Why is gender mainstreaming important
All messages of the e-conference and the summary of the contributions to the question "Why is gender mainstreaming important?" can be found here.
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All messages of the e-conference and the summary of the contributions to the question "Why is gender mainstreaming important?" can be found here.
Summary of discussion on the "whys" This summary intends to extract the major points from all contrbutions to the e-conference concerning this topic.
Message 2: Freddy Miranda A response from Freddy Miranda Castro.
Message 3: Juana on the Why's Juana Vera from Peru responds to the question: "why is it important to mainstream a gender perspective in agricultural water management?”.
In her response, Juana highlights the issues of gender hierarchies in access to resources as well as social differentiation created by confronting interests and status, as playing a role in inhibiting access. She also mentions the differences in the types of roles played by men and women in agriculture, and the perceptions of agriculture as being a primarily male occupation.
Message 4: Manirul on Juana Manirul Islam reviews the comments by Juana Vera’s response in the last message. There are certain points regarding feminist approaches in development and their application to questions within agriculture and water management that are pointed out.
Message 5: Juana responds to Manirul Juana Vera responds to the comments of Manirul Islam. She addresses Manirul’s critique of the application of feminist approaches to development in water management and also clarifies with an example.
Message 6: Gina's Contribution Gina Castillo writes that for development projects and programmes that have a rights based focus, participation is key, and this cannot be ensured without addressing the issues that may inhibit women’s contributions. Also programmes need to understand that users are both men and women, and they each have different concerns as well as needs and requirements. Distribution of the benefits of effective water management also needs to be done more effectively if poverty reduction is a desired outcome from a particular project. The issues that make the process of gender mainstreaming harder are: exclusion from institutions; the idea that gender can be tackled after addressing the broader needs of the community; the idea of gender being about women only; and also the other forms of social differentiatation that intersect with gender and produce disadvantage in a particular context.
Message 7: Violet's response Violet Matiru writes that the defined roles played by men and women in a particular context do not always represent the actual distribution of responsibilities and work between men and women in that context. This means that women’s labour is often essential in productive activities in agriculture. When gender is ignored, it results in the needs of one group suffering. She also points out that people in water management are not sure about why gender should be integrated into their projects, particularly when they are involved in implementing infrastructure.
Message 8: Manirul comments Manirul Islam has sent some references on the concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘gender equality’ in development literature.
Message 9: Ruth Meinzen Dick Responses by Ruth Meinzen-Dick can be found here. Ruth mentions that it is important to mainstream gender in order to look at the “water-related needs” of both men and women. She also links it to the distribution and access to water, as an asset and a resource. The barriers to gender mainstreaming arise due to a more narrow sectoral or discipline-based approach to water management and agriculture, and also the perception of agriculture as a male domain.
Message 10: Margreet Zwarteveen Response from Margreet Zwartveen.
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