| |
Contributions from
the Column
Books and Media
A brief history of Afghanistan
Gender aspects: not very integrated
Rwanda: a record of genocide
Documents: from peacekeeping to development policy
New chatroom for North-South topics
12/2004 |
|
Gender aspects: not very integrated
Birte Rodenberg:
Gender und Armutsbekämpfung. Neuere konzeptionelle Ansätze in der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (Gender and Poverty Reduction. New Conceptual Approaches in International Development Cooperation).
Bonn, German Development Institute 2003, 78 pp., ¤ 9.63, ISBN 3-88985-257-2
Ulrike Bartels:
Frauenförderung in der deutschen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit. Eine Policy Studie mit Fallbeispiel (Promotion of Women in German Development Cooperation. A Review of Policy with Case Study).
Marburg, Tectum Verlag 2002,
114 pp., ¤ 25.90, ISBN 3-8288-8426-1
Despite all the international agreements on gender equality as well as the measured progress made towards it, inequalities between the sexes still persist. In their efforts to eliminate gender disparities, international development cooperation (DC) institutions have pursued, since the 1990s, a policy of “gender mainstreaming”. Now, a decade on, the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming and the integration of gender as a cross-sectoral task in all areas of DC are being examined. The books by Birte Rodenberg and Ulrike Bartels are important contributions to this evaluation.
Birte Rodenberg presents a sound study analysing the current status of gender mainstreaming in the poverty reduction concepts of selected institutions (including the EU, Germany’s development ministry BMZ and the World Bank). She examines, among other things, the poverty reduction strategies drafted for Ghana and Kenya. Policy theorist Ulrike Bartels engages in more of a historical study, tracing the development of gender-related approaches in German development policy and presenting, as a concrete example, a GTZ consultancy project in Colombia on the gender-specific implementation of development projects (Proequidad).
Both books highlight weaknesses in the implementation of the gender approach – from the lack of conceptual clarity about the differences between the structurally based “gender approach” and the old target-group-based “women in development approach” to the poor institutional integration of the gender approach. Where adequate gender concepts are present, they are confined to certain fields of policy, such as education and health. In trade, as well as in peace and security policy, gender profiles and concepts are rare. Moreover, despite appropriate instruments being available, gender aspects frequently fade out of sight when actual strategies (e.g. poverty reduction strategies) are developed and the project implementation phase is reached.
Rodenberg and Bartels see little sign of progress being made on integrating the gender approach as a cross-sectoral task in DC. As for PRS processes, Rodenberg’s finding that gender equality effectively played no role in the poverty reduction strategies of either Kenya or Ghana is instructive. It still seems, therefore, that significant “engendering” is possible only in purely women- or gender-specific projects, as the Proequidad example shows. To strengthen the gender approach, Rodenberg recommends embedding gender more deeply in overarching programmatic and strategic DC concepts, improving its institutional integration and incorporating macroeconomic issues of gender equality into DC concepts and tools.
Sonja Wölte
|
