Gender Mainstreaming In Local Authorities

BEST PRACTICES IN GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN LOCAL AUTHORITIESINTRODUCTIONFollowing a series of international mandatescontained in the Beijing Platform for Actionand the United Nations Economic and SocialCouncil Resolutions 1997/2 and 2006/36, gendermainstreaming was introduced as a process forassessing the implications of legislation on menand women’s concerns and experiences. It becamean integral part of the design, implementation,monitoring and evaluation of policies andprogrammes in the political, economic andsocial sphere of countries around the world.Gender mainstreaming seeks to address genderinequality, and looks at both women’s and men’sroles in society and their needs in developmentintervention. This has entailed changes to policies,institutional cultures, resource allocation anddesign of programmes and projects.Gender mainstreaming does not replace governmentpolicies on gender inequality. Gender equality andwomen’s issues are complementary strategies andshould be examined together, but this depends onthe data available in determining what is needed.One of the most important prerequisites in achievinggender equality is the political will to implement astrategy. A gender equality policy should be in placeand gender-sensitive data and statistics should beavailable. Tools and instruments to put the strategyinto practice have to be developed and the peopleinvolved have to be trained.Women’s empowerment is about improvingwomen’s confidence and status in society, increasingtheir opportunities and facilitating greater2control over their lives. Gender mainstreamingprogrammes and strategies often include women’sempowerment issues. It is recognised that womendo not share equal status in society, and that thereis a need to focus women on political participation,and on obtaining access to basic services. In urbanareas, local authorities often incorporate women’sempowerment programmes.With increasing urbanisation, UN-HABITATestimated that by the end of 2007, half of theworld’s population was living in cities. The numberof urban residents in the world has risen from700 million in 1950 to 3 billion today—morethan quadrupling in less than an average humanlifetime. As the pace of urbanisation quickens, thesocial challenges facing rural regions have startedto shift more significantly towards urban areas,often with adverse consequences for women andmen, girls and boys. Poverty, inadequate housingand shelter, insecure land and housing tenure,poor water and sanitation services and basicinfrastructure, and health and environmental risks,all are causing massive new challenges for womenin society, particularly in cities where slums havebecome commonplace on the continents of Africa,Asia and Latin America.The experience by men and women of a city is quitedifferent. Spatial and organisational aspects of thecity affect men and women in different ways. Agender-aware approach to urban development andits management would seek to ensure that bothwomen and men obtain equal access to and controlover the resources and opportunities offered by a

INTRODUCTIONcity. It would also seek to ensure that the design,provision and management of public servicesbenefits both women and men.Globally, gender equality in development agendasremains a challenge. However, a number ofsuccessful strategies have been integrated intoprogrammes by municipalities. These practicesare known as best practices in this handbook.The purpose is to demonstrate how initiatives canaddress the needs of the urban population and leadto a positive impact on development in general.Building on the Beijing Platform for Action, andother human rights policies and instruments1 ,the Habitat Agenda (1996) contains a wide rangeof provisions for mainstreaming gender in humansettlements development. In particular, it is worthnoting the commitment of UN member states inparagraph 46.46.We commit ourselves to the goal of genderequality in human settlements development. Wefurther commit ourselves to:(a) Integrating gender perspectives in humansettlements related legislation, policies, programmesand projects through the application of gendersensitive analysis;(b) Developing conceptual and practicalmethodologies for incorporating gender perspectivesin human settlements planning, developmentand evaluation, including the development ofindicators;1 Such as the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination against Women (CEDAW), Convention on theRights of Child (CRC), among others.(c) Collecting, analysing and disseminating genderdisaggregated data and information on humansettlements issues, including statistical means thatrecognize and make visible the unremuneratedwork of women, for use in policy and programmeplanning and implementation;(d) Integrating a gender perspective in the designand implementation of environmentally soundand sustainable resource management mechanisms,production techniques and infrastructuredevelopment in rural and urban areas;(e) Formulating and strengthening policies andpractices to promote the full and equal participationof women in human settlements planning anddecision-making.Similarly, in the United Nations MillenniumDeclaration (2000), heads of State andgovernments committed “to promote gender equalityand the empowerment of women, as effective ways ofcombating poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulatedevelopment that is truly sustainable.”Since the 1980s, there has been growing recognitionof the need to ensure women’s equal access tourban public spaces. This applies to physical spacesuch as streets, parks, and public transport, as wellas to governance structures, and the cultural andeconomic life of a city. From the perspective of thehuman settlements arena, there is also recognitionof the need to address women’s access to resources,housing and basic services, such as electricity andenergy, water and sanitation, refuse and wastemanagement.Women face several barriers in urban life: Institutionalbarriers prevent them from participating in localgovernment and planning institutions; informationbarriers affect how they access opportunities andresources; absence of gender-disaggregated data,especially at the city level, negatively affects howpolicy, plans and programmes address the respectiveneeds of women and men.3

