Ad-hoc Expert Group Meeting on Gender Networking

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Synthesis of the Outcome of the Gender Networking Meeting

16-18 June 1997

1. The Expert Group Meeting on Gender Networking was convened by the African Centre for Women of the Economic Commission for Africa, with the objective of developing strategies for networking among diverse actors on three strategic gender objectives. The three, increased participation of women in decision-making; achievement and exercise of women's full range of legal rights, including women's human rights; and women's economic empowerment, were seen as integrally linked and contributing to the urgent and overarching objective of poverty reduction, a key mission for the Commission.

Experts were drawn from civil society, government and the private sector, as well as the United Nations and broader international community, with efforts made to include individuals and organizations who have not made gender a priority focus. During the three days of the meeting, the participants explored ways to develop new partnerships and strengthen existing ones to facilitate and accelerate regional and sub-regional efforts to advance women and mainstream gender in the selected areas. The meeting resulted in a number of strategies and recommendations, with specific ones addressing the future role of the Commission, particularly its Centre for Women.

2. The discussions during the Meeting were based, in part, on six expert papers on the situation of women in the six sub-regions: Eastern, Southern, West, Central, North Africa and the Great Lakes. The papers presented the situation of women in the context of the three ACW priority areas.

The Meeting combined the regional presentations, group work exploring missing gaps as areas for future collaboration and thirdly, group work and a plenary discussion on specific networking strategies for this collaboration, among a wide range of actors at various levels of operation. In keeping with the ACW guidelines, the discussion focused on strategies to utilize women's legal rights and increased power in decision-making to achieve women's economic empowerment and ultimately, the major reduction of poverty for African women and their societies.

3. There was a consensus on three key issues:

(a) The three selected areas of focus of the ACW are inter-related and therefore, cannot be addressed in isolation. Progress in one area cannot occur without interventions in the other two. For example, the absence of women in decision-making is a result of many factors, including cultural values and laws constraining women's political participation. Increasing the participation of women in "power points," therefore, will often require the passage of affirmative action legislation as well as, efforts to change attitudes.

(b) Women are a key economic resource in Africa, comprising at least 60% of the informal sector and over 70% of agricultural labour. Despite these central roles in economic production, their economic growth is severely limited by legal and social discrimination which prevent them from reaching their full potential and benefiting equally from these roles. Therefore the Group emphasized that any strategies, designed to reduce and eventually eradicate poverty, would have to be integrated and intersectoral, addressing poverty through concurrent actions in a number of areas, as well as ensuring that women's needs and capacities are fully mainstreamed.

(c) Mainstreaming gender requires fundamental changes in organizational cultures, if women's interests are to be fully integrated. Therefore, as institutions are identified as potential partners and brought on board, advocacy will also have to focus on internal changes required, including in the goals, policy-making, and resource allocations.

4. The following were identified as critical issues at the sub-regional level, for future collaboration and networking, with specific strategies suggested (the strategies were kept to the minimum in order to ensure effective action):

Food Security

• Share and replicate successful agricultural, food processing, storage and other initiatives.
• Research national and sub-regional food policy frameworks for replication or revision.
• Identify countries with food excesses, for speedy response to shortages in other countries.

Increase and Persistence of Poverty

• Ensure women's input and influence in the design of national poverty eradication plans, or facilitate their alternative plans;
• Utilize UNDP's new way of measuring poverty from a human development perspective - measuring choices and opportunities rather than only income;
• Advocate for creation, by governments, of an enabling environment for women's economic activities.

