by Charlotte Feldman-Jacobs, program director, Gender
I went to a session at the World Bank last week and learned some valuable lessons from a colleague at Gender Action: Show up, sit near the front, listen politely to the presentations, and then ask “Show me the money, please.”
The title of the session was “Women’s and Girls’ Health: Initiatives, Impediments, and Links to Development.” The panelists were impressive: Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, general secretary of the World YWCA and member of the African Women Leaders Network; Michael Anderson, director of General Policy and Global Issues, British Department for International Development (DFID); Gill Greer, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF); and two World Bank leaders, Ian Solomon, U.S. executive director, and Cristian Baeza, director for Health, Nutrition, and Population.
All of the panelists underscored the importance of working with women and girls, calling for recognition that investing in girls and women is “good economics,” and a “moral imperative”; pointing out the barriers that women and girls face—including low education, legal barriers, and reproductive health risks such as high HIV and maternal mortality rates. Important statistics were disclosed about women and youth—in sub-Saharan Africa, girls make up 75 percent of new HIV infections and 85 percent of Kenya’s population is under age 35 (and it should have been added that 43 percent of women in Kenya are under 15). Plans and promises were disclosed: UK’s international development budget will go up by 33 percent in the next three years, with girls and women’s share rising even more; IPPF has a new initiative called “Girls Decide” which will focus on empowerment, access to youth services; and right-based approaches in reproductive health policies (specifically in ending child marriage).
But it was in the brief Q&A period that the real lesson came for me. That was when the Gender Action representative stood up and asked politely of Mr. Baeza about the World Bank’s commitment to reproductive health for women and girls. She came armed with statistics, asking about the disconnect between the World Bank’s expressed commitment when she had just learned that in Uganda, for example, only 0.3% of the World Bank expenditure in that country is for reproductive health. She also questioned whether it was reasonable for Mr. Baeza, in his presentation, to state that the World Bank “needed to have demands from countries” in order to meet the moral imperative of investing in womens’ and girls’ health. It became clear that this Gender Action representative had come to hold organizations, particularly the World Bank,accountable—a word we hear a lot these days. I, for one, enjoyed the lesson, and I thank my colleague for providing an example of just how that works.
Recentmedia reports have focused on the stalled progress for women in Afghanistan and the shift in the international community’s focus as they take steps towards an eventual military withdrawl. Although there’s much work to be done, it’s important to note that there has been tangible improvement for women in Afghanistan. A decade ago, women weren’t allowed to go out in public alone. Girls weren’t allowed to attend school – now 57 percent of girls are in school. And gender issues are now being integrated into government policy.
At an International Gender Working Group (IGWG) Plenary in honor of 2011 International Women’s Day hosted by PATH in Washington DC, Karen Hardee, a senior fellow at PRB and president of Hardee Associates, presented her involvement towards developing the National Gender Strategy for the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Health for 2011-2015. Much international development program and policy advocacy calls for attention to “gender,” but what does the term mean? “Gender isn’t just about women,” said Hardee, but is defined as the social roles that men and women play because of the way society is organized. But these roles aren’t set in stone; they can change over time.
Funded by USAID, the Health Services Support Project worked with the Afghan government to create a plan to integrate gender considerations into all public health programs and policies, focusing mostly on mental health and gender-based violence. Interestingly, the impetus of the process stemmed the initiative of a male official in the Ministry of Public Health who requested assistance to write a plan to integrate gender into the Ministry’s policies and programs. Having participated in WHO-sponsored gender training workshops in the past, he understood the importance of mainstreaming gender awareness for both men and women. It’s a great example of the tangible effects of the work being done on gender by NGOs and international donors.
