Carmen Niethammer: MENA countries have not advanced as much as possible in the political participation, formal labor market
Regional, Culture, 9/28/2004

On the sideline of the Annual Meeting of the Arab Network for Gender and Development CAWTER held in Tunis on September 27 and 28 under the title "from Studies to Policies: Best Practices and strategies," Arabic News (ArabicNews.com) had an exclusive interview with World Bank operations officer of the Chief economist for the Middle East and North Africa office Carmen Niethammer.

She said that the World Bank is engaged in giving loans to governments and "so our attitudes in giving money without pay back from governments and Non Governmental Organizations NGO " is very limited, in general, adding that within that -- the work on gender and support to women is very small.

She said that in the Middle East and North Africa MENA region, which she works for, the promotion of women is the main component for advancing women and so in this regard "we were be able to get some regional grant resources; though small but helpful." She explained that these resources are important for the World Bank to make the partners in the MENA region know each other; noting that more importantly is to find where the progress and opportunities lie regarding gender. She indicated that to this end the WB wanted to connect the research centers and policy makers and NGO with each other; adding that the WB wants to be a catalyst in this regard; with the main issue from its own perspective is to maintain women economic empowerment.

On the WB recent activity to this end is a report under the title " women and the public sphere." The report basically made a point that governments in the Middle East have invested a lot in health and education and that there is almost no disparity -- and even disparity is closing very fast in comparison with other developing countries -- and that the MENA countries have not made advances as much as they could to their potentials in the political participation and formal labor market. She hinted that, for the WB, this is a very big issue because most of those women are of high education and given a lot of resources but they are not contributed by the society and the family.

On expanding WB contribution to such activities; Mrs. Niethammer said " we wanted to work with regional centers and CAWTER is one of them; noting that the other attractive aspect of CAWTER is that it has other international organizations on the board like the Arab League; UNDP; European Union; UNFPA and UNICEF. A matter which gives the World Bank the chance to collaborate with other agencies in a more strategic and effective fashion and by that the WB does not duplicate; rather complements each other's efforts; She expected three points from this networking. " The Arab Network for Gender and Development (ANGED ) gives us the opportunity to check whether the WB policy is on the right track concerning gender strategies," she noted; adding that the event is expected to help in building local capacity. To this point she explained that at her speech at the inauguration of the meeting," she remarked the importance of meeting women from Palestine; Jordan and Yemen and have realized that they face the same issues and work on the same research. This network; she said can connect the different research centers to not only improve research work and message but also to learn from processes.

The third advantage she expects from the event is to complement each other's experience and realize in general that everybody is looking in the same topic but from a different angle and thereby integrating with each other.

On the selection of participants to the network, she said that it is a very open network and horizontal, having altogether active and passive members, however, all seek information sharing, conducting researches and dissemination of information.

She said that the WB promotes activities at three levels: policy; operations and capacity building. She explained that for the policy work the WB makes a lot of resources and it uses the country gender assessment which looks at the gender gap with each sector; evaluates the institution that address the gender gaps whether they are sufficient or must be supported; looking for institutional mechanisms and then giving recommendations for governments.

On the operational level, she said that the WB has many projects. " It is our job in the WB gender unit that the projects have a gender dimension, making sure that the project is beneficial for both man and the woman; alike."

As for the capacity building process; she said that the WB has made a lot of training initiatives with governmental and NGOs; citing an example to that the report on " Gender indicators monitoring and evaluation development " and another report on the " Millennium Goals " besides institutional capacity building and projects in Tunisia, Egypt, and Iran with the objective to strengthen the institutional capacity of the targeted institution.

She underlined the importance of this gathering in deepening membership and quality of researches which all tell stories of success, citing an example on that was the report on "Arab adolescents."

Giving more insight to the importance of the event Mrs. Niethammer said that the WB found the network as very useful for different players and built on this realization it decided to replicate the Arab network experience for the Persian speaking countries.

She concluded by saying that WB business with CAWTER is built on frequent and continued contacts on research and networking, taking into account that ANGED members are active in other countries of the MENA region.

Previous Stories:
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  Arab adolescent girls: reality and prospects   (10/28/2003)
  Topics and participants of the annual meeting of the Arab network for gender and development   (10/27/2003)

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