Women in Development – Enhancement for Gender Equality – UN

In accordance with its
multi-year programme of work for 2002-2006, the Commission on the
Status of Women (CSW) will review the thematic issue of “Enhanced
participation of women in development: An enabling environment for
achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into
account, inter alia, in the fields of education, health and work”,
at its fiftieth session from 27 February to 10 March 2006.

In order to prepare for
the Commission session, the United Nations Division for the
Advancement of Women (DAW), in collaboration with the Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), is organizing an
Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on the same theme, in Bangkok, Thailand,
from 8 to 11 November 2005.

The findings and
recommendations of the experts will provide inputs for a report of
the Secretary-General. They will also inform the deliberations of
the Commission through an interactive panel discussion and through
the agreed conclusions that the Commission will adopt.

II.
Background

The report of the
Secretary-General on the review of the implementation of the Beijing
Platform for Action and the outcome documents of the twenty-third
special session of the General Assembly, submitted to the
49^th session of the Commission in 2005, noted that the
status and role of women has undergone a significant change over the
past ten years, although not at an equal pace in all regions.
Achievements noted included increased awareness, policy reforms,
improved legislative frameworks, and institutional development at
the national level in many countries. Positive developments include
the establishment of national policies and strategies for gender
equality; adherence to international and regional instruments for
the protection of the human rights of women; increased diversity in
the mechanisms promoting and monitoring attention to gender
equality; attention to resource allocations through gender-sensitive
budgeting; the recognition of the critical role played by NGOs in
awareness-raising, advocacy, monitoring and programme delivery; and
efforts to engage men and boys more actively in the promotion of
gender equality.

Yet, ten years after the
adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action by the Fourth World
Conference on Women in 1995, a large gap remains between policy and
practice. Discriminatory practices and public attitudes towards the
advancement of women and gender equality have not changed at the
same pace as policy, legal and institutional frameworks. The
Commission on the Status of Women, at its forty-ninth session in
2005, adopted a Declaration in which Governments pledged to
undertake further action to ensure the full and accelerated
implementation of the Platform for Action and the outcome of the
twenty-third special session.

An enabling environment for women’s enhanced
participation

The challenges of
implementing the international commitments on gender equality and
empowerment of women in the Beijing Platform for Action, the
Millennium Declaration and more recently, and the Outcome of the
2005 World Summit highlight the importance of ensuring an enabling
environment. An enabling environment
may be interpreted as a set of interrelated and
interdependent systemic conditions such as policies, laws,
institutional mechanisms, resources, etc., which facilitate the
promotion of gender equality.

The Beijing Platform for
Action adopted by the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995
proposed strategic objectives and specific actions in critical areas
of concern, which, taken together, would contribute to building an
enabling environment for women’s participation in development. It also stated that it is essential to
design, implement and monitor effective, efficient and mutually
reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes and
institutional mechanisms that will foster the empowerment and
advancement of women.

In their responses to the
questionnaire for the ten year review and appraisal of the
implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, carried out in
the Commission on the Status of Women in 2005, Governments
reiterated their commitment to the involvement of women as full and
equal participants in all areas of development.  

The broad understanding
of women’s participation in development expressed in the Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action complements the concept of
women’s participation in all areas of public life contained in the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW). The Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women has repeatedly noted the importance of ensuring equal
opportunities for women’s participation. In its examination of
States parties’ reports, the Committee also noted that where there
is full and equal participation of women in public life and
decision-making, the implementation of their rights and compliance
with the Convention improves.

The Millennium
Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality identified three
critical dimensions of empowerment and enhanced participation of
women in development: capabilities, for example, in the
areas of education and health; access to opportunities and
resources, for example, to employment or land; and
agency, for example, women’s ability to participate in
decision-making processes, e.g. in political institutions and
policy-making.

An enabling environment
would thus influence the capacity of women to be involved,
participate actively and benefit from development processes in a
sustained and effective manner. It would also contribute to the
elimination of women’s discrimination and exclusion, increase their
access to decision-making, their control over resources such as land
and economic assets, and fully recognize their contributions as
actors in the economy and other areas of public life.