Afghan Ministry of Public Health Gender Training Workshop
Of course, creating policies does not automatically ensure smooth implementation. On paper, Afghanistan is very supportive of gender issues: its constitution calls for gender equality, it has ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), it enacted a law on the elimination of violence against women in 2009, etc. How these policies are implemented and affect the lives of ordinary Afghans across the country is the real issue. Now that gender issues have been integrated into the Ministry of Public Health, its time for the hard work of creating the operational plan. Considering the weakness of the central government in many rural areas, this could be a challenge. Another challenge in creating an environment that supports gender equality is the fact that health is more conducive to these issues than others. For example, integrating gender into land reform is much more difficult due to the deeply engrained social and political hierarchies of land tenure and rights.
Karen Hardee with a photo of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health building
In 2003 I wrote an article for the journal American Psychologist entitled “Being Born Female is Dangerous to Your Health.” It was a part of a special issue on population, reproductive health, and gender, spearheaded by psychologist and researcher, Dr. Henry David. Henry, who passed away in December 2009, was a pioneer in championing women’s reproductive health and rights and his work over many decades validated that family planning, with legal and safe abortion as a back-up, are vital components of both.
As a psychologist, Henry knew that the availability of wide-ranging reproductive health services is necessary but not sufficient. Women must have at least some sense of autonomy to act on their desire to avoid, delay, space, or limit pregnancies. He understood that autonomy in this area is not isolated but flows from a broader autonomy in women’s lives, and he applauded the growing attention to gender issues that followed the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development.
Earlier this year, at a Hewlett Foundation meeting on population and poverty in Marseille, I thought of Henry as several presentations highlighted interventions that empowered women. In particular, I felt that Henry would have been delighted to hear Esther Duflo of MIT’s Poverty Labspeak about the impact of structural change on women’s status. She presented evidence that in India the law mandating that at least one-third of the seats and one-third of the leadership of each village council (panchayat) be reserved for women has had significant results. Compared to similar places where the law was not implemented, the women panchayat leaders were able to bring about positive change in areas of high priority to women, such as drinking water supply and quality. Over time, men rated female leaders as equal to male leaders. In addition, women had greater political participation in villages where panchayat leaders were women.
Today, on Women’s Day, I am glad to unite — at least in thought — Henry David and Esther Duflo, both of whose work gives us hope for the future. Someday there will be a sequel to my article, and it will be entitled “Being Born Female: It’s a Good Thing.”
PRB is celebrating the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day with the launch of The World’s Women and Girls 2011 Data Sheet. Find more materials on PRB’s website.
March 8, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. It is hard to imagine that just 100 years ago, in 1911, women in the United States were still nine years shy of getting the vote. The women’s suffrage movement was going strong, and women in Wyoming had had the vote since Wyoming achieved statehood in 1890, but it was not until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that women throughout the United States were finally afforded the right to vote in 1920.
In 1911, the U.S. population was 92 million, less than one-third of its current size of about 310 million. Life expectancy was 54 years for women and 51 for men. The leading cause of death, after heart disease, was tuberculosis. And 1 in10 children died before his or her first birthday. Our U.S. statistics of 100 years ago are much like those of sub-Saharan Africa today.
After spending almost a month in Mali, I am thoroughly convinced that Malian women can and will transform and market just about anything that is potentially edible, drinkable, or wearable. In this story, I am introducing three old friends. Two attended the ad hoc training program that Mariam and I implemented in 1974- 75. The third one was a leader in the Functional Literacy Office in Bamako when I worked in Mali. These three remarkable women were all part of the group I looked up during my recent visit to see what they had done since the early 1970s. It turns out that all three have built up very successful small businesses. But the most remarkable thing is that all three have combined their economic pursuits with social outreach activities, in support of women’s and youth groups. It is noteworthy that in many of these groups men participate as well, because they want to learn new skills that will allow them to be productive and earn money. However, so far the men have remained a small minority.
