Foro Global sobre Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutrición (Foro FSN)

Hello everyone,

Movies can and should play powerful role in woem empowerment- sharing here the case of recent Hindi movie-DANGAL.

In 2016, movie DANGAL by Aamir Khan was released in India, which is a story of two sisters groomed by their father as wrestlers. He basically wanted boys not girls as usual in Indian society, but he thought otherwise later and focused on his daughters to turn them worldclass wrestlers. It is impactful movie like a game changer in bringing sea change in the mind set in the traditional societies where focus of family is mostly on male child, be it feeding, schooling or career, while for girls- their marriage is the only goal. After watching DANGAL, Men and women were equally appreciative of the approach of the film to bring about change in thinking on gender issue especially the craving for male child that girls too can do what boys do. The famous dialogue or punch line in this movie, “Maari chhoriyan chhoron se kam hai ke” meaning- "Are my girls any less than boys?" itself has the biggest transformative impact in thinking of Man.

Here are some links which indicate the potential of movies in bringing about change in mind set towards gender transformative impacts.

https://bhavpritah.wordpress.com/2017/01/07/women-empowerment-lessons-f…

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/5-bollywood-films-women-empowerment-…

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/interview-empowering-women-through-films…

Thanks, it is stimulating to participate in the discussion.

For gender transformative impacts, your first question already gives a clue, and that is, to understand the differences amongst rural women, in terms of needs and priorities, but also their coping strategies. We dont give adequate attention to the ways in which women are already using the resources they have to survive. Sometimes this involves risky strategies, including engaging in non-legal activities or transactional sex. Once we are able to map out women's gendered vulnerabilities, especially in a context of climate change and growing male migration, we then need to ensure that policies and strategies support or enhance their strategies, provide them information that can ensure safety, for instance.

In much of Africa, an analysis of data reveals an increase in the number of female-headed households. What this indicates is that often women are opting out of marriage, but making economic and emotional partnerships that ensure some support and reciprocity. This has implications for resource access, but equally health and fertility. Gender transformative impacts may then emerge from different starting points, but the bottomline is that the processes of engagement need to address unequal power relations, be it of class, ethnicity/caste or gender.

Hello everyone,

My name is Mauro Bottaro and I work for the Dimitra project of FAO.

On behalf of my team, I would like to address the issue of women's leadership, one of the topics that most frequently arises in this very interesting discussion. Indeed, a fundamental condition for women’s empowerment is their autonomous and full participation in the development dynamics, both at household and community level. In order for all this to happen, women need to acquire self-esteem, capacity to recognize, identify, argue and expose their needs and also take necessary actions to overcome economic and social barriers to meet those needs.

As already mentioned by my colleague Andrea Sánchez in an earlier intervention, Dimitra Clubs’ participatory communication is an endogenous social mobilization approach: women and men inform and communicate, each according to her/his specific capacities, roles, responsibilities and needs. It is a process that enables communities to envisage, define and pursue their own transformation and development practices, where special attention is given to vulnerable or marginalized groups, such as women and youth.

This approach ensures that specific conditions are created so that leaders can emerge, whether men, women or young people. As a result, Dimitra Clubs allow rural women to improve their self-esteem and fully participate in community life. Many of them have seized that opportunity and have gradually taken up a leading role within households, formal and informal organizations and communities.

Some examples on women’s leadership:

• In DR Congo, in the village of Yanongé, Maguy Atilomoi was one of the first women to get involved in the clubs approach. She is a young woman and mother of two from a modest rural family, who gradually made her way up until she became President of the Producers Organization, Vice President of the Yanongé Producers Union and Dimitra Club moderator. She also supports the activities of about 15 clubs in her area, by visiting them once a week and giving advice to members to help them move forward. Maguy makes a living thanks to farming. She farms groundnuts, palm nuts and a local vegetable called niebé. This is a demanding activity but she still finds time to attend school: “I am attending a farming school where I learn agriculture techniques. I am an agronomist, I work like men,” Maguy said.

In some cases, women of the Dimitra Clubs have also acquired specific skills that have led them to develop a political leadership:

• In Niger, Ramatou Issouf - member of the Dimitra Club of Wadata in the village of Wadai - became president of the local office of a political party. She also decided to be a candidate in the municipal elections. She is 46 years old and has four daughters. She mentioned that she developed oratory skills and the capacity to argue with relevance through the Dimitra Clubs.

