Development: Gender Mainstreaming - Coursework Example

Development: Gender Mainstreaming Introduction Gender mainstreaming has failed. The goals set at the Beijing conference in 1995 have still not been met. In fact, research shows that gender mainstreaming initiatives are not even half as close to becoming realistic (Bacchi and Eveline, 2009:13). However, what are the reasons for these failures? Why has a campaign that was launched with a lot of support and pomp just 19 years ago lost the plot? Are international organisations such as the United Nations doing enough? In this paper, the writer will present arguments to support statement that gender mainstreaming and its proponents have lost so many battles that they are they are close to losing the war. Discussion At the 1995 women’s conference in Beijing, so many promises were made on gender mainstreaming. The most important one was to get more women into leadership positions in private and public organisations and the government, as well as involve them in scientific and industrial development initiatives. This was to be done to bring about gender equality, not at the expense of men as some people have reported (Fischer, 2012:569). The ultimate goal of gender mainstreaming was to bring gender equality at all levels of private and public sectors. The aim was to enter the millennium with significant progress having been made in terms of putting women in key positions in the society and cultivating and a better understanding of gender mainstreaming and equality among men (Razavi, 2009:146). However, this has not happened. A 2013 research cosponsored by the US department of education and various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) showed that despite the hype and hullabaloo surrounding the topic, men still dominated major positions in the government and the private sector (Organisation for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa, 2010:14) In fact, most governments created a front for gender mainstreaming and equality but their underbellies were rife with gender inequality and imbalance. The Obama Administration, for example, has made several attempts to include as many women as possible in its policymaking and leadership positions (Kantola, 2010:54). However, this is what the public and some naïve NGOs see and think that progress is being made. For example, the study showed that in departments which were headed by women, there were still more male employees working in senior and influential positions that women should have according to gender mainstreaming advocates. In addition, the findings of the study showed that men’s perception of women has still not changed to reach the level of “progress”; this is 19 years after the Beijing conference (Krook, 2010:23). Another major finding was that the percentage of women that stayed at home to take care of their families while their husbands worked to provide for the families is still high. Forget the numerous statistics that often depict women as having made significant progress in terms of competing with men for key positions. Most of the studies that reveal these findings are not as detailed as they should be (Kuhlmann, 2010:35). For example, when a study shows that more women are now going to school and getting good jobs, does it include all women? According to critics, most of the studies focus on women in urban areas and those in rural regions are ignored. I bet that if all or a large percentage of women were included in these “enlightening” studies then the outlook would be so much different. Although blaming each other will not help anyone, it is still important to understand whose fault it is that the gender mainstreaming agenda is far behind schedule (Lyle-Gonga, 2013:211). In the United States, can we fault the Obama administration for not appointing more women in key positions? Of course not; where would all the qualified men go if we went around dishing out positions to every qualified woman? The blame lies squarely with female activists and their financiers, who forgot what gender mainstreaming is about and led it down the garden path. The 2012 shooting of Pakistani female education activist Malala Yousafzai showcased the failures of gender mainstreaming. Do the women in the Swat Valley where Malala was born even have an idea of what gender mainstreaming is? I highly doubt it and evidence supports this (Oconnor, 2014:73). Do the poor girls in Africa who have no access to electricity understand the fact that they are supposed to be going to school like their male counterparts? Again, evidence shows that most of them do not (Vleuten, 2014:25). It does not matter how many activists or powerful women we produce in the 21st century, the gender mainstreaming process should have started from the bottom up. Starting from the up heading to the bottom has created a situation where we have a few powerful women and millions of uninformed and underprivileged women (Kabeer, 2014:83). The situation could be described, in economic terms, as similar to a country of twenty billionaires and twenty million beggars. For every Hillary Clinton there are millions of girls and women who are left out of the gender debate. Various scholars and researchers, some even female activists themselves, have pointed out that the initiative should have been called gender “grassrooting” instead of gender mainstreaming (Mukhopadhyay, 2014:358). Build from the ground up instead of the roof down. The success of the gender mainstreaming initiative relied – and still relies – on the existence of favorable policies implemented by governments and private sector stakeholders. However, if history has shown us anything over the years, it is that growth in any field that is reliant on the contributions of a few is not likely to be sustainable. This is something that has bogged down the gender mainstreaming effort (Morna, 2013:24). For example, the industrial revolution was not fueled by groups or governments; it was sparked and sustained by individual efforts. If progress had been underpinned on governments and other private sector stakeholders then the world would probably have been quite modest in terms of industrial development. Individual effort is what leads to more willingness to support initiatives across the board. Gender mainstreaming should have followed this cue, but where are the strong and staunch gender mainstreaming supporters who have dedicated their life and time to make sure that the initiative succeeds (Evans, 2011:43). Where are the women who are engaging the government directly and indirectly in leading the gender mainstreaming and equality drive? There are few; the rest are waiting for governments to pass regulations that favor the gender mainstreaming initiative. The problems plaguing the efforts are fundamental problems that should have been addressed at the conference instead of creating a passive agenda that has barely made it to its 20th anniversary (Palmary and Nunez, 2009:76). Asia can feel particularly ignored by the process because conditions are not much better than they were in 1995 when the program as launched. Girls – alongside boys – still work in factories making garments for rich countries and earning less than $20 a month