Key
elements in creating an enabling environment for women’s
participation

The Committee for the
Elimination of Discrimination against Women has noted that a purely
formal legal or programmatic approach is not sufficient to achieve
women’s de facto equality with men. In addition, the Convention
required that women be given an equal start and that they be
empowered by an enabling environment to achieve equality of results.
The Committee noted that it is not enough to guarantee women
treatment that is identical to that of men. Rather, biological as
well as socially and culturally constructed differences between
women and men must be taken into account. Under certain
circumstances, non-identical treatment of women and men would be
required in order to address such differences.  

Interventions to create
an enabling environment may thus be required at many different
levels and involving many different actors in order for them to be
successful.  Actions to create an enabling environment
generally take place at the macro- or meso- levels through the adoption of policies, legal and
regulatory frameworks by Governments and organizations in the
context of reform programmes. New policies and codes of
conduct adopted at national level, however, may not be immediately
enforced and their results may not be directly felt at the
micro-level, .i.e., by individual women,
households and communities in their day-to-day
activities. 

The enabling environment
for gender equality and women’s empowerment may also be influenced
by factors that are not easily controlled by individual Governments,
organizations or communities, for example, the global political and
policy environment, the availability of international financing for
development, and the development of new technologies. Some global
trends and measures also affect women at the micro-level.
Globalization, including trade liberalization for example, affects
women’s migration and employment. Changes in aid modalities and
structural reforms, while aiming to create overall enabling
environments for development, may have limited or even adverse
effects if they do not take into account gender perspectives and the
interests and needs of women.

Some authors have
highlighted the role of formal and informal institutions in
hindering impact of policies and other actions on the lives of
women, and the need to change social institutions. These
institutions might include, inter alia, public, private and civil
society organizations in key development sectors; the workplace;
culture and religion; families and households. The Millennium Task
Force on Child Health and Maternal Health has argued that service
delivery systems such as health systems, comprise core social
institutions for women’s empowerment. Prevailing cultural norms and men’ attitudes and resistance
to change also need to be taken into consideration.  

Women’s
participation in health, education and work

The consideration by the
Commission on the Status of Women of the theme of an enabling
environment for women’s participation in development will take into
account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and
work. These three areas are recognized as critical for women’s
effective participation in development. As noted in the Report on
the World Social Situation 2005, societies that do not provide
educational opportunities for all, adequate health care and decent
employment are doomed to fail. Better education, access to health
services, and opportunities for work, particularly outside the
household, comprise a set of critical conditions for positive
changes in women’s involvement in development. Research has shown
that a certain level of education and health strengthens women’s
human capital and is a necessary prerequisite for women’s
participation in the formal or informal labour market. Evidence
shows that the higher the education, the more likely women are to
have access to formal and higher-paying employment, and thus the
potential to make autonomous economic choices. However, persistent
gender stereotypes, which hinder women from fully utilizing their
education and training, need to be explicitly addressed. Conversely,
work is an entry point for women’ access to other services, such as
health and further education and training. Education and health are
also fields of employment for women, mostly in the public sector.
However, economic adjustment policies, including fiscal austerity
and the privatization of welfare services, have been threatening
opportunities for work in the public sector.

Health, education and
work are also included in the seven interdependent strategic
priorities identified by the Millennium Task Force on Gender
Equality – strengthening opportunities for post-primary education of
girls; guaranteeing sexual and reproductive health and rights;
investing in infrastructure to reduce women’s and girls’ time
burdens; guaranteeing women’s property and inheritance rights;
reducing gender inequality in employment; increasing women’s
representation in political bodies; combating violence against
women; gathering data and developing indicators for monitoring
progress; and financing costs of interventions to achieve gender
equality. Heads of States endorsed the majority of these priorities
in the 2005 World Summit
outcome.

The Beijing Platform for
Action also provided strategic objectives and specific actions in
the areas of health, education, and work. In the field of education
and training of women, the Beijing Platform for Action’s strategic
objectives focus on ensuring equal access to education; eradicating
illiteracy among women; improving women’s access to vocational
training, science and technology, and continuing education;
developing non-discriminatory education and training; allocating
sufficient resources for and monitoring the implementation of
educational reforms; and promoting lifelong education and training
for girls and women. 

