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Addressing gender issues in developing countries

One week before the 100th anniversary of the International Women’s Day, DG EuropeAid Development and Cooperation of the European Commission, in collaboration with the European Journalism Centre, hosted a three-day seminar entitled EU External Cooperation in Action: Empowering Women to Reduce Poverty. Twelve journalists from diverse European media, working on gender or social issues, attended the event.

The seminar aimed first at introducing journalists to the Commission’s work and to the action carried out by DG EuropeAid, while at the same time raising their awareness to gender issues and the importance of addressing them in the media.

The speakers included officials from the European Commission, OECD, NATO and the UN, as well as EU members of Parliament and NGO representatives. The panels addressed a variety of concrete aspects of the topic from different angles and usually combined the official, political or institutional stand with a more pragmatic, hands-on, analysis, provided by the representatives of NGOs and civil societies. As a result, the dialogue was not confined to each individual panel, but rather weaved itself throughout the seminar, with certain ideas being raised, debated, rejected or upheld by either side during those three days. 

Addressing poverty and gender inequality

On the first day of the seminar, panelists gave a general description of gender issues in developing countries, using the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as a marker to evaluate the evolution of development issues.  A couple of these MDGs address gender issues directly – MDG 3, promoting gender equality and empowering women, and MDG 5, improving maternal health.

While less than five years remain to achieve the MDGs, it appears that a lot still remains to be done. Referring to a study released in September 2010, OECD officials were of the opinion that the efficiency of MDGs 3 & 5 is being hampered by their too narrow definition.

Gender issues are linked to women’s access to education, wealth or employment, as MDG 3 implies, but they are also widely related to gender-based violence (GBV, such as domestic violence or female genital mutilation), an aspect the MDG fails to recognise. MDG 5, which is the furthest from fulfilling its commitment - reducing maternal mortality by three-quarters until 2015 – is also influenced by GBV, which limits women’s access to health centres and induces dangerous complications during pregnancy and childbirth.

The study also showed that the strict categorisation of problems according to the different MDGs limits the understanding of the strong interplays they might have with each other. Depriving women of their rights to own land or credit (MDG 3), for instance, reduces the capacity of a family to feed its children, thus directly impacting on nutrition (MDG 1).

Concerted actions and limits

The European Commission panel said it encourages all EU institutions to mainstream gender policy in their projects and plans, in other words to take gender issues into account at every single phase of the decision-making and implementation processes, and to analyse the impact of these policies on women. The goal is to bring coherence in all the policies proposed by EU institutions and overcome discrepancies in gender politics between Member States.

Several journalists expressed the concern that by mainstreaming gender issues across all policies, they might ultimately be lost. Or as Mehmet Koksal, of Inter Press Service (Belgium) put it: “If it’s everywhere, it is nowhere”. Ulrike Lunacek , MEP for the Group of the Greens, expressed the same opinion: “The mainstreaming approach is very important, but it is just as essential to monitor its implementation. Otherwise, we run the risk of the issue slowly disappearing from the EU agenda.”
In developing countries, the Commission addresses the problem of gender inequality through a wide array of initiatives, some of which were presented on the second day of the seminar.

Mzuri Issa Ali, team leader of Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA), described one such initiative - the Women Empowerment in Zanzibar (WEZA) project, which provided EUR 750,000 to help women living in the poverty-stricken region to reach economic independence, but also to tackle problems such as female illiteracy and domestic violence. The work on the ground is carried out in collaboration with TAMWA, whose task is to approach women and help them to gain economic independence, by providing them education, encouraging them to save money and helping them use it for the creation of their own businesses. They also provide them with legal aid in cases of GBV and rights abuse. 

The inhabitants of Zanzibar face problems which are highly indicative of the way different elements, including gender issues, come into play and interact, undermining the lives of the men, women and children by the day.

The culture in Zanzibar encourages men to marry more than one woman and to have many children, as a higher number of children symbolises more success. But during the time that the men, fishermen for the most part, go fishing for periods that may extend for as long as one year, the women, who are often illiterate, are not provided for. Not only do they have to seek work in very harsh conditions, but their children are also forced to leave school and work.

According to a mid-term evaluation report, released in April 2010 by the Austrian partner of the project, CARE Österreich, WEZA was “able to reach 7,242 women against the set target of 6,000[...] These women have been able to save an equivalent of EUR 133,276 against the baseline status of EUR 68,000. The capacitated women’s civil society organisations such as ZAFELA, ZAMEW, ODEO have improved their support to women’s empowerment by enhancing capacities on governance, advocacy, networking and analytical skills”.

Louisa Antolin, spokeswoman of the feminist network Women in Development Europe (WIDE), argued however that although the development initiatives of the Commission are necessary and welcome, “they lack coherence.”

“The Commission provides economic aid to developing countries, aimed at encouraging their economic growth, while swamping their local markets with European produce,” she said.

Catherine Ray, spokeswoman for Andris Piebalgs, the Commissioner for Development, insisted that the Commission is aware of the importance of making growth inclusive and sustainable:  “Development policy supports agricultural policies in developing countries, notably small scale farmers and environmentally friendly ways of production, and encourages regional trade.”

“Common agricultural policy was reformed in 2003 and since then, the EU has almost eliminated all the export subsidies,” she said, adding that “if the DDA [Doha Development Agenda] is concluded, we are ready to eliminate all of them”.

Reporting on gender issues

The last day of the seminar was dedicated to the question of women in peace and security.

For Steven van Damme of Oxfam-Solidarité, while it is primordial to report on gender issues in conflict zones, the media’s focus on extreme cases, such as the systematic rape of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, used to spread terror among the civil population, overshadows other issues, such as “the overall lack of measures taken for the protection of civilians”. Furthermore, conflicts have far-reaching consequences on women, affecting “their livelihoods (and by extension – the living conditions of their family); their access to justice or lack thereof; and their access to essential services such as health and education” (which may, in the long run, increase maternal mortality figures, for instance). The focus on GBV tends to occult these other problems.

Van Damme added that women are not only victims, “but very much also change-makers who make a tremendous effort and difference on the ground […]. Too often, women are not heard in the peace and settlement process. Their views have to be taken into account”.

This is another issue that both EU institutions and media need to redress.

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Photos by Dietmar Temps and Hyppolite Photography, some rights reserved via Flickr

 

 

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