MDG Radio Series MDG 3: Gender Equality

Official Transcript

MDG Radio Series: Live from the U.N. MDG #3: Gender Equality Host: Felix Dodds, Stakeholder Forum Round Table: 1. Violet Shivutse, GROOTS, Kenya 2. Esupat Ngaluwa, Maasai Women Development Organization, Tanzania 3. Lesha Witmer, Women for Water Partnership, Netherlands

1:03 FD:

Thank you for all coming. We’re going to be doing a roundtable today on the Millennium Development Goal 3, which is to promote gender equality and empower women. The associated target is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015. MDG 3 reflects widespread international acknowledgement that empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equity are matters of human rights and social justice. But, how are we doing on this goal, and the indicators? Well, the verdict is mixed. Employers in non-agricultural wage employment who are women has increased by 4% on an international level since the baseline taken in 1990. However, worldwide, over 60% of unpaid family workers are women, meaning that women continue to lack access to job security and social protection. And finally, the proportion of women in lower houses of parliament has increased on a world average of 4%. And in some areas of the world, this has been even more pronounced, such as Latin America, whose numbers have risen by 8%. So there has been some progress, but is this really enough? And do these dry facts and statistics tell us what we need to know? Because behind these faceless statistics are the stories of half of the world’s population. And here we have today three people who are going to be joining us on this roundtable. I’m going to ask the person on my left to introduce themselves.

2:46 LW:

Hello Felix, my name is Lesha Witmer. I live in the Netherlands. And probably one of the reasons you invited me is that I chair the Commission on Sustainable Development of the Netherlands Women’s 2

Council. And I’m also one of the founders of Women for Water, which is a global partnership that tries to empower and enable women to do their thing in water and sanitation. And that differs from region to region, depending on where they live. 3:16 VS:

Yes, thank you. My name is Violet Shivutse, and I’m representing grassroots women from Kenya. I come from the western part of Kenya, and I’ve been anchoring the issue of grassroots women in land issues. And also enabling grassroots women to show their visibility on what their innovations on what they have been doing to address land issues at their community levels.

3:43 EN:

Thank you. My name is Esupat Ngaluwa; I come from Tanzania. I’m here to present an organisation called Maasai Women Development Organization.

3:53 FD:

I’m going to ask you all, what does the Millennium Development Goal 3 mean to you in your work, and your lives, and whether there are any stories for you to share with us? Maybe Violet, you could start?

4:06 VS:

Millennium Development Goal 3, to me, and in relation to the issues I’m addressing – the women land issues – it means women having accessibility and control over land and resources in their community. To me, it also means that women participate in decisionmaking where policies and laws are made to influence land issues that will be in their favour, too, as equal representatives of the society.

4:47 FD:

You’re a local councillor, aren’t you? Or have been, is that correct? So how does Millennium Development Goal affect you? Were you the first councillor? Go on…

4:59 EN:

No, I’m not the first, but I’m the first in the Massai land. But now we are more than four women in the local authority. So, for me, as I see, other women are very far compared with indigenous women. So in our organisation, we started to make awareness of women, to know their rights about land issues and decision-making.

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5:38 FD:

Okay.

5:38 EN:

Yeah.

5:39 FD:

Just looking at the issue of representation, I was going to turn, or maybe even suggest… We’ve seen a very interesting development in the last few months with Spain giving 50% of the cabinet positions to women. So is this something which you think will have an impact on other parliaments? That other cabinets will follow suit?

6:06 VS:

I think that in the African context, when it comes to giving many women a cabinet position in parliament, or in the government, we are still a bit far. Because still there has not been awareness on women participation to contest in elected positions. And for you to be a cabinet minister, you have to go through an elected position as a member of parliament, and then you will be nominated as a minister. But very few women are showing interest in elected positions in Africa. And this is not because women don’t want. It’s because the women who try to show interest in elected positions go through a lot of threats. Like in Kenya, the last elections were so tough for even a woman to participate. There were like very forceful, very…

7:16 FD:

Aggressive?