In the area of health,
the Platform’s strategic objectives aim to increase women’s access
throughout the life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality
health care, information and related services; strengthen preventive
programmes that promote women’s health; undertake gender-sensitive
initiatives that address sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS,
and sexual and reproductive health issues; promote research and
disseminate information; and increase resources and monitor
follow-up for women’s health. 

In the field of economy,
the Platform’s strategic objectives focus on promoting women’s
economic rights and independence, including access to employment,
appropriate working conditions and control over economic resources;
facilitating women’s equal access to resources, employment markets
and trade, providing business services, training and access to
markets, information and technology, particularly to low-income
women; strengthening women’s economic capacity and commercial
networks; eliminating occupational segregation and all forms of
employment discrimination; and promoting harmonization of work and
family responsibilities for women and men.

The provisions of
Articles 10, 11 and 12 of CEDAW stipulate the legal commitments of
States parties to take all appropriate measures to eliminate
discrimination against women and ensure to women equal access and
equal rights in the fields of education, employment and
health.  The Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination
against Women has recommended a comprehensive approach to ensuring
the implementation of CEDAW provisions in these three areas,
including through women’s active participation.  For example,
the Committee stated that Governments should involve women in the
planning, implementation and monitoring of health policies and
programmes and in the provision of health services to women.

III.
Objectives

The commitments and
roadmaps for gender equality and women’s empowerment are clearly
laid out at international level and increasingly at regional and
national level. The main challenge is to identify concrete
institutional change strategies that can transform the environment
to enable the realization of women’s participation in development.

Keeping in mind that the
elements and dynamics of an enabling environment for women’s
participation are likely to be theme-, situation- and
country-specific, the EGM will explore the factors and strategies
most likely to create an enabling environment for women’s enhanced
participation in development. The experts will provide evidence from
the fields of education, health and work with a view to identifying
good practices and lessons learned.

The EGM will address the
following questions:

1. What is the interrelationship between health,
   education and work for enabling women’s participation in
   development?
2. At national level, which core policies,
   institutions, mechanisms and strategies have been proven effective
   in increasing women’s capabilities, assets and agency in the areas
   of education, health and work?
3. At local and household levels, which strategies
   have ensured that women effectively seized opportunities created
   by more favourable national laws, policies, infrastructure,
   institutions, services, etc?
4. What lessons learned can be drawn on factors that
   facilitate or hinder an enabling environment for women’s
   participation?

On the basis of its
findings, the EGM will propose policy recommendations to different
actors, including Governments, United Nations entities, other
international and regional organizations, and civil society.

IV.
Documentation

The documentation for the
EGM will consist of:

a)        
A consultant’s background paper commissioned by DAW, which will
elaborate on the creation of an enabling environment for women’s
participation, and provide some illustrations in the areas of
education, health and work.

b)        
Papers prepared by each expert on a specific topic from her/his area
of expertise;

c)        
Papers prepared by observers.

V.       
Profile of the participants

The EGM will be attended
by ten to twelve experts appointed by the Secretary-General of the
United Nations. The EGM will also be attended by observers from
Governments, the United Nations, other inter-governmental
organizations, non-governmental organizations and academia.

In selecting the
participants, the criteria of geographical balance, and gender
balance to the extent possible, will be respected. The participants
will be drawn from a variety of fields and expertise, in accordance
with objectives identified above.

The United Nations will
provide travel and daily subsistence allowance to the experts
appointed by the Secretary-General. Observers will participate at
their own expense.

VI.      
Organization

The EGM will be organized
by the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) of the United
Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, in collaboration
with the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific
will host the EGM.

The EGM will meet in
plenary and in working groups.  In an opening plenary meeting,
background presentations will create a conceptual framework for
discussions.  The plenary will be followed by an in-depth
discussion of specific issues in working groups.

The EGM will be conducted
in English and the documentation will be in English. 

VII.
    Expected outcome

On the last day of the
meeting the experts will adopt a final report that will contain the
main conclusions and recommendations of the EGM.  The report
will be made available to the Commission on the Status of Women.

For further
information on the expert group meeting please contact:

Heike Alefsen
Office
of the Director
Division for the Advancement of Women /
DESA
alefsen@un.org

NOTE:  For
full bibliographical references, please consult the PDF version of
this Aide-Memoire.