• In Niger, in the village of Falwel, seven women, members of the local Dimitra Club have been candidates for local elections.

As previously mentioned by my colleague Yannick De Mol, Dimitra also produced a video series to illustrate the dynamic nature of the Dimitra Clubs and the impact that they can achieve. Other examples on women’s leadership can be found in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6cPjEYzC8I&feature=youtu.be

About the question, what can be done?

Will it help in gender equality, if Gender sensitization is included in school curriculum ?

I am sharing here information about a recent Campaign in India, to MAKE GENDER SENSITISATION COMPULSORY IN SCHOOL CURRICULUM. The proponents of this campaign say, “In our tradition-bound society, certain attitudinal change and change in the mindset is needed to respect women and to ensure gender justice. Right from childhood years, children ought to be sensitized to respect women. A child should be taught to respect women in the same way he is taught to respect men. Gender equality should be made a part of the school curriculum. School teachers and parents should be trained, not only to conduct regular personality-building and skill-enhancing exercises, but also to keep a watch on the actual behavioural patterns of the children so as to make them gender sensitized.”

Read more about this campaign:

http://www.firstpost.com/jaagore/issues-womens-safety

About Men’s voice

I wish to share with you elements about the FAO-Dimitra Clubs approach regarding this point mentioned by Clare. Andrea Sanchez already presented the approach last week but if you need more info : http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4706e.pdf or http://www.fao.org/dimitra/en/.

Striving for gender equality is indeed an important prerequisite for viable and sustainable rural development. So, a strong awareness of gender is woven into all the Dimitra Clubs’ activities. Of course, much importance is given to strengthening the visibility of women and their ability to take part in decision-making. But the approach does not focus only on women, a lot of attention goes on the relations between men and women, with strong emphasis on encouraging the involvement of men and on the expression of the respective needs of women and men. Both play an active and equal role in the life of the clubs. It is clearly the most efficient way to trigger gender equality at community level, working with local institutions (traditional and political authorities, producers organisations, etc.) often composed of men. For this process to succeed, identification of the partner organisation (that will accompany the Dimitra Clubs) and capacity development on the long term is essential and can be challenging. Switching to engaging equally women and men takes knowledge of the context, skills and time.

The case of Isangi in DR Congo is interesting on this matter. In the Tshopo Province, in the northeast of the country, traditional schemes of labour division between men and women have been questioned and sometimes broken. Tshopo is covered by the rainforest and watered by the Congo River and its tributaries. On this huge territory, fishing is a key economic activity, traditionally controlled by men. However, recently, women have begun to make their contribution, in the village of Isangi for instance: “equality and the gender division of responsibility were discussed in the club for the first time. We have realized that women can also play a proactive role in fishing activities,” said Henri, one of club’s members. Behaviours have gradually changed and today women carry out tasks that were previously attributed to men, just like fishing. This redefinition of women’s roles by the community increased the household’s fish catches and consequently their incomes. As a result, their diet is now more varied and balanced. This example is mentioned in a video of the series FAO produced last year: http://www.fao.org/dimitra/dimitra-clubs/en/

Gender transformative approaches

 

Dear All

My name is Takele Teshome, Founder and executive Director of Association for Sustainable Development Alternatives (ASDA). I was not able to actively participate in the online discussion since I was out on field trip where Internet access is difficult. I am now ready to share my thoughts and experiences in the field.

Question 1: What are the main challenges rural women and girls are facing today?

The key challenges of rural women in Ethiopia were unequal access and control over resources. Insufficient knowledge and access to information have also affected economic empowerment of women in general and women headed households in particular. Gender violence is also part of the challenge. However, although a lot remains to be done there are improvements in the recent years.

Question 2: Are we using the right approaches and policies to close the gender gap?

Noticeable effort has been exerted in areas of policies and strategies. However, practical actions to bridge the gaps are insufficient. A lot has been done to address practical gender needs such as reducing work - loads, increasing access to education, reproductive health etc. Programmes and projects are often formulated based on general need assessment, not on proper gender analysis, not on in-depth analysis of underlying causes for gender gaps and gender sensitive targets and indicators

Question 3: How can we best achieve gender transformative impacts?