7:17 VS:

Aggressive, people using even whip-bones to put away their opponents. And women – I remember the case of two women who were contesting who were beaten up, who weren’t to be admitted to hospitals. So when women see these things, they stay away from participating in elected positions.

7:41 FD:

Is that true in Tanzania?

7:43 EN:

In Tanzania, even women, they get a position as ministers. But the problem is the confidence of women themselves. You must have your confidence, because the competition is very high. So if you know you don’t have confidence, the possibility of winning is too low. So you have to struggle as women have struggled, and to be organised with others. To have the support of other women. Because

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as I see, the population of women in Africa is higher than men’s. So if they organise themselves, the possibility of winning is high also. 8:36 FD:

And what’s the position in the Netherlands at the moment?

8:41 LW:

We’re always on waves. So the last elections, we have less women in parliament now than we had in the previous period. That one was very successful, because suddenly we had 45% of women in parliament. And that was also – this is very true what you were saying. It had to do with the fact that all the women’s organisations in the Netherlands joined forces and actually made it into a joint campaign. And that gave a lot of the women the confidence to overcome what their own communities were saying about them: ‘Oh you can’t do this’, or ‘You’re not good enough’. Or, ‘This is not within our tradition’, because we have the same problem. And this didn’t happen in the next round of elections.

9:30 FD:

I wonder what you feel about MDG 3 itself? Because considering we’d had Beijing, which actually was a much more all-encompassing conference. It dealt with so many other things, such as violence to women, and much more issues relating to the role of women in the environment, and peace and post-conflict. Do you think MDG 3 should be improved for the future?

10:01 LW: Well, the problem I have with MDG 3 is let’s say twofold. One is that it, in the day to day things that people are doing in the framework of MDG 3, it usually comes down to basic education. Now of course that is very necessary, but in a lot of cases, it is not the basic education that makes it difficult for women to function. I mean, even if you cannot read or write, you can still be a very good businesswoman. But if you don’t get a chance, simply because people say you can’t read, or keep a book, then you are discriminating again. A lot of education is focused on the girls, which of course is our future. It has to happen. But only building a school, which is mainly the stuff that people are doing. And then forgetting about sanitation, which means that the girls will not go 5

to school. And then forgetting to raise the salaries of the teachers, or give them decent living conditions means you have a school, but no teachers. So the whole translation of what MDG 3 could mean in that respect is very narrow. And secondly, a lot of education that women would be able to translate immediately – grown-up women – into work, and having better living conditions is not done. So things like vocational training for women is very, very rare, and usually forgotten. 11:31 VS: I know. And the female school-going, their issues or problems that are different than the male school-going. And you can tell from Kenya’s perspective. Many girls start their school in lower primary somewhere, and the enrolment is very high. But as the girls go along reaching upper primary – that is the age of 12 years to 14, or junior secondary – the girls keep dropping out of the school. This is because even in the school curriculum, the education has been focusing on education to exam. Not education on sanitation, not education on the health of a girl and the reproductive health of a girl. And we know that as a girl grows, this is where the challenge becomes. They are reaching their stages of teenage, where they have many things happening on their bodies. And they come from rural communities, where their mothers were not taught the same. Some mothers feel it is a shame, teaching your girl about reproductive health. So the girls keep suffering silently, and dropping out of school. Most of the girls, too, have been victims of early pregnancies in the upper primary and junior secondary schools. And when we talk of education, still, and like my friend from the Netherlands is saying – we keep talking about universal primary. I think, to me, education is not the primary education. For me, education means being fully educated. If you have to say, “I am educated”, you have to compete with other people from all nations to say you are educated. Now our governments all over Africa are focusing on primary education. You will hear all presidents saying, “primary education is free, primary education is free”. In fact, this has increased the number of children in 6

