Ambassador and Permanent Representative of France to FAO H.E. Bérengére Quincy. Credit: ©FAO/Alessandra Benedetti

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 17 2013 (IPS)

Closing the gender gap between women and men on agriculture and food security could free over one hundred million people from hunger. 

Women represent 43 percent of the global agricultural workforce yet they have access to disproportionately less land and productive resources, according to FAO’s report The State of Food and Agriculture 2010-2011.

Not only are they discriminated against in terms of access to credit and land, but they also are burdened with more house and family care chores and are more likely to be in precarious and low-paid employment.

During this week’s biannual conference in Rome, FAO announced the mainstreaming of gender across all its policies and put its gender policy for discussion in front of the national delegations.“In order to close the gender gap, it is not enough to adopt the gender lens." - ActionAid International’s Alberta Guerra

Observers of FAO’s work on gender argue that the organisation has made very good progress over the past years, and that the basic necessary documents and normative frameworks needed for closing the gender gap are now in place.

But care must now be paid to implementation.

“Gender mainstreaming is necessary but not a guarantee,” Berengere Quincy, France’s representative to FAO, tells TerraViva. “The mainstreaming needs to be backed up by better knowledge and expertise and followed up with clear objectives and indicators of progress.”

In many places around the world, as Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen pointed out in his speech given in Rome at the kickoff of the FAO biannual conference, women are also discriminated against when it comes to nutrition, with men systematically getting the best food. In turn, this weakens women’s chances of meeting their full potential.

FAO’s report quoted above further points out that granting women equal access to land and resources as men would increase yields on their farms by 20 to 30 percent, which in turn would lead to raising agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to four percent and saving 100 to 150 million people from malnourishment.

In response to these realities – and to pressures from civil society – FAO has over the past two years made significant progress on turning itself into an organisation focused on closing the gender gap when it comes to food security.

The 2010-2011 State of Food and Agriculture report was for the first time focused on women’s role in the global food system. Importantly, it brought quantitative data to support the idea that empowering women contributes significantly to FAO’s mission of defeating hunger, which in turn contributed to gender issues being embraced across FAO departments.

In 2012, the organisation published a Gender Policy which aims to both prioritise gender issues in the FAO’s own structure and programmes and to increase capacities for promoting gender equality in the countries where FAO operates.

Several countries (Switzerland, Norway and the United States) as well as the European Union warned that clear targets and implementation mechanisms, alongside a sufficient budget, are crucial to add to the current plans if FAO is serious about gender equality.

This year’s conference is expected to endorse a budget for 2014/2015 that would leave the amounts for gender issues unchanged from the previous budget period 2013/2014, that is, 21.8 million dollars.

This amount represented a doubling of the 9.8 million dollars corresponding to the 2010/2011 following pressures of gender rights supporters within and outside FAO, and represents a 2.1 percent of the overall net appropriation. Over the next years, FAO is expected to set a target for gender spending which could even exceed the 2.1 percent.

ActionAid International’s Alberta Guerra, whose group has been advocating for a gender policy and gender mainstreaming at FAO for years, says that it is important that the organisation keeps up the momentum of promoting gender equality.

That would mean paying attention to implementation of the current commitments and making sure that a solid budget comes together with the objectives stated out in the policy documents.

“In order to close the gender gap, it is not enough to adopt the gender lens. It is essential that, in addition to that, interventions that target, specifically, women’s needs are put into place,” Guerra says.

“The policy is very forward looking. It’s not just a policy for FAO, but a policy for its members, a policy which tries to set objectives and goals that everyone concerned about food and agriculture is trying to achieve,” says Eve Crowley, FAO deputy director for gender, equity and rural development.

“It’s important to build a momentum around these objectives and goals among all stakeholders.”

Despite pushes from international bodies such as the United Nations (UN) or the European Union (EU) to promote gender equality in Central and Eastern Europe, access to funding for such initiatives remains largely conditional upon national governments’ willingness to embrace this agenda.

