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Recommendations for the Beijing + 5 Review

Introduction

The UN Secretary General stated, in relation to the report “1999 World Survey on the role of Women in Development: Globalisation, Gender and Work, ” that gender issues are finally at the centre of development policies after three decades of struggle”. Though this is a major achievement, one might add that with respect to operationalisation and implementation there is still a long way to go.

Development is one of the three themes of the Special General Assembly entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”. Development as a core theme has, however, been rather neglected in the ECE-preparatory process and the national responses of EU-governments to the UN-questionnaire; Eurostep therefore would like to underline the following issues in the context of development:

Eradication of poverty

The EU has committed itself in The Amsterdam Treaty and the World Summit for Social Development to the eradication of poverty, and to sustainable social development. The commitment to “the goal of eradicating poverty in the world” adopted at the Social Summit and reaffirmed at the Beijing Conference by all the EU Member States, should unequivocally and unambiguously be at he heart of all its policies. While the level of relative poverty may have declined, the absolute number of people living in poverty has continued to grow. Though there has been increasing recognition of the gender dimensions of poverty, the feminisation of poverty is widening and has in many cases been exacerbated by economic globalisation and economic restructuring processes.

Eurostep argues that the eradication of poverty can only be achieved if men and women are seen as equal and if women are empowered to take their full role in political, economic and social life. If women are excluded from these spheres their children - and particularly the girls among them, become more vulnerable to poverty and social exclusion. Therefore certain measures are necessary:

In Official development assistance:

• To designate 0.7% of GNP of OECD countries to aid, and 0.15% to the least developed countries as soon as possible and increasing the share of funding for social development programmes.

With regard to economic restructuring:

• To include gender dimensions in the design of SAPs in order to minimize their negative effects on poor and marginalized women and to devise measures to ensure that they gain access to and control over economic resources.[1]

·        To support – especially poor women in the South – regarding their access to services, training, infrastructure, marketing possibilities, information technologies and economic literacy.[2]

·        To engender macro-economic policies

Data and statistics

Effective gender aware (development-) policies cannot be developed in the absence of targets, sex- disaggregated data and monitoring mechanisms. This was also one of the findings of the report of the UN-Secretary General.[3]

Eurostep reiterates the language of the Beijing PFA in order to ask the EU, the United Nations agencies and all other relevant actors to:

• Collect gender and age-disaggregated data on poverty and all aspects of economic activity and develop qualitative and quantitative statistical indicators to facilitate the assessment of economic performance from a gender perspective; (PFA )

• Collect, compile, analyse and present on a regular basis data disaggregated by age, sex, socio-economic and other relevant indicators, including number of dependants, for utilization in policy and programme planning and implementation and to reflect problems and questions related to men and women in society. (PFA)

• Collect gender-disaggregated data for use in policy formulation and in monitoring the impact of policies on women.

• Collect data disaggregated by sex to advance studies aimed at recognising the unpaid work of women in national accounts.

Mainstreaming

Conceptually the nineties have moved the understanding of mainstreaming gender forward. Many understood the concept of mainstreaming gender as either a substitute for targeting women or an end in itself. Gender mainstreaming is, however, aimed at transforming society to address the basic structures and processes of inequality between women and men. Gender mainstreaming implies that adequate consideration is given to the needs and priorities of both men and women and that women and men have equal opportunities to setting goals and priorities and participate and benefit. Mainstreaming of gender equality will actually impact on the development agenda itself.

• Eurostep argues that there continues to be a need for special and specific attention and support to women (including financial support to women’s organisations) alongside the need for mainstreaming gender equality perspectives into all countries’ policies, planning procedures, monitoring and evaluation processes, structures and the society as a whole.

Discrimination against women

An emphasis needs to be put on discrimination against women. Many countries have not yet signed the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of discrimination Against Women that was called for as a high priority in Beijing. In order to give this convention creditability, highest priority should be given to its ratification.

Eurostep argues that the EU and its member states should ensure that initiatives are taken by all relevant actors in order to:

• Call upon all countries to sign and ratify CEDAW and furthermore the Optional protocol

• Call upon all countries which have signed and ratified the CEDAW to ensure implementation of CEDAW, Which implies a translation into policies and legislation at national levels.

• Identify measures in order to prevent women from being driven into dangerous occupations, including trafficking and sexual slavery.

• Give augment consideration to structural violation of women’s rights as a reason for granting women an independent right to asylum.

Basic Education

EU Member States and the Commission should co-ordinate their efforts on education in developing countries.

Eurostep argues that the EU and its member states should promote for initiatives to be taken in order to:

• Evaluate the extent to which support to the education sector in Southern countries contributes towards achieving policy goals and international commitments on gender and education;

• Incorporate a thorough gender analysis of education systems that they support;

• Support a more holistic approach as a deliberate development strategy;

• Build on existing gender expertise and awareness among their staff at all levels and include a requirement for gender expertise in the TOR of all external consultancies;

• Develop relevant, realistic gender indicators for planning, monitoring and evaluation purposes.