AS to ASDA, programmes and project be formulated based on gender analysis to understand underlying causes for existing gender inequality and harmful traditional practices and gender violence. Research agenda should also consider gender inequalities. Feed back should also be collected not only from males but also from females using gender lense.

The population ratio between men and women in many countries is about 50:50. But when it comes female extension experts and development agents is unacceptably low. The challenge is very serious when it comes to female headed households and orphan girls (child/youth headed households.

ASDA has success stories in enhancing economic empowerment of women. It has established fuel efficient stove production, seedling production women groups, vegetable growers, poultry keepers and sheep fattening groups. These livelihood diversification options promoted skill acquisition and economic empowerment. The project also enhanced management and leadership capacities to run their business and increase self esteem.

In addition to this, ASDA established community dialogue center in one of the project districts to facilitate discussion among women groups on matters that affect their lives and come up with women driven projects and local actions. In ASDA, women participation in water users and care takers committee, social accountability committees natural resource management groups.

Women initiated and managed projects were presented to good practice competition at national level and undergone series of reviews at various levels and now short listed as top 5 best practices winners where the final ranking will be done by the panel of Judges in recent future.

One aspect in the progressive realization of economic empowerment of women is in terms of having an increasing presence of women in decision-making bodies. More can be done however particularly in enabling women to participate in decision making more effectively. Numbers is not just enough; but is a good start- there is need to address the quality of participation in decision-making. This requires investment in capacity building interventions that enable the women to better understand the issues and build their confidence enough to be willing and daring to engage and contribute ideas in male dominated fora. This is, of course, a progressive transformation to be realized over time; but key to women’s effective participation. Women who acquire skills and knowledge are able to be independent minded and self-driven; and the external interventions leverage what they are already doing.

Policies and approaches used in the various women focused interventions should be tailored to fit specific contexts as much as possible to avoid situations where this springs negative reactions. For instance, approaches applied to women headed household may need to be different from those applied to male headed ones. For the male headed households for instance, policies/approaches may need to focus more on the family unit- not to appear to isolate the woman and give them some special treatment. The policy should support “freedom of families to sit and discuss” the proposed women focused interventions. Women will do better if they are supported by their families/men, who, when they are involved, appreciate their women’s contribution to the development of the family, as opposed to perceiving them as competitors. Support for women should not appear as alienating the men, rather, it should create strong households, not empowered women and disempowered men.

Marine and Inland water fisheries are sectors operated by women. Rural fish markets in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka are managed exclusively by women."Malsyfed" a co-operative organized by Government of Kerala has all women fish selling kiosks spread all over Kerala. Coir industry in the coastal zones of Kerala had more of women. Cashew industry where nuts are burned and kernel separated depends on women. Drinking water collection from common ponds and pipes is again a prerogative of women. Tailoring is catching groups of women for self employment. Home nurses are again dominated by women. Avenues are endless. Group approach is safer for women in the context of reported atrocities against the fair sex.

Feedback from the facilitator of the online discussion

Thank you to all new and returning contributors for your inputs to the online discussion during the last week.

A summary of the contributions by topics addressed shows that we have already covered a lot of aspects of question 1 (in terms of the context, needs and priorities of rural women), question 2 (the policy framework and skills development), and question 3 (ways for addressing deeply rooted gender norms and engaging with men).

Have the interests and priorities of rural women in your country of region been adequately reflected in the discussion?

The contributions during the last two weeks have shared insights from around the world on different aspects of the empowerment of rural women. The greatest number of contributions have come from Asia. If you feel the discussion is missing a perspective from your part of the world, please feel free to contribute.

Are there more examples of the private sector creating space to empower rural women?

The topic which has received less attention overall – although there have been some very valuable contributions – is around engaging with the private sector and women’s entrepreneurship. How can women be facilitated to fully engage with private sector opportunities?

Men – are we hearing your voice?

Men have been active in this debate, accounting for one quarter of the contributions. But if you have more to say, especially regarding effective ways of engaging with men and boys to achieve gender transformative impacts, please write in.

Coming again to the role of women dairy cooperatives in bringing transformative impact on the lives & lihelihoods of rural women in India, attached is our article with a summary in the introductory para.