BEST PRACTICES IN GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN LOCAL AUTHORITIESResearch around the world reveals the challengeswomen face in the context of growing urbanisation.Those challenges include: personal safety; accessand mobility; affordable housing; public toilets andlocal facilities such as shops, community facilitiesfor children and the elderly, schools, meetingplaces, parks, leisure facilities and playgrounds.Low-income women in developing countries faceadditional issues, such as lack of access to waterand sanitation as well as legal barriers to owninghousing, land and property.One way of reflecting women’s issues in developmentand planning agendas is to ensure their greaterparticipation in local government – in political andplanning structures. However, mere representationdoes not assure women’s issues are addressed. Legaland policy reform, advocacy, capacity building andawareness creation are equally important.Many initiatives by local governments promotinggender equality have been documented. Someare comprehensive and are based on supportivepolicies. Others are ad hoc and address specificissues, sometimes as a result of a crisis. Whateverthe context, the initiatives provide lessons for othersto learn from. Indeed, many city-to-city exchangestake their origins from the ‘best practices’ fromother contexts.The best practices can be arranged into three mainsections: (i) gender mainstreaming (ii) women’sempowerment (iii) women’s safety and security.Women’s empowerment encompasses a wide rangeof related issues: poverty reduction, increasingwomen’s participation in decision making,enhancing women’s access to housing and securityof tenure, better access to basic services, including,for example, child care facilities.4Interventions in specific areas often reinforce theultimate goal of gender equality. For example,an initiative to improve transport services from awoman’s perspective can lead to improved safety,increased mobility and improve job opportunities.If this type of initiative were to include consultationsby local government with women’s organisations,it could eventually lead to the institutionalisationof women’s participation in local planning anddevelopment.These initiatives often are supported by policies,strategies and action plans. Mechanisms forscrutinising resource allocation including genderbudgets2 are provided. Stakeholder participationis encouraged and institutionalised, within whichwomen’s organisations are recognised as stakeholdersin the process. Such initiatives integrate monitoringand accountability mechanisms and are also backedby gender disaggregated data.2 A gender budget is a budget that accounts for the direct andindirect effects of a government’s expenditure allocations andrevenues on both women and men. It acts as an instrumentfor holding the government accountable to its gender equalitycommitments. Source: www.gender-budgets.org GenderResponsive Budgeting - Gender Budgets: an overview - Canada

SOURCES OF INITIATIVESPRESENTEDThe initiatives presented in this handbook aredrawn from the best practices database ofUnited Nations Human Settlements Programmeas well as other databases and websites. The UNHABITAT Best Practices database is fed largely bysubmissions to the Dubai International Award forBest Practices to Improve the Living Environment.The award has been running for ten years andabout 3,000 initiatives have been collected in theprocess. Some of the thematic categories for theaward include Good Governance, Social Inclusionand Gender Equality. In addition, many practicessubmitted under different categories – for example,Access to Housing or Safety and Security addresseswomen’s empowerment and directly or indirectly,gender mainstreaming.has been organising the Women’s Safety Awards.These and other partnerships have elicited severalbest practices illustrating how local governments aretaking women’s issues into account and supportingwomen’s participation in local development.Initiatives range from incorporating gender issuesto addressing single issues in a particular locality.UN-HABITAT has had a programme on women’sempowerment and gender mainstreaming since1990. The programme has worked with women’snetworks, local authorities and their associations(notably the International Union of LocalAuthorities/United Cities and Local Government)and other United Nations programmes. The role ofgender mainstreaming is to provide technical adviceand to enhance the capacity of UN-HABITATstaff and Habitat Agenda partners. Further, UNHABITAT Gender Mainstreaming Unit togetherwith the respective regional offices, and inpartnership with UNIFEM, organises competitionson Gender Responsive Municipal Governments inLatin America & Caribbean, and Asia and Pacificregions. Similarly, UN-HABITAT, in collaborationwith UNIFEM and Women and Cities International Comparing different best practices usingcommon documentation formats and criteriaThe main reason for awards is to motivatedocumentation and to encourage the development ofprogrammes. In some instances, awards also accordpolitical mileage to initiatives undertaken underdifficult political circumstances. Competitionshave proved valuable in: Raising awareness about initiatives that mayhave remained only at a local level Providing the opportunity to isolate the essentialcatalytic factors and the elements for success andsustainability Building a body of best practice knowledge thatothers can learn from Bringing to light enabling policies underlyingsuccessful initiatives but also constraining policyfactors Increasing political mileage for innovativepractices that may not be fully accepted in theirhome country or district.5