Immediately after the fall of communism in 1989, Central and Eastern European (CEE) NGOs working on gender equality got most of their funding from U.S. or Western European private foundations or governmental agencies; following these countries’ entry to the EU, non-EU donors withdrew considering the region well covered by EU funds.

CEE NGOs, however, noted that following EU accession, it has become ironically more difficult to access funding, primarily because EU funds must generally be co-financed from national budgets and also get distributed according to priorities set at the national level. As a consequence, NGOs find themselves limited by their governments’ agendas that are not always progressive.

“Before EU accession it was paradoxically easier to get money for more radical actions and publications,” says Alina Synakiewicz from Polish NGO Feminoteka. “Now, even though money is available, it is given out via governmental intermediation, meaning that the government channels it the way it wants.”

In the best case, NGOs “get creative” and manage to fit their priorities into the governmental agenda; in the worst, they are simply denied funding for themes deemed unacceptable.

The most striking example of such marginalisation of a core gender equality theme as a result of a conservative national agenda concerns reproductive rights in Poland. In 1993, abortion was made illegal in this country and, to date, access to contraceptives and sexual education is limited, and doctors are free to invoke a “conscience clause” to refuse writing prescriptions for birth control. Gender equality activists argue that such limitation of reproductive rights in the country is primarily caused by the strong hold that the Polish Catholic Church has on both the state and society as a whole.

Last year, activists attempted to introduce a reproductive rights bill in the parliament, having as main points the legalisation of abortion, making contraceptives affordable and more accessible, introducing fact-based sexual education in schools, and state support for in-vitro fertilisation.

Their effort to gather the 100,000 signatures needed to bring the civic law proposal into the legislative failed because of a media blackout on the initiative alongside a lack of funds and help for the activists. Even some NGOs working on women’s issues steered away from supporting this effort as they did not trust the initiative can succeed.

“What has unfortunately changed in the last 20 years in Poland is that the whole public space is dominated by the terminology propagated by the Church,” says Elżbieta Korolczuk, one of the activists promoting the initiative. “Not only the general public but quite a big part of our activist circles do not believe it is possible to change the law when it comes to reproductive rights in Poland in the foreseeable future.” Korolczuk, however, says the fight will continue, even in such an unfavorable climate.

And, across CEE, gender equality activists are winning battles every day regardless of resistance or indifference from national authorities.

Some of the most difficult themes to address across the region over the past two decades have been violence against women and domestic violence. Funding from national sources remains scarce for groups working on violence against women which results not only in limited NGO capacity – highly problematic considering that it is NGOs that do most of the work on this issue — but also in an insufficient number of shelters for victims of violence.

Legislation regarding domestic violence has also advanced with fits and starts. Most CEE countries have passed such laws, yet often the texts lacked provisions for imposing restraining orders on the aggressors; arguably, this reluctance has to do with a “sanctification” of private property across the region after 1989 and hence an unwillingness to take men (usually the aggressors) out of their homes (of which often they are the owners).

But this week (Feb. 28), following over two years of intense campaigning by NGOs, the Romanian parliament finally introduced an amendment in the national legislation regulating the use of restraining orders against the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Two years back, Cristina Horia from Sensiblu Foundation, one of the main groups working on domestic violence in Romania and organiser of a strong public campaign on the theme in 2009, was telling IPS that “the involvement of state institutions with the issue of domestic violence is limited, being at most supporters and partners, but not initiating campaigns.”

Over the past two years, Horia says, national and local authorities have improved their attitudes, yet “systematic gaps” continue to prevent a proper engagement with domestic violence.

Among these gaps, Horia lists “the under-financing of the social assistance system, the insufficient number of shelters for battered women, the lack of a national strategy to address domestic violence, the authorities’ failing to assume the role of protecting victims and to implement measures to punish aggressors, insufficient training of the police and public services staff to deal competently with victims and aggressors.”

