The Gender Agenda

This short article is written to raise awareness of the ever present theme of gender and the making of inroads towards positive social development by Kate Dalrymple. After a pleasing response to the Laos Community Education and Gender Lessons presentation made at the Knowledge Sharing Workshop, I’m following up with some general discussion for practitioners in our industry to consider. Conveniently, this coincides with the Global Land Tools Network (www.gltn.net) forum discussion on gender responsive land tools (Sept 8 – Oct 15, 2008) which I encourage you all to visit.

The Issue
Issues of access to land, food and tenure security largely underpin social and economic development necessary to reduce poverty. Disproportionately these issues have been shown to affect women and their dependent families. Gender inequities are often embedded in traditional social practices, cultural regimes, and rudimentary policy and legal frameworks. It is crucial that efforts to achieve the millennium development goals address both equality and equity issues simultaneously. This is echoed in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which was effected by the United Nations General Assembly in 1981. The effects of inadequately addressing implications of inequality, starting with gender, can cause serious long term burdens on families, communities and governments.

Land Administration Response
Land administration programs have the potential to improve gender equality in development through widespread community participation programs, grassroots level empowerment and equal opportunity. Essential to land administration programs are the efforts to improve accessibility of formal systems to women by strengthening and allowing tenure security of land leases and joint or individual recording of rights (recording male and/or female names). In addition to outreach facilities strengthening the legal framework of inheritance and family laws to protect vulnerable groups such as women are mechanisms for empowering women and improving their decision making power both within and outside the household.

Individual Efforts
It is essential that gender considerations remain at the forefront of decisions and advice. The most important input from development assistance personnel is to ensure the gender dimension of an issue has been explored and women are engaged as conclusions are reached. Actively preparing for gendered discussions is the onus of every development practitioner. It requires no new skills, no new technology, and comes at no extra costs. It does require time and understanding. Extra time may be needed to delve into some gender focused literature. By having a greater understanding of issues one ultimately saves time through better focused question. Bringing gender into your matrix of issues and checklist of indicators and just ensuring gender implications are considered in designs, advice or reviews will contribute to more sustainable and socially responsible outcomes. There is a gender specialist in all of us that will ensure sustainable and appropriate solutions, and continual improvements for keeping gender on the agenda.