Gender Mainstreaming in Europe (Date: 06/09/2002)

Gender Mainstreaming in Europe – A Challenge for Political Education
A European Congress on Gender Mainstreaming – A Challenge for Political Education was organized by the Centre for Political Education and the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies of the University of Leipzig, Germany, between the 6 and 8 September 2002

The Director of the Department of Women in Society within the Ministry of Social Policy, Renee Laiviera and NCW president, Grace Attard representing women’s NGOs were invited to participate in this Congress. Ms Laiviera was invited to read a paper on Women and the Economy during one of the workshops. Her contribution offered a critical analysis of the need for a serious re-thinking of the role of women in the economy.

The Congress challenged the concept of gender mainstreaming, the importance of defining this potentially innovative tool and the need to learn more about how to implement it through more specific gender research. Changes in relations between genders have called for the need for political education of gender through different educational processes at national level.

The Congress was addressed by specialists from the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Iceland and USA. The workshops dealt with gender mainstreaming in a number of areas including: Justice and Crime; Foreign and Security Policies; Media and Information Society; Ecology, the Economy, Multicultural Societies; Science and Research; Body and Identity; Political/Civic Education and Social Policy.

Implementing Gender Mainstreaming at National Level
This requires a double strategy – reviewing the role patterns of men, men’s specific aspects and questioning male/female roles and behaviour today. It is not enough to rely on statistics regarding the situation of women in different aspects of society. We should not be talking of gender neutral laws and measures because this does not reflect reality. We need concrete criteria to disclose hidden disadvantages in laws that are seemingly neutral.

Defining Gender Mainstreaming
What is there to learn about gender mainstreaming? It is a potentially innovative tool aiming at the re-organisation, improvement and development of policy processes for the incorporation of gender mainstreaming strategies of gender equality, by addressing systems and structures to counter bias in social institutions. It should be seen in action. Gender mainstreaming has the ability ‘to be stretched’ and therefore will complement other strategies thus ensuring sustainability. However a Gender Impact Assessment is necessary for gender mainstreaming to be implemented effectively
.
All this calls for rethinking a new approach without pre-conceived ideas, with clear goals a clear strategy of consultation and participation of all stakeholders and screening of documents . All this requires human and financial resources. Structural funds should be used for this purpose.

Implementation
Implementing gender mainstreaming is a political and legal task. It requires:
· Responsibility
· Backed by scientific research
· Academic education in further learning and
· A bottom up approach
· This can be carried out effectively with the training of employees to disseminate and implement gender mainstreaming
· A check list, criteria for all areas of administrative policies
· Developing aids for everyday work to facilitate the integration of different ministries including Education, Finance, Social Policy, Foreign Policy together with University – an interministerial working group.
· It requires the backing of a Cabinet decision, regular control measures and continuous training for all employees to raise awareness.

Ecology and Women
Ecological issues are embedded in sustainable development. And gender is embedded personality development. Therefore it is important to study the different stages of an individual to understand the relationship between women and the environment and men and the environment. Some of the challenges to women are access to decision making in:
· Technology resources
· Areas of natural resources, consumption and conservation issues
· Mobility and town planning
· Feminisation of environmental responsibilities and the reformation of environmental institutions. In environmental organisations women do the work while men take the decisions.
· Global business responsibility
· Biodiversity
· Biogenetics
Women in Johannesburg World Summit 2002 lobbied hard but in the final document the
only clause accepted in favour of women’s rights was regarding ‘health security of women according to human rights’

Ecology and Men
Ecological issues concerning men have been disregarded, often as a result of a traditional perception that men are never associated with any weaknesses, rather than the understanding that all individual human beings need to continually adapt to the environment around them and to demands of new lifestyles.
Some of the issues discussed were:
· Fertility: In industrial countries the fertility rate of men is reduced by 50^ as a result of industrial pollution
· Accidents and catastrophies
· Science, technology, politics with low ethical standards
· At the workplace – traditional male roles and long hours of work are resulting into tiredness and therefore a higher rate of accidents at the workplace
· No impact assessment has been carried out on ecological issues and men.

Are men really priveleged in the patriarchal pattern?
Are men taking refuge in alcohol?
There is an absence of adequate capacities for men to cope with emotional problems and therefore the need to get men interested in how the above is affecting them
If men are more with their children they can understand and listen more to the needs of different people and therefore be more aware of gender issues
The need for more research and action in the field of gender and ecology that includes addressing values and levels of personality development of both men and women




· Women and The Economy
It is a fact that only a very limited number of studies has been carried on women and the economy. (One such Maltese study is ‘A Day in Her Life’ by Francis Camilleri). Women therefore lack knowledge and information on different aspects of the economy.
Economists do not have a gender perspective; decisions are therefore taken on some of the following assumptions that need to be challenged
The male is still the traditional breadwinner, therefore the welfare state, pensions etc are based on male perspectives thus assuming that the family will benefit
Women working long hours in the house or community are not really working
If household work is taken into account it is considered as completely altruistic and not attributed its economic worth.
The rise in female employment rate mans a rise in female employment but in reality it has resulted in a rise in female part time work and therefore is providing more flexible workers and more low paid workers in the labour market
Equal pay policy on the EU agenda is equally so in member states
That the major concern is to focus on job creation and not on good quality jobs for both men and women
There is no link between the decision of work in the home and in the labour market; therefore the partner who will take up household work will lose decision-making power at work and at home.
Women and men are competing for the same jobs
We don’t need affirmative action
That long-term discrimination will eventually fade away

Good policy needs to be evaluated and the impact on the different stages of an individual’s life cycle and on the needs of the family need to betaken into consideration

Conclusions
The need for a gender sensitive budget
Analysis:
· Gender awareness policy appraisal
· Gender desegregated beneficiary assessments
· Gender desegregated public expenditure
· Household budgetry survey to be gender based
· Gender desegregated tax incidence analysis
· Gender desegregated analysis of the impact of the budget on the use of time
· Gender desegregated medium term economic policy framework
· Gender aware budget statement

The Leipzig Congress was a unique experience that sought to address the implementation of gender mainstreaming through a wide range of areas that are crucial for an effective and realistic implementation of this important gender equality tool.


Grace Attard
President NCW