There is a sense that NGOs active in CEE are operating in quite a different reality than that described by their national authorities in reports to international bodies, full of good intentions and commitments to gender equality.

A possible test of this statement could be to look at how one of the most advanced gender mainstreaming tools proposed by the UN, gender budgeting, fares in the region. Gender budgeting means analysing and transforming national and local budgets in such a way that they allow for the advancement of women or at least that obstacles to gender equality are eliminated. It does not mean giving more money for women, but rather, using existing resources more cleverly.

According to economist Elizabeth Villagomez, who has worked for years with various UN agencies on training and assessing possibilities of introducing this tool in CEE, “gender budgeting is not strong in these countries because the idea and principles of gender equality are still weak there; in former communist countries, the idea of equality as a value in general, including when it comes to gender, is not yet very much welcomed or still misunderstood because of the recent socialist past.”

Gender budgeting has been attempted in several places across the region, from municipalities in Poland (Gdansk) and Albania (Elbasan), to the national level in the Czech Republic, but its implementation remains patchy and has not brought the results seen in the West. Villagomez adds another reason for this lack of success: “using gender budgeting depends on the real capacities of governments to use results-based budget management and also on how the political priorities reflected in the budgets are set.” (END)

In 2008, delegates meeting for the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) agreed that much greater investments in women and gender equality were a critical – and overlooked – aspect of sustainable development.

For example, according to UN Women, while the international community gave 7.5 billion dollars in official development assistance to rural development and the agricultural sector in 2008–2009, a mere three percent was spent on programmes in which gender equality was a principal objective, and only 32 percent to those in which gender equality was a secondary objective.

Four years later, there has been some forward movement in a number of countries, but in many others, progress remains slow and uneven, a situation that is exacerbated by the ongoing global financial crisis.

Rural women continue to face limited access to productive resources, such as agricultural inputs and technology; only five percent of agricultural extension services are provided for women farmers.

As the CSW meets again here from Feb 27 to Mar. 9, panellists from around the world sat down Thursday to evaluate the evolution of financing for gender equality and women’s empowerment in their home countries, and chart a way forward.

“It’s time to promote gender equality and for that purpose we need a change of paradigm, we definitely need to change our way of thinking,” said Maria Almeida, vice finance minister of Ecuador.

Cambodia

Dr. Ing Phavi, minister of women’s affairs in Cambodia, cited a series of measures taken by the Cambodian government that have proved successful in enhancing gender equality across different areas.

“In Cambodia, in the context of a public administration reform, the prime minister has launched a major drive in 2008 to address the gender imbalance in the public administration,” she said.

As a result of extensive promotion across ministries and affirmative action policies, the number of female civil servants increased by 34 percent. At the sub-national level, more women were appointed as deputy governors or heads of government departments.

“In education, gender disparity has been eliminated in the primary and lower secondary education,” she noted. “Remarkably, with the focus on training and deploying female teachers, the female ratio at the primary level reached 46 percent in 2009/2010.”

However, fewer girls than boys continue on to get a higher education.

Asked what more needs to be done, Phavi told IPS, “The most important thing to understand is that gender equality is a government policy and it has to mainstream the poverty reduction strategy.

“Poverty reduction means taking care of growth, trade, agriculture development, well-being in terms of health, education and so on,” she said. “Gender is already inside all sectors so it should be part of the poverty reduction strategy.”

Morocco

Mohammed Chafiki, director of studies and financial forecasts for the ministry of economy and finance in Morocco, spoke about Morocco’s transition to equal rights and liberties for men and women.

In April 2011, the country ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), a key instrument often described as an international bill of rights for women.

Morocco also adopted a new constitution in July that included many articles which expressly enshrined gender equality. For example, Article 19 affirms that men and women have equal civil, political, economic, cultural and environmental rights and liberties.

“In Morocco, we now need to continue the institutional reform. We are reforming our financial laws so it integrates gender considerations irreversibly,” Chafiki told IPS.

