COMMISSION ON STATUS OF WOMEN DISCUSSES, IN PANEL FORMAT, WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Press Release
WOM/959
COMMISSION ON STATUS OF WOMEN DISCUSSES, IN PANEL FORMAT, WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
19970311 Women should be empowered to incorporate sound environmental practices into their activities, the Commission on the Status of Women was told this morning in a panel discussion on the theme "women and the environment".The Minister for Environment, Science and Technology of Ghana emphasized that the presence of a critical mass of women in leadership positions would be conducive to such empowerment. She also stressed the need to shift away from the concept of "women's affairs departments" to introducing gender-sensitive programmes in every department.
Today's panel was part of a series of discussions that the Commission will hold on four critical areas of concern included in Platform for Action of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing. Those areas include: education and training of women; women and the economy; women in power and decision-making; and women and the environment.
Speaking in the panel discussion, the Under-Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, Nitin Desai, said the issue was not women and the environment but the need for a gender perspective in matters related to the environment. He emphasized that it was important to get away from the simplistic view of women as victims or saviours of the environment. He agreed that women's issues should not be confined to women's departments.
Another panellist, Rachel Kyte of the World Conservation Union of Brussels, warned that merely increasing the number of women in decision-making would not lead to gender mainstreaming and better policies for sustainable development. While there was evidence of positive impact of women at decision-making levels, their positive impact on other women's participation in decision-making at the community level was unclear, she said.
Statements were also made by Sirpa Pietikainen, Economist and former Minister of Environment of Finland, and Khawar Mumtaz, Coordinator, Shirkat Gah-Women's Resource Centre of Pakistan.
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In a question and answer session following the presentation by panellists, participants noted that the economic recovery and structural adjustment programmes of the last decade had necessitated the removal of subsidies on some products like liquified petroleum gas with definite linkages to environmental degradation. They also expressed concern that everyday life was politically underrepresented and stressed that a re-evaluation of its importance could improve the quality of life for all, helping to solve environmental problems and empowering women.
The Commission will meet again at 3 p.m. today to continue its debate on women and the environment.
Commission Work Programme
The Commission on the Status of Women met this morning to continue its consideration of follow-up to the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women, focusing on the implementation of strategic objectives and action in the critical areas of concern relating to women and the environment.
Panel Discussion on Women and Environment
CHRISTINA AMOAKO-NUAMA, Minister for Environment, Science and Technology of Ghana, said the empowerment of women as a tool for achieving gender equity, increased access to resources, expanded choices and greater participation in decision-making had all been strongly recommended in the action programmes of both the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development held in 1994 and the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995.
Noting that there was low representation of women in policy-making, she said women had not been empowered to incorporate sound environmental practices into their activities. To that extent it was important to have a critical mass of women in leadership positions. Besides the presence of women in decision-making positions, it was also crucial to have gender sensitive males represented in decision-making positions. In the general sense, a conscious efforts had to be made to improve networking among women in policy-making positions. That would prove more helpful than individual women trying to bring about changes.
Moreover, there was a need to shift away from the concept of women's affairs departments, she said. Gender-sensitive programmes should be introduced in every department. Also, the interlinkages between trade and environment must be explored. Within the Ghanaian economy, mining had been a growing sector. However, there had been no disaggregation of data on women in that sector. It was notable that economic recovery and structural adjustment programmes of the last decade had necessitated the removal of subsidies on some products like liquified petroleum gas with definite linkages to environmental degradation through deforestation in charcoal production and fuel wood harvest. That had clearly not been in the interest of sustainable development or poverty eradication for the majority of women.
However, she emphasized that gradually gender issues were being mainstreamed in Ghana, specially at the local and regional levels. Women had been affirmatively targeted and efforts were being made to improve their income generation capacity so that any negative impact that they might have on environment could be mitigated. It had also been recognized that data collection on gender sensitive issues needed to be disaggregated and the linkages among the few women in policy-making areas had to be strengthened.
SIRPA PIETIKAINEN, Economist and former Minister for the Environment of
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Finland, said crucial questions for the future were interdependent and should be dealt with simultaneously and in a holistic manner. According to the "umbrella concept" of sustainable development, human development could not be achieved without solving environmental problems and environmental problems could not be solved without human rights, gender equality, social equality, social development, fair distribution of resources and empowerment of people.