• Make increased aid for basic education conditional on progress towards eliminating the gender gap, using focussed, culturally sensitive intervention to increase girl’s enrolment and attendance.

• Ensure participating countries produce Education Action Plans setting out the financing requirements which will enable them to achieve gender parity in basic education by 2005 and universal primary education by 2015 at the latest.[4]

Structural Adjustment Programmes

Structural Adjustment Programmes have usually included extremely strict financial terms on developing countries, with cuts in public expenditure as a key mechanism.

The impact of the programme has, however, affected women and men unequally. Structural adjustment has often decreased women’s access to public sector jobs and decreased the availability of and access to public services.

Focus on agricultural policy and increasing the exports of agriculture products have deteriorated women’s position particularly in countries where women mainly carry out food production. Structural adjustment combined with market liberalisation has increased the concentration of ownership, an issue problematic from women’s viewpoint, especially regarding land ownership.

Eurostep recommends that:

• The EU should ensure that International Organisations which shape global governance such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, G-7 and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) introduce gender equality and poverty reduction targets in their decision making, implementation and evaluation processes.

·        The evaluation of the social impact of structural adjustment policies should include gender dimensions.

• The EU should in all their agreements with developing countries, promote stable monetary policies.

Health and Reproductive rights

Critical areas where not enough progress has been made since the Beijing conference are maternal mortality and morbidity and the spread of HIV/AIDS. The former still claim an unacceptable [5] high number of women’s lives each year and the proportion of women infected with HIV is growing steadily, leading to what has been dubbed “the feminisation of AIDS”. A clear connection between the level of education and maternal deaths and HIV/AIDS has been noticed. Where female literacy is lowest, the maternal death is highest and where female literacy is highest, the maternal death ratio is low.

Eurostep argues the EU and its member states should promote for initiatives to be taken in order to:

• Include training and equipment of health-service providers at local level;

• Include access for adolescent and adult women to sexual and reproductive health services in all health programmes;

• Include access to sexual and reproductive health and rights information for adolescent and adult women in all health programmes;

• Promote and protect women’s right to a full range of high- quality and affordable sexual and reproductive health services, including safe and accessible abortion and post-abortion care services.
• Ensure education on HIV/AIDS in all their health programmes.

Economic and Political rights

In many developing countries women are the main providers of their families. They contribute in a large scale to the provision of their households. A lot of the work that is being carried out by women is unpaid and there for not recognized as proper work. Women must be given the possibility to play an active role in the political as well as in the economic sector in order to promote social and economic development.

Eurostep argues that the EU and its member states should ensure that initiatives are taken by all relevant actors in order to:

• Ensure women’s full access to economic resources especially to land and credit.

• Ensure women’s full participation in national and local politics.

• Ensure women’s right to organize independently as actors in civil society;

• Ensure that national policies related to international and regional trade agreements do not have an adverse impact on women’s new and traditional economic activities.

• Give attention to women’s access to employment, the protection of their position in the labour market and the promotion of equal treatment of women and men, in particular in respect to pay.

• Improve the situation of the conditions of the single parent and ensure that single parent families and female-headed or female maintained households receive the social support they need, including adequate housing and childcare.

• Ensure equal access to legal services.

• Promote women’s access to basic social services.

Peace-building

The report of the UN-Secretary General states that there has been a growing understanding of the role of women in conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peace-building and societal reconstruction. This has, however, not yet adequately been translated into action. We therefore call upon the EU to take the process further by promoting:

• The EU, international Organisations and other relevant actors to involve women in all stages of the design, planning and implementation of post-conflict transformation as opposed to simply reconstruction. War crimes, especially gender-based violence, should be exposed, investigated and convicted.

• All relevant actors to share good practices in all of these areas, especially the planned UN study on “Gender Perspectives in Multidimensional Peacekeeping Operations”, so as to tangibly demonstrate the value of a gender perspective in peace processes.

• To reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies resulting from rape. Organisations in the social and judicial sectors must train officials and staff to facilitate adolescent and adult women’s access to emergency contraception and safe and accessible abortion by making appropriate referrals.

• The EU, international and national communities should set voluntary targets for reduction in military spending (e.g. at least one percent of GDP by 2005). Guidelines should be established for investing the resources released in development. Research should be conducted to expose illicit arms dealing and monitoring mechanisms set up to sanction illegal arms trade.

April 2000

[1] See also ‘NGO-Coalition in support for the Beijing Platform for Action, New York, 29 / 2/ 2000

[2] see also WIDE Advocacy Card “Implementation of the Platform for Action of Beijing”, Brussels, 1999 / 2000

[3] E/CN.6/2000/PC/2

[4]See Eurostep’s briefing paper on Gender and Education: “Access Denied”. February 2000

[5]  In Africa this has even risen since 1995.

Updated on 5 May 2000
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