Conflict Situations

• Provide support for women's peace initiatives and movements and for mainstreaming their perspectives into higher-level fora and national initiatives;
• Create a data base of peace networks, particularly those created by or involving women, and document the extent of their impact;
• Ensure that the establishment of the African Women's Committee for Peace is in conformity with recommendations of Kampala, Johannesburg and Kigali, including its mandate to report to the Summit of the Heads of States.
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Access to Land, to Water and Basic Services

• Create an alliance on land reform, sharing successful national strategies to ensure women's access to and ownership of land;
• Review discriminatory national land ownership policies and utilize the alliance and other sub-regional mechanisms for reform of those policies.
• Network for influencing policy-makers at local and national levels on the need for women to bring adequate water closer to women to improve their production.
• Set up mechanisms for providing adequate basic services to women in the rural areas.
• Train more women as extension officers.
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Access to Credit

• Review and establish regulatory frameworks for micro-credit schemes;
• Negotiate with national, regional and international banking institutions to engender their policies;
• Replicate and expand local and traditional women's credit/savings schemes.
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Political Participation

• Encourage governments and regional bodies to adopt affirmative action measures in favour of women at all levels and in all sectors;
• Support civil society organizations's initiatives to promote women into decision-making positions, particularly leadership training activities and specific training for women political candidates;
• Provide gender training to civil servants, beginning with those in senior positions;
• Research and give greater transparency to appointment and promotion procedures in the civil service and private sector;
• Facilitate the formation of women's political caucuses and share the experiences of those caucuses at the sub-regional level;
• Investigate the positive and negative consequences of affirmative action measures for women;
• Pressure and provide support for governments' ratification and implementation of CEDAW and other international women's rights conventions.
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Regional Cooperation, with an emphasis on remedying the lack of an enabling environment

• Review carefully the policy documents and activities of sub-regional mechanisms, in order to identify entry points for women's economic empowerment;
• Lobby sub-regional and regional institutions for the removal of trade tariffs and other regulatory barriers to women's full participation in economic production.
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Unequal Power Relations between women and men in the household, community and other spheres.

• Utilize (and create, where necessary) advocacy and interest groups to sensitize and gain public acceptance for gender equality as integral components of human rights, democratization and development;
• Lobby for the adoption of laws and policies which provide for equality, access to and control of resources and greater power for women in decision-making;
• Ensure that women's household management activities are quantified and recognized, as well as included in definitions of economic activity and national accounting;
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5. Under the three themes a number of additional gaps were identified as opportunities for networking. The meeting agreed that collaboration was needed to:

Economic Empowerment

• Engender the macro-economic policies of governments and financial institutions;
• Increase women's access to credit through policy dialogue and intervention, investment in the private sector, creation and strengthening of women's credit institutions, credit cooperatives and savings and loan schemes, etc.;
• Take advantage of conducive legal environments and advocate for their replication;
• Increase and systematize trade and strengthen relationships among women entrepreneurs at all levels;
• Highlight the economic and entrepreneurial contributions of women in all sectors, including women politicians, business women, farmers and activists.
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Women in Decision Making

• Build capacity of women and their organizations and associations through leadership and basic skills training, civic education training, organizational capacity building and investment in confidence building programs;
• Increase efforts on building economic and legal literacy for women;
• Advocate for affirmative action programs;
• Facilitate gender training for women and men in `power points', including ministers, civil servants, judges, decision makers in lending institutions, etc.
• Make concrete use of the space provided by democratization processes for advocacy on gender equality;
• Make more effective use of the expertise and experience of women already in decision-making positions in various spheres.

Women's Human Rights

• Prepare alternative reports when governments are presenting reports to international human rights oversight committees and other important policy fora;
• Strengthen existing human rights networks and establish new ones as appropriate, increasing their focus on women's rights;
• Engender reconstruction, recovery and development plans in conflict areas;
• Develop and introduce human rights education into national curricula;
• Promote women's rights through inclusion in activities for 50^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 5^th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration on Human Rights;
• Prepare national and sub-regional studies for the Commission on the Status of Women's upcoming review of the global situation of women's human rights.
• Support the drafting and adoption of the Additional Protocol on Women in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.
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Recommendations to ACW

• Advocate, facilitate and act as focal point for networking between NGOs, governments and international agencies;
• Organize small, focused sub-regional and regional consultation on some of the above gaps which were identified as opportunities for networking.
• Support training initiatives on economic and legal literacy, leadership skills, organizational capacity building and networking skills