She said there should be a two-fold strategy for sustainable development: a holistic approach identifying the interaction of different factors, and specific task-oriented work. Issues related to women and nature were still considered as of secondary importance in the present male-dominated mainstream. Men and women need to work together towards sustainable development. Women's reproductive role emphasized the longer perspective of interests. The concept of well-being was broader and less material, less quantitative. Nature could not be seen solely as a material resource. The importance of emotions and social structures needed to be recognized as well. She noted a feminine tendency to seek manageable, small-scale solutions to problems.
In order to integrate concerns for the environment and the needs of women, the significance and meaning of everyday life and local solutions combined with a horizontal way of looking at things should be adopted, she said. Centralization and concentration caused problems for women and the environment.
Everyday life was politically underrepresented and the re-evaluation of its importance could improve the quality of life for all, helping to solve environmental problems and empower women, she said. The vast majority of people who took care of children, used or produced social services, used public transportation, worked at home and carried the responsibility of home and its daily needs were women. Yet those people had no role when plans for the future were made.
Physical planning of land use was one of the most powerful tools that affected peoples' living conditions, as well as larger environmental questions, she said. A healthy, well functioning local economy was the basis for a sustainable environment and it could be achieved by empowering the local population, especially women.
Women should be actively involved in environmental decision-making at all levels, she said. A new gender concept of sustainable development must be recognized. Gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes needed to be integrated for sustainable development to be achieved. Mechanisms for assessing the impact of development and environmental policies on women should be strengthened or established at both the national and international levels. Also, indicators were needed on the allocation of public funds at all levels.
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NITIN DESAI, Under-Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, said an expert group meeting on women, population and sustainable development had been organized jointly by the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Division for Sustainable Development, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) in the Dominican Republic from 18 to 22 November 1996.
The meeting had identified three areas on which guidance from the Commission was required for future work, he said. The first related to a "better understanding" of women vis-à-vis environment. It had been stressed that it was important to get away from the simplistic view of women as victims or saviours of the environment. In fact, women's relationship with the environment should be viewed more broadly. The issue, therefore, was not women and environment, it was the need for a gender perspective in environment.
It had been emphasized that women's issues should not be isolated to women's departments, he said. Gender analysis had to be brought into the mainstream. That was linked to the strong emphasis that the Beijing Conference had put on mainstreaming. Procedures and methods had to be developed for that. Another area which required attention was the involvement of women in decision-making. At the international level, the United Nations had tried to ensure women's involvement in decision-making. In his Department women made up 46 per cent of the staff. Women were also well represented at the levels at which proposals were presented. At the national and local levels, specific steps were required to involve women in sustainable development strategies, above and beyond their presence in political processes. Women's access to financial resources and property rights was important. Therefore, a gender perspective was required in that area as well.
KHAWAR MUMTAZ, Coordinator, Shirkat Gah - Women's Resource Centre of Pakistan, said the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was a milestone in the history of the United Nations, opening the Organization to a new kind of scrutiny and influence. Following UNCED, successive United Nations conferences had witnessed increasing levels of participation from civil society organizations. Those conferences together with the involvement of Pakistan's civil society, especially women, had contributed to increased activity among societal groups to organize themselves and link with each other on issues of common concern. The resulting interaction with the Government had wielded results.
In Pakistan, however, there were some policy and development mechanisms already in place to pursue the sustainable development agenda, but women were not an integral part of them, she said. Part of that was due to the fact that the environmental movement was still not strong in the country. There was a
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need to strengthen it and for the women's movement to give the environment as high a priority as it gave to human rights. As previous speakers had noted, there was a need for more women to be active at the decision-making level. Leadership with a gender perspective was essential. Political parties should put the environment on their agenda in order to achieve effective participation of women in the broader political process. There was a need to establish an implementation mechanism that included representatives from governments, civil society and international agencies. A successful implementation of the Beijing strategies required the combined efforts of those groups.
RACHEL KYTE, of the World Conservation Union, Brussels, said five years after UNCED the world of international decision-making was a very different place. The focus had shifted to independence in an interdependent world. While the forces that had shaped the conferences at Rio, Cairo and Beijing had to be understood, it had to be realized that the United Nations conferences did not represent the idealistic best that one hoped for in response to public and private dilemmas. Rather, they provided a timely snapshot of where States could agree and where the intellectual consensus would hold.