primary school. A big class with one teacher, the teacher is unable even to track the progress of children in school, is not even able to know who is able to excel, who can do what. For the upper parents who have money, they are taking their children to academies, to good schools. Private schools. But for parents in the rural community, their children keep going to these full classes, they have nowhere to sit, they cannot get even these free text books. And this means that they have no chance to go to the higher secondary or higher learning institutions. And when we look back at the female girl… The female girl, very few go to higher learning institutions. So the education in relation to gender, I think there’s still a lot to be done. 14:31 LW: I also think that a lot of it is due to the fact that agencies in the governments who say, ‘Okay, we will go and do MDG 3’, then of course saying that basic education is easy. I mean, you take out some budget, you say there is a school building, I have a teacher, so I have done everything that I could. But of course, it doesn’t change the mindset in which these girls are going to school. Parents not understanding, because they didn’t have education. A lot of times, they have to leave their villages, and go to other regions to even get schooling. Which sometimes is impossible, because they’re needed at home. Or they will be brought back home after two or three years. Now you can read, and you have to come back home again. So there is no follow-up, it is not in a policy, so in the end you lose the goal. Because you’re not really empowering these girls and these women with education, but you’re going through the moves. 15:38 FD: I mean, is that something that’s happening in Tanzania? 15:44 TN: There is this same. Education is low for most communities. Especially for Massai, it is another barrier which doesn’t enable them to be in decision-making, because of the lack of education. Because if you wanted to be maybe a councillor or an MP, you have to be fully educated. If you are not, it is impossible for you,

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because you are going to meet other people who are educated. You are just to sit there and watch them. But you cannot fully participate. 16:34 FD: I mean, I’m intrigued, in a sense, having been involved with the Beijing conference, at least as far as the UK is concerned. I didn’t attend, but the document seemed to have so much more depth in the context of what it was trying to do. Looking at the MDGs as they are, I mean, what role do you think gender has in the other MDGs? 17:02 VS: I would say gender is a cross-cutting aspect in all the MDGs. Because looking just at goal number one, goal number one, which highlights the eradication of poverty and hunger. And in this goal you realise that as much as we talk about the eradication of poverty and hunger, women are among the poorest constituency that has continued to live in poverty and hunger. Reasons being, women do not own, or access and control land. As much as many women are the ones who are producing day to day our food in the society in the whole world. Day to day they are in the land, especially in the African countries. But then, you realise that women do not own land. This means, like a woman will start improving on some land, and then she will be shifted after some time, because they rely on – the land they use is for the male relatives or the husbands. In the case of the husband’s death, you find a woman losing this land because of inheritance. In Africa, most of the land is passed. It’s like family land, from my father, to my brother, to my brother’s sons. And I am nowhere among the people who are getting land. So women continue to suffer without land, without being sure for food security that they’re able to own land and control land. And land also, in Kenya, someone who has a big portion of land, even small, with an entitlement is a rich person. Because they can access a loan from a bank with a document from this land. Land will be the guarantee to get money to come and improve this land. Now many women cannot get these loans, because they do not have land in their own names. And there is still a very poor attitude. 8

Helplessness in the women. Because the women even fear buying land in their own names, even for those who are working. They’d rather give money to their husband, to buy land in their husband’s name. Because they fear being associated with this woman who’s got twenty acres of land, a hundred acres of land. It’s like very strange – “what’s happening to this woman?” “She wants to own the community.” It becomes very strange in the African society. So, when we talk about poverty and hunger, goal number one, it’s like a dream. 19:39 FD: I mean, what do you think about the relationship between environment and gender? 19:45 LW: Well, one of the biggest discussions I have had in the last six years with the Commission on the Status of Women is that they’re not looking at environment at all. It’s one of the main chapters of the Beijing Platform. It’s the K Chapter. There are very clear and distinct goals in there. It’s very much a women’s issue, because women are affected in a different way, by deteriorating environment. But also, if you look at the roles that women play in their communities, especially if you look at the rural areas where they are the natural resource managers, from way, way back, and know exactly what they’re doing. That’s not recognized. If you look at the importance of safe drinking water, good sanitation, it has taken years before people understood that there is a difference between a toilet, as such, and having good facilities for women. And that’s not because they wanted to be different, but because their bodies are different. And all these issues have hardly been addressed outside of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which is much more sensitised to the fact that women have different needs, and different roles to play, especially, than most of the other UN commissions. Which is also very strange. Including the one that should be promoting this. They just don’t do it. 21:18 FD: I mean, two of you have come for your first meeting to the Commission on Sustainable Development. And in a sense, one of the criticisms that could be levelled perhaps at those of us that have

