Zoom: ‘No women, no development, no dignity.’ A report on the Step It Up event
Discussion details
Opening ceremony Photo©FAO/Carlo Perla
On Friday 16 December 2016, the event ‘Step It Up Together with Rural Women to End Hunger and Poverty’ took place at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy. The one-day event was organised the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), the European Commission and the FAO, in close collaboration with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UN Women. The event aimed to look for ways in which development organisations can better work together to advance gender equality in the framework of the 2030 Agenda. The event was also linked to the UN Women’s campaign Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality which encourages national governments to make commitments to address the challenges facing women and girls.
In this zoom article, we present an overview of the achievements of this event, based on an interview with Willem Olthof and Lourdes Magana de Larriva of the EU Delegation in Rome. Lourdes Magana de Larriva is an Advisor at the EU Delegation and co-chair of the Network for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, a network of diplomats in Rome, whose aim is to work in close collaboration with the Rome-based agencies to advance the gender agenda in relation to agriculture, food security and nutrition. Willem Olthof is the First Counsellor at the EU Delegation and also the chair of the Open Ended Working Group on the SDGs of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). In particular, the EU Delegation took the lead in the organisation of the ground-breaking roundtable on the gender transformative approach to ending poverty, hunger and undernutrition which took place in the afternoon. In this article, we describe the event as a whole, followed by an analysis of the afternoon’s roundtable. Finally, we review some of the event’s further deliberations. The full programme can viewed here.
| Textbox 1: Gender equality, hunger and the SDGs
According to the FAO, there is substantial evidence that as much as half of the reduction in hunger between 1970 and 1995 can be attributed to improvements in women's societal status: progress in women's access to education alone was linked to a 43% rise in food security, as significant as the gains from increased food availability (26%) and health advances (19%) combined. When women control additional income, they spend more of it than men do on food, health, clothing and education for their children. Enabling and empowering rural women therefore translates into improved overall well-being for children, households and communities, contributing to building human capital for future generations and to long-term social and economic growth. Empowering rural women and girls is therefore not only critical for agricultural development, it is crucial to social and economic progress, and to sustainable development. |
High-level event
The event offered an interactive platform for UN organisations, the international community, civil society and other stakeholders to address the structural causes and consequences of gender inequality in rural areas. It also provided the opportunity to identify the main challenges, gaps, opportunities and collaborative actions for unleashing the potential of rural women and girls to end food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty. The event was convened in the context of the Slovak Presidency of the Council of the EU which had chosen ‘gender equality and empowerment of women as the key priority in the humanitarian and development fields. [Its] goal is to recognize the role of rural women which lies in the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, as presented during the speech of Gabriela Matečná, Slovak Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. It brought together 400 participants, representing a good turnout.
High-level speakers included EU Commissioner Neven Mimica who set the tone in his speech by underscoring that his current proposal for the future EU development policy puts gender at the front and centre of all actions, being the first time that the EU Consensus on Development will be focusing on women and girls not just as beneficiaries, but as key drivers of development. He concluded his speech by stating - what would become the key quote of the day - ‘no women, no development, no dignity.’
According to Willem Olthof, the event represented a good opportunity for the EU to present current priorities on gender, notably in EU development policies and programme, as reflected in the new Gender Action Plan 2016-2020 which came into force in January 2016. Furthermore, it allowed Commissioner Neven Mimica to further profile himself as a gender champion and thereby providing inspiration for the leadership of the Rome-Based Agencies.
The Director General of FAO, José Graziano da Silva, the President of IFAD, Kanayo Nwanze, Denis Brown, Director of Emergencies at WFP and Maria Noel Vaeza, Director of Programmes of UN Women, also delivered key messages on how to progress on the empowerment of rural women. Dr. Ameenah Gurub-Fakim, President of the Republic of Mauritius, Princess Victoria of Sweden, Sika Bella Kaboré, First Lady of Burkina Faso and Tawakkol Karman, Nobel Peace Prize also addressed the audience.
| Textbox 2: The EU Delegation and the Rome-based agencies
Within the so-called three Rome-based UN agencies, namely the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the EU Delegation is charged with representing the EU’s policies on development, agriculture, food security, rural development, gender, health, food safety, environment, maritime policies and humanitarian assistance. The EU Delegation works in collaboration with EU Member States in its interaction with the Rome-based agencies. The agencies and the EU have a number of common objectives such as achieving Zero Hunger, eradication of malnutrition, addressing the causes and consequences of climate change, tackling vulnerability and exclusion, supporting access to the results of research in the field of agriculture and nutrition, providing humanitarian assistance, as well as confronting the root causes of migrations. The EU together with it 28 Member States is the largest global donor in terms of development aid and humanitarian assistance. |
Roundtable on the gender transformative approach
The roundtable on the ‘Gender transformative approach to ending poverty, hunger and undernutrition’ was considered to be ground-breaking because it focused on real transformation of women's and girls' lives by tackling the underlying causes resulting in gender inequality rather than addressing economic empowerment and the consequences of gender inequality alone. It explored how a gender transformative approach can be integrated into sustainable agriculture, rural development, and food and nutrition security interventions, focusing on promoting an enabling environment for transforming gender relations and for the fulfilment of women’s and girls’ rights.