“But in order to move forward with gender equality, it is not all about the government. Local communities will also have to take concrete actions,” he said.

“To finance gender equality and women empowerment, we also need partnerships. We need partnerships with the private sector, with NGOs, with governments, of course, and we need international cooperation.”

Chafiki cited significant progress in reducing educational disparities as one of the country’s primary achievements.

“In 2010/2011, 96.3 percent of the girls from six to 11 years old are sent to school,” he said.

Austria

Gerhard Steger, director general of budget for the ministry of finance in Austria, explained how the government now integrates gender considerations into budgets.

The concept of gender responsive budgeting (GRB) was included in a comprehensive budget reform package that was unanimously adopted by parliament. It features a medium-term expenditure framework, accrual budgeting and accounting and performance budgeting.

“First of all, we transformed our budget from a traditional steering instrument of resources, asking the question ‘who gets what?’, into a comprehensive instrument for resources and results,” Steger told IPS.

“So we ask two questions: who gets what, and who has to deliver what for public management,” he added.

“We ask each and every ministry to define no more than five top objectives for the ministry, which are part of the budget decision in parliament, and at least one of those objectives has to be a gender objective.

“Gender is directly interpreted into the performance budgeting process in Austria. Therefore every ministry has to contribute – with no exceptions.”

Steger stressed crucial lessons that can be drawn from the Austrian experience.

“To make GRB a success, the design needs to be simple and focused on the most important aspects. If the design is too complex, GRB will very likely be a failure,” he said.

“We also have to make gender relevant and thus integrate it into the budget and to create awareness for gender issues to convince decision makers to support GRB.”

While national governments must take the lead, key agencies like UN Women are also working hard to steer funds into gender-oriented development.

On Thursday, UN Women announced it will give out 10.5 million dollars in grants to organisations working to advance economic and political empowerment of women in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Central Asia.

The grants will start at 200,000 dollars for initiatives that “make tangible improvements in the lives of women and girls, from enabling women candidates to run for office, to managing resources to support themselves and their families.”

“At this moment of historic change, we cannot afford to leave women out. These grants will advance women’s efforts to achieve greater economic and political equality during this time of transition,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director for UN Women.

Since its creation in 2009, the Fund has invested a total of 43 million dollars in 40 countries around the world for projects working for gender equality.

(END)

By Rousbeh Legatis
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 29 2012 (IPS)

Gender considerations remain largely disregarded in existing climate funds, even though women are some of the hardest hit by the impacts of climate change on livelihoods and agriculture.

Courtesy of Liane Schalatek

The Green Climate Fund (GCF), which would receive a portion of the 100 billion dollars a year expected from rich nations by 2020, could prove to be “important way to put equity back into the multilateral response to climate change”, says Liane Schalatek, Associate Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in North America.

However, most climate financing – whether channeled through funds, governmental spending programmes, ministry initiatives or bilateral and multilateral agencies to reduce emissions and to help societies to deal with the adverse effects of climate change – lacks gender responsiveness, she stressed.

Together with the Oversees Development Institute, the Heinrich Böll Foundation monitors the 25 most important climate funds (Climate Funds Update), tracking down who pledges what, how much donors have disbursed, and to where climate financing flows.

A participant in the fifty-sixth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York, being held in New York from Feb. 27 through Mar. 9, Schalatek spoke with IPS U.N. Correspondent Rousbeh Legatis about taking stock of climate financing through a gender lens.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Looking at existing dedicated climate funds, you found gender considerations to be an “afterthought” instead of systematically addressed. Could you explain that further? 

A: Several of the existing climate funds, for example the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) or the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), both dealing with adaptation and administered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), have been in existence for more than 10 years.

Others, such as the Climate Investment Funds at the World Bank or the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund, have only operated since 2008/2009. At the time of their operationalisation, the discussion about gender and climate change was an exotic one that had not yet extended to climate funds and financing instruments and need to make them more gender-aware and gender-responsive. This is a fairly new topic in the global climate finance discourse itself.