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been here for a long while, is perhaps we haven’t taken or helped to take those global agreements and help convert them into useful toolkits – to enable people in their communities to actually use those global decisions. I mean, is your intention to take what comes out of this year’s CSD, and next year’s, and bring it down to a local level? 21:57 VS: Yes. Like, I am representing the community. And because I come from the community – the rural community centre. And this gives me an opportunity to disseminate this information back to the community – even in the local churches where I am, or in the committees. Like community development committees at the community level. But my worry is, how many people from this CSD are going to do that? Because you find that people attending these meetings are people from the high levels. They are ministers – perhaps the person who comes from the community could be a minister who is very busy. Even time is chasing him when he is here. There is a lot that he’s got to do. But he takes this as a workshop – it is not really something that is going to change when he goes back. And this is a big challenge. On enabling people, like people from the major groups, people from the non-governmental organizations who are close to communities, to get opportunities to attend such meetings for feedback back in their communities. And even it helps to measure. Because when I leave this place, or even when I’m talking – the way I’m talking now – I’m able to reflect back and go, “what is really going on in my community?” “Is it the same as what is being discussed here?” “What are the gaps?” But these people are not relating to anything. They are relating on the papers and the theories that they keep making every time to time. 23:35 FD: I mean, as a counsellor in a local community, is there things that you’ve heard while you’ve been here that you would be able to take back and use, so far?

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23:45 EN: Yes. I’ll have to organise my community and tell what has happened in New York. But as my colleague says, it is true. Because even in our communities, MPs, and the counsellors, after electing them, most of them, they forget who elected them to be here. They don’t do anything for the community. They just attend meetings, meetings, meetings, without feedback. So, it is very important for the grassroots from the community to participate fully in these meetings. Because they are the ones who face these problems. For Massai land, women take care of the families. They are the ones who are looking for fetching water, looking for firewood, and cooking. They’ve done all activities – they have many activities than men’s. So, at what time does that lady remember he wanted to share the decision-making? And she is really tired with other activities. And many, many, many….and she works, and she overworks. So she doesn’t even remember how I have to go to the meeting today. So she doesn’t hear anything. She doesn’t know what is going on. 25:25 FD: That’s a big challenge. I mean, in the sense of how we convert global agreements into – in a sense – toolkits, or language that enables people to challenge their implementation. I mean, this is a review year. So, in a sense, what we’re looking at here are constraints or obstacles to what hasn’t worked, and some successes. And if you’ve been to see anything that’s caught your eye on what could be used for future activities at the local level… 25:56 LW: Well, there were a couple. There’s a group here called the GRATIS Foundation. And, to me, for two reasons, they’re very interesting. One, it is a mainly women’s organisation, which is heavily involved in small technology in agriculture. So what they do is actually adapting machinery and technology for the local rural communities. And then give small loans to the local farmers, mainly women and education, to actually use that equipment. Another one is an interesting experience with using modern technology in terms of communication. There are some networks, mainly in Africa and in South America, who have made combinations of town meetings, using radio, then translating it into an email or a phone call. And 11

