Ensuring Gender Equality and Capacity Development opportunities for rural employment and sustainable development

Transcription

1 Ensuring Gender Equality and Capacity Development opportunities for rural employment and sustainable development Helen Hambly & Silvia Sarapura Capacity Development & Extension School of Environmental Design & Rural Development Ontario Agricultural College University of Guelph Presented at the FAO-IFAD-ILO Workshop on Gaps, trends and current research in gender dimensions of agricultural and rural employment: differentiated pathways out of poverty Rome, 31 March - 2 April 2009

2 Presentation - 4 Points 1. There are several systemic issues that are blocking progress on gender equality in rural employment and sustainable development. 2. How can capacity development help to overcome these systemic issues? Note: we argue that gender equality is not sufficiently addressed in the literature on capacity development. 3. What are some relevant examples of capacity development to ensure gender equality in rural employment and sustainable development (examples from Peru, Kenya and Ghana)? 4. Some final recommendations for consideration how we can ensure that capacity development responds to issues of gender equality?

3 1. Making progress on gender and rural employment depends on several systemic issues The supply side of women s labour exists; demand is often for unskilled, cheap female labour Women s off-farm work increases and so too do time constraints; the dilemma of increased multi-tasking (triple or quadruple work days work in home, outside home, community and possibly, education) Social norms may reinforce occupational segregation by sex Rural women may organize themselves into groups (e.g. micro-credit, farmer groups) to access collective resources but there are dilemmas: Can group activity influence individual behaviour as well as households? Can group activity be the basis for wider social change movements? Rural women are being trained skills for product markets and rights for labour markets but without organizational, networking and institutional support they may find themselves in glass walls And there are more issues continuing to emerge in the research

4 2. So.. here comes Capacity Development: the basic model Individual Level Enabling Environment/System Institutional/Sector/Network Level Organizational Level National and international agencies have embraced CD considering it superior as a systems perspective to approaches that were exclusively focused on human resource development and technology transfer CD is defined as the process whereby individuals, groups and organizations enhance their abilities to mobilize and use resources in order to achieve their objectives on a sustainable basis.

5 Ensure Gender Equality in Capacity Development Feminists have long argued for systemic change in order to achieve gender equality and women s empowerment. Individual, organizational and institutional change implicates men as well as women analysis of masculinity and development process Feminists reinforce that capacity development is context specific both in time and space. We should recognize that gender analysis has brought about a critique that women are not always victims, nor are they the same at all stages of their life as farmers, off-farm workers, caregivers, leaders, etc. While we may have knowledge gaps from a dynamic rural development context, there are substantial knowledge gains (learning and innovation) that have to figure in the capacity development framework

6 (Feminist) Capacity Development Enabling Environment/System Institutional/Sector/Network Level Organizational Level Understand and act on the systemic nature of power relations; network access Individual Level Understand and emphasize collective action; obligations of organizations to valuing the roles and relations of all male/female, young/old, etc. Understand and emphasize individual self (autonomy, awareness, human agency)

7 3. Examples: Gender Equality and Microfinance in Peru Microfinance is an effective pathway for rural women when it emphasizes individual self-worth, self-actualization as well as relationships within the household (with husbands) and community (with other women) Entry point individual articulated actions that strengthen organizations and use networks to challenge and change institutions

8 3. (cont) Example 2: Gender Equality and Rural Women Organizing in Kenya Many development agencies denied that men were members of women s groups; Kenyan policy allows max. 20% male membership without formal leadership roles; men form shadow leadership men join groups to enable their own access to resources (labour, capital, communal land) but also women let men in to enable women s access to resources that women did not want to spend time on (training, travel away from home, gov t. bureaucracy/meetings) Entry point organizational articulated actions that strengthen individual women leaders, dialogue with men and organizations offering assistance to women (only)

9 3. (cont.) Example 3: Gender Equality and Educational Institutions in Ghana Tertiary education creates a pathway for rural women when it emphasizes corporate social responsibility among men and recognition of the glass walls of women academics partnering with rural women in field level research and training Entry point institutional articulated actions that strengthen individuals and use corporate ethics and locally developed knowledge gains (innovations) driven by communities

10 4. Final Remarks & Recommendations Capacity development may be an effective approach to make progress on gender equality in rural employment because it addresses several systemic issues. but capacity development frameworks will need to strengthen their focus on gender equality and women s empowerment at the individual, organizational and system levels Recommendation: move beyond counting women in human resource development and technology transfer approaches to developing capacity Recommendation: international agencies and national policymakers can use their individual shared capacity development strategies and to act on gender equality issues in rural employment Recommendation: when we look at rural employment and sustainable development from a systems of innovation perspective, implement technical change alongside wider institutional and social change this is an important advance in practice but also in thinking about gender issues

11 Thank you.