However, these funds several years into their operations with their first projects and programmes implemented have realised that without gender considerations, their funding is less effective and less equitable. Their experience confirmed that of development finance, where a focus on gender equality has proved to be a core contributor to better development outcomes.

Better outcome of climate actions is particularly important in times of scarce public funding availability. By including some gender provisions retroactively, for example consultation guidelines that stipulate the outreach to women as a special stakeholder group or the inclusion of a gender analysis in project proposals, fund boards and administrators feel that they have a better chance of benefitting more people in developing countries.

However, putting some provisions retroactively into funding mechanisms is not the same as designing them in a way that is focusing on improving gender equality in recipient countries as an important and expected co-benefit of funding climate actions.

A climate fund designed this way would include gender equality as one of the goals of its actions; would strive for gender-balance on its governing bodies; make sure that there is gender-expertise among its staff to evaluate proposals for their contribution to gender equality; write operational and funding guidelines that stipulate the inclusion of gender indicators and gender analysis in any project proposal; and monitor for gender equality co-benefits as part of a results framework.

So far, no existing climate fund has managed such a comprehensive integration.

Q: Could you describe the consequences if climate funds are not gender-responsive? 

A: If the financing that climate funds provide for mitigation and adaption actions is not gender-responsive, projects and programmes done in the name of climate protection might actually hurt women or discriminate against women (in violation of women’s human rights).

They are also likely to be less effective in reaching long-lasting results. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, women are still the primary agricultural producers, accounting for up to 80 percent of the household food production.

As women own little of the land they work on, they are often kept out of formal consultation processes to determine adaptation needs of rural communities and are unable to secure credits or other agricultural extension services.

In times of food insecurity – aggravated by the extreme weather variability and long-term weather pattern changes brought on by climate change – women and girls are often likely to receive less food because of gender-based distribution dynamics within households.

To be effective, adaptation policies and funding for adaptation projects and programmes in agriculture in Africa need to consider the gender dynamics of food procurement and distribution both within households and markets.

For example, they should target rural women in Africa specifically with capacity-building, consultation outreach, technical assistance and tailored agricultural extension services. Without a gender- sensitive lens, climate financing instruments delivering adaptation funding for Africa can exacerbate the discrimination of women.

Q: You point to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) as particularly promising to change business as usual in global climate financing. Why? 

A: The GCF in its governing documents already has several references to a gender-sensitive approach integrated, for example, with respect to gender-balance as a goal on the GCF Board and among the staff of its secretariat.

Most importantly, it has stipulated in its objectives and principles that promoting gender responsiveness is to be considered an explicit “co-benefit” of any funding done by the GCF. Verbally, this is already more than any other existing climate fund has integrated.

Of course, the challenge is now to make sure that these words are operationalised into concrete measures or mechanisms, for example in the form of gender indicators and gender-inclusive stakeholder participation guidelines. The outlook is not too bad: The level of awareness of governments, both of contributing and recipient countries, on the relevance of gender considerations to address climate change, has increased.

It is today far greater than just a few years back when many of the other funds became first active. International organisations such as UNDP (U.N. Development Programme), UNEP (U.N. Environment Programme) or multilateral development banks as implementing agencies of many climate funds have become better in supporting governments in writing more gender-aware funding proposals and investment plans.

Lastly, civil society groups, which have played a key role in the GCF design process in pushing the integration of a gender perspective, are committed to work with the new GCF Board and Secretariat, but also to challenge the GCF publicly if necessary, should it fail to turn promises contained in the governing document into actions.

Of course, the GCF can only be operationalised as a gender-responsive climate fund if it receives the full political and financial support of developed countries quickly. Some large funding pledges now would secure its viability.

It would also send a signal to developing countries that developed countries are willing to fulfill their part of the Durban package without quid-pro-quo, but in the spirit of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”.

A gender-responsive, fully funded GCF would thus be one important way to put equity back into the multilateral response to climate change.

(END)

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