in some cases (Bibbings, 2012:34). Boys are still subjected to hard labor that negates the little gains made, and women are still finding it hard to get into key positions in the government and private sectors. We can always cite the emergence of more women leaders in the 21st century as evidence that gender mainstreaming works. However, the truth is that most of the women today would have made it in politics or development circles if we did not have anything like gender mainstreaming (Bose, 2009:35). Finally, there is a need to develop concrete, practical and futuristic plans for the gender mainstreaming process, or do away with it altogether and come up with something that works. The current program, in its current state, will not lead women and men to where they want to go. It has failed. The gender mainstreaming initiatives should be approached in the same way that women’s suffrage was handled in the United Kingdom and the United States in the early 20th century (Hankivsky, 2013:641). Where are the street demonstrations and the passive resistance efforts shown by women to compel governments and private sectors to support the gender mainstreaming effort? It is safe to argue that the women at the Beijing convention have seriously let down their colleagues. The attendees of the convention have been largely passive and unprepared for the grueling task of making gender mainstreaming a success (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010:36). Some gender mainstreaming supporters think that governments will just, all of a sudden, sit and decide to support them wholeheartedly in the quest. Governments also have their agendas that they would like to meet whether gender mainstreaming exists or not. Why not give them a reason to support the initiative? Why not engage them directly and indirectly and convince them to offer more support to the gender mainstreaming (Herrell, 2013:72). In 2013, the Rockefeller Foundation reviewed the role of gender mainstreaming in shaping the ideals of women in the 21st century and found that most women found it exaggerated in terms of PR and lacking punch when it came to the delivery of its promises (Prügl, 2009:184). Of course, gender mainstreaming has not completely failed. There have been some major successes across the world, particularly in the Baltic States that suffered under civil war for years before peace was finally restored after years of fighting. Gender mainstreaming has also had major successes in countries such as Myanmar, where women have been courageous enough to stand up and be counted (Caglar, 2013:45). In Africa, educational initiatives and equality programs have created the next generation of women who will steer their futures and the futures of subsequent generations in the right direction. However, major successes have been tempered by major failures (Sinha, 2013:18). Anybody who wants to know how much the gender mainstreaming initiative has failed needs to compare its status with that of climate change and reduction in emissions (Davids, Driel, and Parren, 2014:398). The approach used by environmentalists to bring change in the climate change area is more effective than what all the gender mainstreaming activists put together, and yet Beijing came before climate change efforts started getting serious. All in all, the gender mainstreaming supporters have not done enough to warrant the change they have been so desperately yearning for (Eveline, Bacchi, and Binns, 2009:207). Apart from the developed countries, where the efforts are easier because it is easier to access people and the people understand the message, less developed countries have not been treated the same when it comes to equality in the application of efforts (Pini, 2011:21) One other major failure of gender mainstreaming has been with regard to the perception of women by men and the opinions of men about the whole gender mainstreaming topic. At the Beijing convention, it was agreed that although women were the target, men were needed onside because the initiative could not be successful without them (Vohra, 2009:46). If you want power you must sit with the people who have it and negotiate, they claimed (Bowl, 2012:32). Among all women programs developed at the convention, and all other programs that came after, gender mainstreaming is the initiative that has reached out to men the most. It tried to get men in powerful positions to use their influence to balance the situation and drive the initiative on because there was something it for them as well (Rai, 2013:34). Although it was successful in the beginning, the efforts soon started going downhill because men started feeling threatened by the program (Engelstad, 2012:56). Feminists hijacked it and turned it into a women issue; gender mainstreaming was never about women only. The feeling of being threatened is one of the reasons why most men have still been reluctant to support women in their gender equality efforts. Men feel that women are not doing enough to fight for their own causes and when they do, they have to do it by using men as targets for attack to champion their causes. The notion that men are the enemy is what affected gender mainstreaming about eight years after it was launched (Corsi, 2010:29). In 2010, a report by the United Nations revealed that the gender mainstreaming process had failed to reach its targets in less developed countries and is unlikely to meet them unless more men are roped into the discussion and made part of instead of adversaries of the program. Less developed countries are known for the wide gaps that exist between men and women in terms of development. The gender inequalities there are a major impediment to the gender equality initiative worldwide (Christensen, 2011:21). One is left to wonder why the drivers of this program did not start with these countries and then moved on to the developed countries. The UN report detailed how in some situations, women engaged in malpractices such as corruption and nepotism that compromised the effectiveness of the process (Enarson, 2009:38). When such things happen, what message does it send to other women who are involved in the program? It diverts their attention away from the main goal, of course. It also leads to squabbles among women that slow down progress and make them look bad in the face of men and other women. Conclusion Gender mainstreaming has failed; it is beyond reasonable doubt. Evidence points towards a bungling of the process about three years into its launch and the use of approaches that have proven largely ineffective (Eerdewijk and Davids, 2014:308). International women’s organisations have focused on their “mainstream” counterparts and ignored the plight of those who need them the most. Women and men in poor countries are still wallowing in poverty without hope that they will ever see the day that gender mainstreaming will solve some of their problems (Calvo, 2013:19). As previously mentioned, the program should have been called gender grassrooting so that the foundations would be set by the people who needed it the most instead of glory hunters who have turned the campaign into a public relations exercise (Winslow, 2009:553). 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