Gender as smart economics

To support the Country Programme Strategy (CPS), MS Tanzania has made a gender strategy. On October 8, representatives from partner organisations met in Dar es Salaam to review MS’ Policy on Gender Equality, share experiences and discuss the way forward.

Participants in the gender workshop.

‘Gender equality starts in the family. Boys and girls need to be treated equally especially with regards to their access to education’, said a representative from Tanzanian Youth Coalition (TYC) when presenting the group-work done by the youth organisations. But how do you break the vicious cycle when parents acting as role-models are not equal? It may seem easy to agree on gender equality being desirable but when it comes to implementation, challenges are many and solutions not straightforward.

Traditional cultural and religious beliefs were pointed out by partner representatives as major obstacles to achieving gender equality. But the discussion on culture and beliefs is a delicate one, because there are deep-rooted values that are not easily challenged. Other more tangible obstacles as the ones found at policy level seem easier to address but then again implementation collides with customs.

How to make men interested in gender?
The efforts to mainstream gender in the CPS are not an easy task. To start with, there is the challenge of making men interested in gender issues. In this workshop, only five out of 25 participants were men. However, if you seriously want to change the existing power balance you need full participation by both men and women.

MS director, Flemming Olsen, rounded up the day by sharing with the participants one of the good arguments for why we need gender equality: Economic analysis shows that investment in promoting gender equality pays off, on the bottom line, as reduced poverty, improved health and education and last but not least, building local democracy can only be achieved through the participation of both men and women. 

Investing in gender equality is simply smart economics.