Source: Daily Press
On the second day of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Technical Meeting for the Women Panel, the major items on the programme were: Presentation and Discussions on the Draft IDB Gender Mainstreaming Action Plan (2012 - 2015) and an abridged workshop for Panel members.

The topic was an introduction to gender and gender mainstreaming into organisations. It was facilitated by my humble self from a regular manual used for gender workshops usually organised by ABANTU for Development, where I conduct gender training for NGOs. The aim of the workshop was understand the difference between "gender" "sex" and 'women," and the importance of gender sensitivity at all levels of development. The workshop objectives were to arrive at a contextualised understanding of "gender" and to understand the importance of gender sensitivity and gender planning in all aspects of development.

Since the entire panellists are gender experts, the workshop sessions were collapsed and focused on brainstorming just to refresh participants' memory of gender terms and processes. I used a participatory format to elicit from Panel members the differences between sex, women and gender. Sex describes biological differences determined before our birth. It is God given, universal and does not change. All over the world all children are born male or female. Gender on the other hand is created by human beings and refers to the societal expectations and the roles assigned to people based on their sex. These roles vary from one society to another and are affected by one's age, class, religion and ethnicity etc. Gender textures the economic, social and political relations between women and men in different contexts. Gender relations can and do change. Women and men have unequal decision making powers; unequal access and control over resources and different needs. Women are often subordinate in gender relations.

The second part of the workshop discussed the importance of mainstreaming gender in their organisation's work and training activities. It explored the various stages to achieving gender mainstreaming. They begin with ensuring gender awareness by learning gender concept and providing gender training for staff. This would be followed with gender being included in institutional policies and practices and the outcome will be designing and implementing gender sensitive programmes.

The facilitator then drew attention to a survey on mainstreaming gender in organisations conducted by some development partners which is used to assess the challenges faced by organisations when they try to mainstream gender. The survey titled Barriers to observe that 'The organizations surveyed identified the following factors as limiting women's advancement into senior management positions:

Lack of commitment from top management to hiring women for senior positions is a barrier. A senior program officer from one large member agency reported that "gender integration will not happen until there are women in management." There is need for an increased number of women in positions which involve decision making over allocation of resources.'

Biases in the hiring process were mentioned by one agency. For example, stringent qualification requirements served to exclude women: one of the organization's requirements was that candidates should have ten years of field management experience.

Lack of pay equity and equal opportunity for advancement were identified by a few organisations as barriers. Women in similar positions to men received lower salaries and faced limited opportunities for advancement compared to their male counterparts.

Religion based traditions were also mentioned in the survey. In two cases, affiliation with religious institutions was mentioned as a source of resistance to advancing women and addressing gender equality issues. Emphasis on raising awareness within the hierarchy of religious organisations is seen as an important step towards positive action. On this point, two members of the IDB Women's Panel told interesting stories of their encounter with IDB staff on gender mainstreaming. Dr Saleha Abedin is an academic and teaches at Al Hikma University in Jeddah. When the IDB was established in 1975, the Bank had no women employees, although women make up half of the population of the member countries it serves. She said two of them decided to visit the bank and meet the executives but to their chagrin they discovered that the Bank was an all male work place with no women on staff. They insisted on meeting the leadership of the Bank. As soon as they entered the building there was hysteric alert sent to all offices "there are two women in the building!."

Their insistence on entering the building broke the tradition of 'No Women' workplace that the Bank had consciously or unconsciously adopted. Another member of the Panel, Mrs. Syda Bhumba, a Minister of Finance from Uganda went with the Ugandan Ambassador in Saudi Arabia to the Bank and demanded to see the IDB Chairman. The staff were embarrassed but could not turn down her request. The interaction of the two women with the Chairman opened the path to gender mainstreaming for the Bank. Mrs. Bhumba commended the IDB Chairman Dr Ahmad Muhammad for his receptive nature to gender issues. She described him as a gender sensitive man being the only Chief Executive Officer of an Islamic international organisation who attended the 1994 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. He stayed to the end of the conference and attended all the sessions. Today, the Bank has developed a gender policy which the Women Panel discussed and recommended for implementation.

The workshop then explored gender planning which means incorporating a thorough understanding of gender into all stages of the planning process. Gender Planning is necessary because of the need to: better inform policy at all levels of planning, to improve planning procedures, promote gender in order to achieve the goals of sustainable development and social justice.

The facilitator then introduced the evolution of the WID-WAD- GAD concept for gender mainstreaming. 'In the early days, development planning was gender blind: it ignored the fact that there are differences between men and women, and that development plans, programmes and projects affect men and women differently. Women in Development (WID). This first evolved and was premised on the need to integrate women into development'. WID was based on welfarist assumptions, and took the form of special projects for women. WID projects often overlooked the fact that women were already engaged in a range of activities that contributes to development. In fact more women have always worked in various areas but their contribution was not recognised or remunerated.

Then the Women and Development (WAD) approach came, which takes account of the fact that women have always been "in" the development process. It focuses more on the development process itself, emphasizing the way in which it has become a major source of women's poverty (the feminisation of poverty), marginalisation and inequality. The last is Gender and Development (GAD) which takes gender relations as being at the heart of the development process. GAD proponents take the view that a focus on women alone is not enough, and targets the structures and processes that give rise to women's subordination. It is therefore a more strategic approach which aims at gender equality. GAD approaches are holistic, taking account of all features of social organisation and life and not to presume women to be an homogenous category, women, like men, are divided by class, ethnic, religious and other differences, gender relations work at all levels of social existence and organisation.

 

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