The Women’s Banks, featured in my previous blog post, emerged largely thanks to Mariam Ndiaye, my counterpart while I was working in Mali, and my friend for life. Mariam was born in 1942, when French colonization was still firmly established throughout Africa. When she went to primary school, at age seven, Malian children were sitting in the back of the classroom, while the children of the French butcher, baker, and hairdresser occupied the front rows. Students of both groups considered that this was the “normal” societal order. However, the Malian children that made it to school, especially the girls, were usually descendants of forward-looking and highly motivated families who encouraged their children to learn as much as they could to help their society change for the better. As a consequence, they were the children who were consistently on the honor roll. Already at a young age, Mariam liked the “hard sciences” such as physics and biology. After completing secondary school, during the period that Mali became independent in 1960, Mariam enrolled at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENSUP) in Bamako. After obtaining her first degree, she was admitted to graduate school at ENSUP, section biology, as the first Malian woman in science.
In every African village there is always one house where the courtyard is swept more neatly, the children look cleaner than in the other compounds, and the woman of the house seems to carry her head dress straighter, and with more pride and self-confidence. This is precisely the case of the house of Sefa Coulibaly in Sirakorola, the main village of the Cercle (administrative unit) of Sirakorola. Sefa is the pivotal person of the Sirakorola Women’s Bank, a well-organized and well-run federation of 32 women’s groups with 1,255 members: 1,198 women, and 57 men. (As an aside, when I asked a few of the core group of women if they were not afraid that the men would take over, they responded, giggling, that on the contrary, a few men were always needed to do the hard work, and this way the women even did not need to pay them for their labor.) Sefa is the main Community Organizer (“Monitrice”) who teaches skills to the other women in the core group (“Animatrices”). Each group has its own president, treasurer who keeps the books and the money that is in the bank, and a number of Animatrices, who teach functional lliteracy, and a variety of skills related to microbusiness development. To create its beginning capital, a group starts by asking each member to contribute 250 Frs. CFA (about 50 cents) per month, over a period of eight months. At that point the bank starts to function as a savings and loans association by giving out microloans and initiating members’ savings accounts. The actual amount of cash in the bank is kept to a minimum, in order to avoid taking costly security measures, and minimize the opportunities for thieves to steal the money.
by Carl Haub, senior demographer. O.P. Sharma, PRB consultant in Delhi, contributed to this blog post.
From the beginning, questions on one’s sex on census forms had two choices: male or female. But no more. In its upcoming decennial census, to be conducted in February, India offer the possibility of a third response – “other” (see partial facsimile of the census form below). The innovation has generated quite a bit of publicity in the Indian press. The group most affected by this change to the census form is usually referred to in India as transgenders/eunuchs, or hijras.
Hijras have a long tradition in South Asia. Their dancing and singing at births and marriages are seen as good luck by many as well as being somewhat annoying. They are given money on these occasions as well as in some holiday seasons. More attention has been focused on hijras since campaigns against HIV/AIDS got underway in India and they are usually considered a high-risk group. Much support and care for HIV-positive hijras has been provided by the Naz Foundation, headquartered in Delhi who welcomed the development as treating eunuchs as legitimate members of society.
The “third sex” is far from a recent concept in many parts of the world, having existed for thousands of years. References to a third sex (triteeyaprakrti in Sanskrit) appearedat least as early as the 2nd century B.C. In Pakistan in 2009, the Supreme Court ordered that eunuchs be given national identification cards identifying their special gender status. But the inclusion of a three-response question on sex in a traditional census enumeration must be a first. And, not long afterwards, Nepal announced that it will do the same in its 2011 Census, which begins in May.
All of this does lead one to wonder what census statistical tables would look like. Will all three sexes be shown? Or will male and female not quite add to the total? It will be an interesting year in many ways.
Click here to read this post in French. Click here for the first part in this blog series.
