Poverty has a gender

Danida approves the international gender network, which is to be coordinated by the Nicaragua South-North Advocacy Group.

José Valdivia: “Perhaps we will also profit from increasing our awareness as regards gender issues”.

Although usually nowhere to be found in official statistics or poverty reduction strategies, poverty does indeed have a gender. While it is practically mandatory to mention gender as a cross-cutting issue in many strategies, it is also an issue infrequently reflected in specific plans of action.

This is why grass-roots organizations, national NGOs and the Danish network of which MS is a member, the North-South Coalition, have undertaken the effort to establish an international gender network which from the soil on which poor women live to the marble staircases leading to the buildings in which decisions are made, will attempt to make women’s poverty visible and propose how to fight it in such a way that women are able to unleash their resources and emerge from poverty, together with their families. 

Danida has just approved financing for a two-year experience, to be coordinated by the Nicaragua South-North Advocacy Group (GISN). The Group is an umbrella organization that brings together grass-roots organizations, associations of municipalities, and national and international NGOs, among them MS. The Group emerged from the North-South Coalition PRSP project, itself an effort to exert influence upon the poverty reduction strategies embarked upon by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and which highly indebted poor countries must develop if they are to be granted debt reduction and soft loans. A total of six countries are participating in the experience: Nicaragua, Nepal, Ghana, Zambia, Honduras and Denmark. Parallel to the gender network, Ghana will head an effort on bottom up advocacy.

Gender audit

“In Nicaragua we are still machos (chauvinists)”, says GISN coordinator José Valdivia with a laugh, adding that despite this he thinks the Central American country has something to offer. As part of the PRSP project the GISN is on the right track, with a pilot that seeks to prepare instruments for a gender audit regarding development plans at local, national and international level. Milagros Barahona and Isolda Espinosa, who are both members of the table on Women and the Economy are coordinating the experience, and expect to see concrete results during the month of October.

“After systematizing the relevant research they have formulated four tools which will be put to the test by NGOs working in the rural municipality of Malpaisillo. Once these tools are adjusted to real life experience, they will be applied in other municipalities in which the GISN has a presence,” reports José Valdivia.

In October the result will be analysed by all GISN members in order to eliminate any trace of machismo from the plan of action and to substitute these for a gender approach that is more than a mere obligatory parenthesis at the end of a document. Further, a coordinator is to be engaged for the gender network. His/her first task will be to map the gender work done in the other countries that form part of the network and subsequently to evaluate if it is viable to introduce the Nicaraguan model. 

The four tools mentioned earlier are as follows:

•  Analysis of the concept and design of programmes and projects, for example on women’s access to and control of resources. 
   
• An analyses of their own situation made by poor women and men. This will very likely focus on the need for a systematic gathering of statistics broken down by gender. 
   
•  How do public investments influence inequality among the sexes? Frequently programmes and projects geared specifically towards women tend to increase the traditional distribution of roles.
   
•  Finally, an analysis on what impact programmes and projects have on the way in which men and women use their time. This study will show how much unremunerated work is expected from men and women while a project is underway.
   

“The audit will yield good instruments with which to carry out our advocacy work”, says José Valdivia, “and perhaps we will also profit from increasing our awareness as regards gender issues”.