BEST PRACTICES IN GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN LOCAL AUTHORITIESThis handbook has drawn from the knowledgegenerated by the awards, including the learningexchanges motivated by the award process. Itattempts to offer a representative, rather thancomprehensive, set of best practices. Countries andregions are at different stages in development anddemocratisation, and the sample initiatives reflectthis fact. However, some very interesting initiativescome from relatively underdeveloped regions, andnetworking at inter-regional levels can also facilitatethe sharing of best practices.The two annexes at the end are detailed case studieson: The Women Development Code of Naga cityand Seoul Metropolitan Government’s WomenFriendly City Project, Korea.Naga City is included as an illustration of asuccessful gender mainstreaming programme. Itdemonstrates the structures and actors, as well asthe monitoring mechanisms.The Seoul case study is a new initiative whoseimpact is not yet measured. It is included for tworeasons: 1) it is comprehensive in nature and 2) itdocuments the efforts of a city to bridge the gapbetween national policy and practice, and urbanrealities.6

USE OF THE HANDBOOKThis handbook aims to disseminate theexperiences from these initiatives that arecontributing to the goals of gender equality in urbancontexts. It is intended to assist UN-HABITATProgrammes, Habitat Agenda partners – nationaland local governments, as well as civil society - inmainstreaming gender issues in urban developmentpolicies and programmes. It attempts to extract thelessons on what is working, as well as identifyingsome of the challenges.The book can be used in a variety of ways: makingavailable general information on gender andwomen’s issues, inspiring others, providing a basisfor exchange programmes, using the examplesin training and capacity building programmesand tools and informing policy formulation andprogramme design.7

SELECTED THEMESAND ENTRY POINTSThe following themes are by no meansexhaustive. They are presented as illustrativeof the most common interventions as describedin the case studies. The contribution to gendermainstreaming in most cases will depend on howfar a particular initiative addresses women’s rights,or on its effect on structural issues, such as theinstitutionalization of women’s participation as ameasure of gender equality.WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENTEmpowerment of women involves awarenessraising, building self-confidence, expanding choicesand increasing access to, and control over resources.The important instruments of empowermentinclude information and networking activities– often entailing a process through which womenacquire knowledge, skills and a willingness tocritically analyse their situation and take appropriateaction to change the status quo in society.Empowerment involves practical measures toenhance women’s participation in decision-makingand in governance processes, and generally to uplifttheir status through literacy, education, training andraising awareness. Other actions include povertyreduction programmes, that themselves involveincome-generating activities and enhancing accessto job opportunities. Underlying issues are takeninto account such as the protection of a woman’shuman rights, her reproductive health as well asproperty ownership.8Several initiatives aimed at women’s empowermenthave been implemented. Examples include: Development of gender policies at nationaland local authority levels. Some have involvedincorporating laws, legislation and quotas aimedat making local government institutions andstructures more inclusive. Gender equality indicators and indexes atlocal, national and regional levels. These areaimed at monitoring, for example, educationlevels, labour force participation, incomes, andpercentage of council members, of both womenand men. Affirmative action which includes women indecision-making processes. For example, theSouthern African Development Community(SADC) governments have committedthemselves to 50 percent of occupancy by womenin political and decision-making structures by2020. Some countries have established officesand departments coordinating women’s issues,including the promotion of women’s activities indecision-making and municipal management. Women’s initiatives for self-empowerment, asindividuals as well as in groups. These includemutual self-help groups as well as networkingand solidarity-building activities. Women development funds and grants. Special measures on women’s access to justice.

SELECTED THEMES AND ENTRY POINTSWomen working for change in Kabul, Afghanistan UN-HABITAT Scholarships, sponsorships, fellowships, awards,exchange programmes and conferences forcapacity building. Charters for equality of women and men inlocal life. Gender-positive recruitment andpolicies including affirmative action.staffing Facilities and measures to help women combinedomestic roles, and work outside the home,including child-care and flexible working hours.Combining home and work has increasinglybecome an issue for men. This ultimatelyencourages men to take on family rolestraditionally attributed to women – in effectcontributing to greater gender equality.UN agencies such as UNDP, UNFPA, UNIFEM,UN-HABITAT and international organisations,have continued to play a role in women’sempowerment. They endeavour to link women’sempowerment to themes such as: democraticgovernance, poverty reduction, crisis preventionand recovery, environment and energy, HIV/AIDS, and Millennium Development Goals. UNHABITAT is particularly dedicated to Targets 103and 114 , Goal No. 75 , and recognises a woman’sright to fully enjoy the rights and opportunitiesaccorded by human settlements development andmanagement.3 Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainableaccess to safe drinking water.4 Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 millionslum dwellers, by 2020.5 Ensure environmental sustainability.9

WUF4 - Women Roundtable Jiang Suping and Nanjing Women’s FederationGOVERNANCEGovernance reffers to a process of decision-makingand the ways in which decisions are implemented.Both national and local level governance involveformal and informal decision-making, implementersand implementation structures. Government isonly one of the actors in governance. A measureof good governance involves, to a large extent,the relationship between government and civilianactors. The latter include women’s organizations.The participation of women in governanc

South Africa: Gender Mainstreaming . Gender Violence, Cebu, Philippines 68 . GBV Gender-based Violence GDP Gross Domestic Product GFPs Gender Focal Points GRBs Gender Responsive Budgets .