Press Release No. 22/1997

ECA Fleshes out Issues, Strategies and Actors to Develop Gender Networking Systems

Gender networking in Africa has found its place in the priorities of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) with the conclusion of 3-day meeting this week focusing on women and economic empowerment and decision-making through the promotion of women's human and legal rights.

Using existing networks in the subregions and the employment of macro- and micro-level interventions, the African Centre for Women (ACW) will strive to impact on some of the most important issues on the gender landscape, among them:

• Food Security
• Increasing and persistent poverty
• Conflict situations
• Access to credit
• Political participation
• Unequal power relationships in the household and outside.

ACW is the division in ECA responsible for advancing Africa's social and economic development with gender for its cutting edge.

Josephine Ouedraogo, Chief of ACW, is confident. "Are we taking on more than we can deliver?" she asks? "I do not think so. Gender networking is an all-inclusive effort."

Networks that participated in the meeting include some of the most motivated organizations in the region: Women's organisations, members of Parliament, the business and academic communities, among others.

The meeting devised strategies for attaining its objectives.These include sharing and replication of successful projects in food security and research into the policy framework on food at national and subregional levels, and identification of countries in which there was an excess of food so as to respond to shortages.

"We shall adapt strategies and tailor them in the interest of different subregions without losing sight of their inter-connectedness", said Ms. Ouedraogo.

In this effort ACW will enlist the support of United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization FAO) and ECA's own Food Security and Sustainable Development (FSSDD) and all subregional institutions. In seeking women influence in the design of poverty alleviation action plans, they will invite UNDP, the NGO community working with women in Parliament and OECD countries.

ACW will join forces with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), UNIFEM and the Federation of Women's Movement to support women's peace initiatives and document existing peace networks, their successes and impact.

"Peace-making has a culture of its own which we have to study and master along with our partners", Ms. Ouedraogo said.

The strategy here is to support Women's peace initiatives and to lobby the OAU to upgrade its level of operation on women, specifically women and peace.

Access to land occupies center stage on networking economic empowerment in the region. It affects the livelihood of millions of African women. Creating an alliance on land reform with the United Nations Center for Human Settlements (UNCHS), and NGOs -- especially those dealing with legal rights of women -- will go hand in hand with reviewing existing discriminatory land ownership policies at the national level.

ACW wants to involve actors as varied as governments and private sector, religious and traditional leaders, professional associations, trade unions and the media in women's access to resources such as credit, water and health.

ACW's strategies for gender networking include activities ranging from advocacy and lobbing, capacity building and policy debates on budgets and macro-economic policies to networking for good governance and democracy: the list is endless.

Not surprisingly the issue of political participation calls for all-inclusive strategies, including:

• Encouraging Governments to adopt affirmative action in favour of women at all levels and investigating results;
• Supporting such initiatives as training women candidates for public office and the private sector;
• Keeping up pressure to ensure the implementation of national and international instruments designed to attain the goal of economic empowerment of and confer decision-making capacity on women through the promotion of women's human and legal rights.

Asked whether the subject matter of the meeting was too ambitious, Ms. Ouedraogo replied: "At the outset it looks daunting - economic empowerment, decision-making, legal and human rights. But in the end, we tied them all up: strategies, issues and actors".