Gender and development: A bid to encourage and enable gender- responsive program development
Syria-Regional, Culture, 6/3/2003

Gender issues have for long been given top priority as a heated debate with efforts concentrated to explain its various concepts regarding gender roles; gender training, gender equality and gender planning. Highlighting this issue on the need to increase the capacity for the integrated efforts of both man and woman for developmental partnership. UNICEF's Damascus office has organized 3 workshops to Gender sensitize the officers from various walks of life and to provide knowledge on gender mainstreaming at various levels of program preparation. The three workshops were held on May 24th through June 3rd, at the Damascus's Carlton hotel

The current 3rd training workshop being attended by staff of UN agencies in Syria. Previous two workshops were attended by officials from various ministries like Ministry of Education (MOE), Ministry of Health (MOH), Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA), Ministry of Culture (MOC), Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) and Non- Governmental Organizations NGOs and popular organizations. Samira Ahmed, expert from UNICEF' s Office in Sudan, has spearheaded the training workshops.

In a statement to ArabicNews (ArabicNews.com), UNICEF's Damascus office program coordinator Narindar Sharma said that the current 3rd training workshop is being attended by staff of UN agencies in Syria. Previous two workshops were attended by officials from various ministries. He added that in adopting the "Women's Equality and Empowerment Framework (WEEF) in 1993, UNICEF was among the first organizations in the United Nations system to identify an operational tool for mainstreaming gender that is appropriate to its mandate and work. The framework postulates that inequality needs to the addressed at levels: Welfare; access to resources; awareness raising; participation in decision-making; and control over resources and actions for social, economic and political development. This analysis becomes the basis for setting goals, formulating strategies and developing indicators for monitoring and evaluation.

Citing an example on how gender as a concept is misunderstood, Sharma said that whenever somebody refers to a "nurse" suddenly a face of a women comes in front of you. Why not of a man? Generally, we say "Gentleman's promise" but why don't we say "Gentle Women's promise." This is gender role stereotyping.

He explained that generally speaking, this word "gender" is misunderstood along with the old and stereotype of thinking, with sex. In fact "gender" refers to the socially defined or constructed sex roles, attitudes and values which communities and societies ascribe as appropriate for one sex or the other. Gender there refers to how women and men are perceived and expected to think and act because of the way society is organized, not because of biological difference. While "sex" refers to a person's genetic, physiological characteristics, which indicate whether one is male or female.

He urged that there is a need for efforts to provide parents with the knowledge and skills to create an enabling family environment for child care, in which there is no discrimination on the basis of gender. The responsibilities and involvement of fathers and males in childcare requires even greater attention than already has been given in many countries.

In Basic education programs, the growing recognition of the need for life-skills education for both school-based and out-of-school adolescents calls for innovative responses. The integration of components on mutual respect of rights, gender equality and non-violent behaviour in the entire range of learning situations for boys and girls will be fundamental to responsible life decisions within the context of the development of children and protection of their rights. In the area of adolescent development, actions need to provide new opportunities for preparing girls to defend their rights.

Advocacy tools and program interventions require promotion of the rights of adolescents to information, motivating their participation and supporting their efforts to address responsibly such issues as early marriage, exploitation, HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence.

The term Gender sometime is misunderstood with "Women Empowerment only" due to the misconceptions. Therefore, a need to continuously provide the knowledge at all levels of society to understand "Gender and Gender roles."

Gender mainstreaming is a broader effort and mainstreaming a gender perspective is the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimensions of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and social spheres so that woman and men benefit equality. Mainstreaming is therefore the very opposite of a strategy of segregating gender issues into separate "women's project." The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.

Shedding light on Syria's efforts to focus on gender issue, Sharma said that in 2002, Syria's First Lady, Mrs. Asma Al-Assad, made very touching remarks regarding the socially constructed gender role that "In General, in many families the sister is asked to bring a glass of water for her brother and rarely is the bother asked to ring a glass of water for his sister."

There is a need of close examination of various such issues problems or situations in order to identify the gender issue or disparities.

"Thanks to late President and now the current President's policies for gender gap reduction and gender awareness. Syria is one of the first five countries in the region having gender equality,"Sharma said, adding that this can be seen at the composition of at male/female ratio in the Syrian Parliament, Cabinet of ministers having women as ministers, and high girls school enrolment at national level. However, Sharma indicated that there is "still a long way to go in achieving gender equality."

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