either exclusively, or as a sector in a large program/project, or as participants or cooperators in "integrated" projects. A list of these technical cooperation or ODA projects has been gleaned from that contained in the national report (NCRFW: 124-128) and reproduced over the following pages.

Among the funding agencies with a definite bias for women are the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Australian International Development Assistance Bureau (AIDAB), the Deutsch Gesellshaft Fur Technuische Zwammenarbeit (GTZ), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Ford Foundation, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). The International Labour Organization (ILO) has also supported DOLE'S program for women entrepreneurs and home-based workers. These agencies have funded projects that employ any of the three approaches: integrating women in the different project activities, incorporating a women's component, or designing a project exclusively for women.

The projects for rural women are of several types: training in leadership, assertiveness, or income/productivity-enhancing technical skills (financial management, livelihood skills); income-generating projects (IGPs) that support existing livelihood activities, which in turn comprise many of the women's components in projects; and organizing women, such as the women along Laguna Lake or the home-based workers. Of indirect importance to the rural women are the gender-sensitivity training activities that the NCRFW and NGOs, conduct with agricultural development agencies in building data bases and the like.

To funnel more resources to rural and urban women, Congress enacted the Women in Development and Nation Building Act (RA 7192), which provides that a substantial portion of ODA funds be allocated to support programs and activities for women. The NCRFW estimates that, as of January to May 1993, 18 percent of the US$ 166.8 million committed ODA funds were earmarked for projects that purported to integrate women in the various project activities, or that had a women's component. Meanwhile, 23 percent of the proposed or pipeline projects evaluated by NEDA for ODA consisted of integrated projects (5 percent), projects with WID components (2 percent), or women-only projects (16 percent). The rest, NCRFW claims, were non-gender sensitive projects. Of the funds slated for women, only a fraction presumably benefited rural women, directly or indirectly.

Technical cooperation and assistance pertinent to women in agriculture¹

Critical area of concern	Project title	Classification	Funding sources and amount²	Status
Inequality in the sharing of power and decision- making at all levels	Training in Leadership and Organization- Building for the Women along Laguna Lake	Women-specific	UNIFEM/ Australia	Proposed/ Pipeline
	Pilot Provincial Agricultural Extension Project or PPAEP(Regions 5 and 10)2	Integrated	A$2.97M AIDAB/(Phase 1)	Ongoing
Insufficient mechanisms at all levels to promote the advancement of women	NCRFW Institutional Strengthening Project(Training)	Specific gender and development project	CIDA/1.53 M	Ongoing
	NCRFW Institutional Strengthening Project(Data base)	Specific gender and development project	ADB/0.1 M	Ongoing
	Creation of NCRFW Project/Groups		GTZ/ DM 150,000	Ongoing
		Women Only
	WID/NGO Umbrella Project		CIDA/3.5M	Ongoing
Poverty	Livelihood and Revolving and Capability-Building Fund for Women	For Women Only	Ford Foundation/P10 M	Completed
		WID Integrated
	Entrepreneur Support Project		CIDA/4.3 M
		WID Integrated
	Child Survival Project		USAID/3.25 M
		WID Integrated
	Family Planning Assistance Project		USAID/10 M
		Women Only		Ongoing
	Financing Program (with 4 NGOs)		USAID/0.94 M
				Proposed/
	Participatory Action Research for Grassroots Women Development		UNESCO	Pipeline
Inequality in women's access to and participation in the definition of economic structures and policies and in the productive process itself	Shallow Groundwater Irrigation Development Project for Mount Pinatubo Affected Areas	Women's component	JICA/4.46 M
	Diversified Crops Irrigation Engineering	Women's component	JICA/4.71 M
	Development of Viable Agrarian Reform Communities in Southern Palawan	Women's component	JICA/1.89 M
Inequality of access to education, health, employment and other means of maximizing awareness of women's rights and the use of their capacities	Recurrent Education Program		Netherlands/ ECC; UNESCO	Proposed/ Pipeline
	Radio Broadcasting for Women's Concerns		UNESCO	Proposed/ Pipeline
	Promoting Self- Employment through Labor Ministries	Women only	ILO-DANIDA/ 0.29M (Phase1) 0.03M (Phase2)	Completed Ongoing
	Women in Non- Traditional Trades(WINT)		ILO/Royal Dutch Gov't 0.504 M	Completed
	Action Research to Promote Organization Among Piece-Rate Workers		Voluntary Fund for the UN Decade for Women/2,500	Completed
	Skills Training Program for Rural Women		ILO/0.092 M	Completed
	Cooperative Entrepreneurship for Rural Development		ILO
	National Study: Living and Working Conditions of Homeworkers		ILO
	Productivity Improvement in Small Enterprises		USAID and ILO
Inequality in access to education, health, employment(cont.)	Project HOPE (Homeworkers Program for Empowerment)		ILO
	Child Labour Project	WID integrated	UNICEF
	Training of Trainers for Agricultural Extension	Women and Men	APDC (with some support)	Completed

¹ The list was gleaned from The Philippine Country' Report on Women, 1986-95, prepared by the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women for the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, Beijing, China, September 1995 (NCRFW 1995a: 124-128). Data before 1992 (pre-RA7192) was not available.

² In US$, unless noted otherwise.

³ These were added to the original list contained in the national report.

Several problems presently limit the effectiveness of the implementation of RA7192 vis-a-vis ODA and technical cooperation. These include absence of a systematic monitoring system by the government on how much is going to projects or activities that address women's concerns, distinguishing between concerns of rural and urban women; lack of general as well as sector-specific Gender and Development (GAD) guidelines to help the government assess the gender-responsiveness of projects or programs; and yet undeveloped mechanisms for categorizing, recording, and reporting on ODA-funded projects according to approaches employed for meeting women's needs and concerns in rural as well as urban areas. The NCRFW has identified other problems that also apply to assistance to rural women, namely: lack of awareness or understanding of foreign experts of the Philippine rural and agricultural situation; lack of funds to train local experts who could provide technical assistance; and fielding by foreign donors of appraisal missions that are neither gender-sensitive nor aware of the Philippine rural and agricultural situation. Finally, the NCRFW recognizes the need to strengthen its role so that it could not only direct funding to government agencies and NGOs, but also to ensure that a substantial portion of development funds for women are channelled to agricultural and other similar concerns of rural women.