Through the passage of conferences in the 1990s, the role of women's organizations had been successively dismissed as that of an interest group that had conspired with other groups, she said. Moreover, they had been portrayed as naive and subject to manipulation while at the same time cunning and manipulative. However, women's groups were essential actors in translating issues to the general public. They had stressed that an integrated perspective on gender was crucial and to that end a more coherent policy strategy was required.
The Beijing Platform for Action was a gender and human rights document, she said. As called for in that document there was a greater than ever need for gender training across all the agencies working in development planning. The recent expert group meeting on women, population and sustainable development had cautioned against believing that merely increasing the number of women in decision-making would lead to gender mainstreaming and better policies for sustainable development. While there was evidence of positive impact of women at decision-making levels, their positive impact on other women's participation in decision-making at the community level was not clear.
She also said it was important to outline whose budget would pay for training and gender mainstreaming. Moreover, the lack of gender disaggregated data could not be used as an excuse for not moving ahead. She emphasized that the post-Beijing rejuvenated Commission should consider at this point the message that it wanted to convey to the Commission on Sustainable Development.
Question and Answer Session
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In the question and answer session that followed the statements made by panellists, representatives stressed the importance of technology transfer and of training women to gauge their impact on the environment. Concern was expressed by some participants at the export of banned pesticides from developed countries to developing ones. The importance of women's participation in all areas of decision-making was stressed. It was emphasized that women could play a pioneering role in the exploration and use of solar energy.
Questions were asked about the manner of introduction of a gender perspective. How could gender perspective be mainstreamed? It was emphasized that equity in research concerning men and women was important as was women's access to information at all levels. Questions were raised about how governments could invest in sustainable development. Participants also wondered about what actually constituted a safe environment.
Responding to questions raised, Ms. PEITIKAINEN stressed that women should be involved in decision-making relating to financial resources as well as technology. There had to be "genderized sustainability". Resource allocation had to be sustainable vis-à-vis the environment and gender. She underlined the importance of linking human rights and the environment. A combination of "human rights" and "nature rights" would yield sustainable development.
Once the decision-making structures were changed, that would change the gender sensitivities, she said, adding that pressure should be put on politicians to take concrete action to that end. She also stressed that the concept of functionality was important. Women should not have to walk long distances for services. She emphasized that it was important to handle the issue of land-mines, adding that sustainability was not expensive when it was done gender-wise.
Ms. AMOAKO said talk about the environment included built environments such as homes and workplaces. While policies for sustainable development existed in many local communities, those were not being tapped. For instance, the problem of water in the coming century would require the protection of water resources. Equal sharing and equal empowerment was essential. She also emphasized that when the United Nations called for action in any sphere, it should also specify how such action should be carried out.
Ms. KYTE emphasized that placing women in positions of power was not equivalent to having a gender perspective on sustainable development. In fact, very often placing a woman in a decision-making position meant letting others off the hook. She added that governments should assess the environmental and gender impact of investment decisions. At the moment gender was not integrated into policies. Power was not a zero sum game. Every women promoted to a decision-making level did not mean the loss of a man. Real development and progress was about team work.
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Mr. DESAI said there was a general problem in bringing social issues in the mainstream of development policy and the Commission should suggest ways of bringing about such mainstreaming.
On the question of mainstreaming a gender perspective, Ms. MUMTAZ said initiatives were required at multiple levels. A critical mass of women was needed at the decision-making level. In addition, resources had to be allocated in a manner that women were not marginalized. The need was to have a gender perspective in each programme so that there was no "special" programme for women.
Other Statements
ANITA MAIR, from the Women's Environment and Development Organization, said given all the talk of gender mainstreaming there was a distressing lack of coordination among governments on that count. There was a striking gender imbalance in government delegations and in bureaus of various commissions. The challenge before the Commission was to influence those processes. Gender mainstreaming should not merely be a buzz word. She stressed the need for universal access to water resources by the year 2000. That was at the heart of sustainable development. Moreover, the impact of international and regional agreements on women should be examined.
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