translated back to local radio again. And by doing that, giving education to people in rural areas who wouldn’t have access to any other means. And it’s not only education. They also give them access to markets. Because they will tell them that the market in that place has a good price for your products. Or that you have to have this type of quality. Which means that they produce better, and also know where to go and sell it. Well, those are excellent examples, and if networks like that – mainly women’s networks – would get more continuous support. Not just one project, but continuous support. And also the NGOs, or the local organisations that are doing the work would get some institutional support. Also to be able to do their work, that would make a big difference. And they’re here – I mean, they’re visible. 27:52 FD: So what I find interesting about that is that – and it goes to the core of what the role of this commission is – it’s to do with capacity building. With the transfer of technology, or appropriate technology, and with allowing, or reviewing, the finances available to deliver the issues that we’re discussing. So maybe that’s one of the challenges. Looking forward to 2015, it’s clear that many of the Millennium Development Goals aren’t going to be met. I’m expecting that governments will set new goals in 2015. If there was to be a new goal on gender, and you had the chance to write it, what would be included in that, from your perspective? 28:42 VS: I think, generally, for the cause before I go to the gender, it would be localising the Millennium Development Goals. Because I’ve seen it working. What I can tell – like what madam said about networks, a network called Huairou Commission that is here in New York. And Huairou Commission is like a movement of many grassroots organisations at the community level. And what happens is when there is policy or even the Millennium Development Goals discussions going on at the global meetings, Huairou Commission uses the mechanism of enabling this information to reach the nationals and leaders who are grassroots, of course, and then it goes back to the community. And Huairou Commission has worked a bit 12

differently, because what they do is – they have money, small money. They fundraise small money. And this money is not like the donor money that we receive with a lot of attachment – you must use it this way. No, it is like, if you have to disseminate this information to the community, and you have to sit with a few women – like thirty, forty from your community. Whom you will train – that is what we call capacity building – in a simple way of training. And then these women will go disseminating this information to the community. They have also used peer-to-peer learning, whereby I can leave Kenya, and go to Ghana to learn what the grassroots women in Ghana are doing – and replicate it in Kenya. So for me, if I would be given an opportunity to give objectives of goal number three for the next five years, and keeping in mind that 2015 is just about to reach, I would actually promote capacity building. But in a way that capacity building that is discussed at this global meeting. Not the similar way that what they are thinking – like these high-level training. I would focus on localising. Going down to the community. And enabling people to understand Millennium Development Goals. 30:57 LW: But what I would try and do is rephrase the goal. In a sense that I would stress that it had to be clear, by 2020, that women are the actors in the development in their community. And that would probably be difficult to measure – or you would have to look at counsellor’s positions, or people elected, or something like that. Because that does two things: one, it makes the women equal actors, just by phrasing it differently – and not a target group. “We will take care of you, buddy.” Which is one of the things that drives the women crazy. I mean, it’s always very paternalistic. “We will take care of you.” And the first step in equality is that you recognize that other person at an equal footing. And say, “You have knowledge that might be different from mine. But it’s just as important. And let’s combine it.” So, if you had to measure it, probably it would be more interesting to see how many women would be in decision-making or leadership positions. And bring up that 13

number, because implicitly, that means that they’ve been educated, that they can get out of their house. So, implicitly, you take a lot of other things on the bandwagon. 32:25 EN: I think that you need time. It is not easy, like we say here, and you write in the books. Because most of women who are in politics, most of them, they give up. Because of many interactions with men, even in communities. Sometimes, when a woman is in the position, and he is busy with the meetings, when he participates…others, they start to talk about her. I think these ladies get a divorce with her husband. Every day, she’s travelled, she’s travelled. And this lady says that next time, “I can’t. I don’t need …there is no need.” Others, they give up, about this position. Because they have no support of their men. They have no support of the community… 33:26 FD: So we need to change the men. 33:30 EN: Yeah. We need to train them. If we train the women without men, we are doing nothing. Because they are still obstacles, to make sure we are not developed, we do not move, we are under them. So… 33:46 FD: So maybe MDG 3 should be also encompassing the need to retrain men. 33:52 All: Yes, of course. 33:55 EN: We have to be together, like this. Because we need to be together in development, in decision-making. Even in the training, it is better when we are together. And men see themselves – we don’t have any support with them. So they have to support us, as I support him. Yeah. 34:19 FD: Thank you very much. {End}

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