Central elements of the transformative approach comprise altering the way that women and girls are perceived in society, which requires challenging gender norms and power imbalances. It requires removing all forms of discrimination against women and the barriers to women's empowerment in order to change the legal and institutional frameworks so as to recognise women’s social, economic and political rights, and ensure their full realisation.
One of the main messages out of this roundtable was that gender equality will not be achieved unless women are put at the centre of all development activities as key agents of change. To this end, giving women their own voice and building women's power through investing in women's organisations and women's social movements is critical. Women should not be subjects of policies but key agents of these policies.
Strong emphasis was placed on how to measure transformation and impact on women's and girls' lives. In this connection, proper mechanisms for monitoring and assessing transformation and impact of projects and programmes is required; this represents a fundamental need before scaling-up or replication can take place. Qualitative indicators are required as numbers alone do not provide the whole picture. The issue of data was raised as one of the major challenges which needs to be addressed before it is possible to put in place the right policies conducive to gender equality. Proper context assessment is needed to support such policies while the huge gap in gender data which requires to be filled.
Participants comprised:
Estrella Penunia, Secretary General of the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA)
Fatimah Kelleher, an expert on women’s rights from Wise Development
Paola Cirillo, Vice-President of the Italian Association for Women in Development
Fatima Shabodien, Country Director of ActionAid, South Africa
Maria Hartl, Senior Technical Specialist Gender and Social Equity, IFAD
According to Lourdes Magana de Larriva: ‘a conservative gender approach that focuses on women’s economic empowerment alone, without taking transformation and a rights-based approach into consideration, is not conducive to true and sustainable gender equality. In this roundtable, we emphasized the transformative approach, focusing on structural and cultural barriers to women’s empowerment. It is crucial to start looking at gender from this perspective in relation to food security and nutrition and agriculture policies, and we really think that this approach hit a nerve.’ One of the reasons for this was that the participants of the roundtable were able to explain the issues from the perspectives of women’s rights, based on their experiences in Asia and South Africa. A further strength of this approach is that it is embedded in the whole policy making process and has a multi-sectoral perspective, rather than focusing on specific cases and projects. A further article Back women’s movements for a real chance at equality on this roundtable by Henrietta Miers was published on SciDevNet on 30 January 2017.
Further discussions
Against the background of persisting discriminatory institutional frameworks that impede equal access for women to resources and inputs as land property, financing, training, property of the equipment, stocks or retail possibilities, participants considered the need of a cultural and institutional shift conducive to ensure equality to women as a basic human right. They argued that giving equal opportunities to women, and allowing the full achievement of women's rights, would help to build resilience in societies that are often struggling with problems of lack of food and malnutrition. Women, as the main work force in several agricultural production sectors, could contribute even more to global food security and nutrition if dully empowered as actors on all levels of the decision making process from policy design to policy implementation.
In terms of follow up to the event, although there were no specific commitments or outcome document, the EU Delegation is already following-up on it with the Rome Based Agencies. In this connection, regular meetings will be conducted with gender experts of the agencies, in order to build on the messages of the event to contribute to facilitating a new vision on gender equality and women’s empowerment. Two concrete steps forward are already in place:
- The International Women’s Day on 8 March 2017 will build on the outcomes of the High-level Event.
- In the week subsequent to International Women’s Day, FAO, IFAD and WFP will together present outcomes and results from the High-level Event to the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations in New York, most likely through the preparation of a joint side event during the CSW.
Sources
High-level Event to ‘Step It Up Together for Rural Women to End Hunger and Poverty’ - Rome, Friday 16 December 2016
FAO and Asian Development Bank (2013) Gender equality and food security: women’s empowerment as a tool against hunger.
About the Delegation of the European Union to the Holy See, Order of Malta, UN Organisations in Rome, Republic of San Marino, 12 May 2016
UN Women website, About Step it Up, undated
IFAD website, Women in action and actions for women, 21 October 2016
IFAD, Spotlight No. 5, Gender equality and women’s empowerment, 2016
Speech by Gabriela Matečná, Slovak Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, 16 December 2016
Speech by EU Commissioner, Neven Mimica, 16 December 2017
Note for High-Level Event: Step It Up Together with Rural Women to End Hunger and Poverty
Round Table II: Gender Transformative Approach to Ending Poverty, Hunger and Undernutrition
Henrietta Miers Back women’s movements for a real chance at equality 30 January 2017, SciDevNet
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