My wonderful friend Boubacar Macalou met me at the airport in Bamako upon arrival in Mali. I have known Macalou, a.k.a. “Monsieur SAGA” (Mr. Social and Gender Analysis) for the past 15 years. During that period we worked together on different World Bank projects related to agricultural development and environmental management in Mali, and in the West Africa region at large. Macalou received the nickname “Monsieur SAGA” when he worked as the Director of Training at a natural resource management project in Mali where he organized three training sessions on social and gender analysis in environmental management. To do so, he mobilized over 100 high-level civil servants—all men at that time (1995)—of the Ministries of Agriculture and Environment. In the process, he managed to raise awareness and, I might say, great enthusiasm for the subject as I witnessed in person when I was a guest speaker in his training sessions. He undertook this initiative in spite of initial widespread skepticism from his colleagues because of a genuine conviction that the exclusion of women and some social groups from the means of modern agriculture would be detrimental to the development of his country.
This month, I will travel to Mali and interview villagers I worked with from 1971 to 1976 for the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO). These interviews will inform a book I’m writing on the impending radical changes in the social and economic structure of African societies. These in-depth interviews will allow me to see how the lives of former trainees affected by FAO projects and their children have changed, and to form my ideas of what may happen in the near future. The Mali case study will become a part of the larger study with data for the region. Blog posts on this Mali fieldwork will be published here over the coming weeks.
The field work in Mali will allow me to see many old friends again; friends I traveled with through the country in a old Land Rover (without air conditioning) in temperatures reacing 128 degrees Fahrenheit, sleeping in huts with agricultural tools, and an occasional mouse making it up on our bamboo beds. Although brief, it was an unforgettable period, and when I think of the cell phones and air-conditioned four-wheel drive cars that will be part of my equipment this time, I feel like I’ll be sitting in the lap of luxury. I’ll have the same companion and translator, Sefa Coulibaly, except that she was 17 when we started working together, and she is now a dignified elderly lady of 57, with numerous offspring. And she is still running the women’s bank that she started 20 years ago.
In the early 1970s, I worked for FAO for three years in Benin (then still called Dahomey) for an agricultural project to support farmers, and then worked in Mali for over four years for a similar assignment. When I left Africa after seven years, I had yet to experience a system of female-led farming since women were not the main farmers in either one of the two countries. In southwest Benin, women were traders and left agriculture to the men. (As an aside, being occupied on a daily basis throughout the year provided women with a steady income. Their husbands, however, received sizable sums of money a few times a year, when the agricultural harvest was marketed. Once the money was spent, they borrowed from their wives, at very high interest rates, and they paid back their debts once they got to the next harvest. That is when I became aware of the prevailing practice of separate budgets within the same household in communities in West Africa.)
In Mali, the pattern was different. Women contributed on a daily basis to agricultural labor throughout the cultivation season, which lasted approximately from April until October, with an interruption of about two months during July and August – the short dry season. Women worked alongside the entire family, with men of all ages and children. Women and their children were supposed to contribute their labor to the family fields in exchange for quite substantial sums of money or in-kind payments given by the husband’s family over time to his (future) wife’s relatives. However, much later, in 1983 when I carried out a survey of 604 women in Burkina Faso, we managed to get a clearer picture of how the household budget really managed in the Sahel region. Again the separation of various budgets within households was common. Women did have the right to keep any money from processing primary products (bean and millet cakes, and “dolo” – the local beer), provided they had bought the raw materials, rather than taking them from the family granary. This pattern of strict separation of various parts of a household’s budget is prevalent throughout the Sahel region.
When I started to work more extensively in the southern part of Africa in the 1980s, I got to see the real female-led farming systems, and I came to the conclusion that African agriculture was basically in the hands of women. Yet, even today, it is hard to find communities in sub-Saharan Africa where women have truly equal access to land, capital, knowledge, and other means of modern agricultural production. If the system continues, this lack of access and control may be the largest constraint on developing Africa’s considerable agricultural potential. This is what I hope to learn more about over the coming weeks.
Click here for Pietronella van den Oever’s other posts from Mali.
by Elaine Murphy, visiting senior fellow at PRB
