Message 41: Dorothy Hamada

Dorothy Hamada asks if we should even negotiate on the ‘minimum agenda’. Read her response.

4. What should be done?

4.1. Accept our shortcomings, stop apologizing and stop negotiating partial or trial gender mainstreaming.

5. Feasible Steps that can be taken:

5.1. Integrate gender mainstreaming in the formal and non-formal education streams. Its being done for nutrition, health (even HIV/AIDS), why not gender? Funders of education institution/curriculum development can play a big role here. Engendered institutions can also make it a requirement for accepting school transfers.

5.2.. Appropriate but complete sex-disaggregation and gender analysis of all data sets everywhere. No jokes like: "do we also have to sex-disaggregate the crops/livestock?" In answer to such jokes: Why not but do not stop at sex-disaggregation, gender analyze (what do the sex-disaggregated stats mean?) What difference does it mean to have 10 female and 1 male piglets as compared with 10 male and 1 female piglet?

5.3. Fund allocation priorities for engendered research proposals that do not stop at proposals to sex-disaggregate data. There should be meaningful gender analysis.

5.4. Gender training should be designed to include backstopping and monitoring support through an adoption-of-learning phase. Institutional commitment to support adoption of gender training by its' trained staff should be obtained in writing as part of their investment share in human development through gender training. The implementation of this commitment would form part of the backstopping/ monitoring phase of training programmes. Stakeholder gender training should be of a critical mass to be effective. One gender-traned staff to PHD level would be less effective than 70% staff trained and skilled in sex-disaggregating and gender-analyzing data sets.

6. How do we operationalize some of the steps (in the minimum agenda)?

6.1. Need we negotiate on a minimum agenda?

6.2. Include proven gender mainstreaming skills in all TOR of all staff, administrative, technical, service.

6.3. Include sex-disaggregation, gender-analysis of all data sets in all project documentation in the project document with, wherever appropriate, specifying reports, forms, data sets as necessary and deemed part of project cycle.

Dorothy Hamada