THE TRUTH BEHIND SRI LANKA’S GENDER DEVELOPMENT STATISTICS

About Gender. Despite impressive human development indicators, Sri Lanka still has a long way to go in fully utilising the skills and talents of its female citizens to move the country’s development and peace processes forward.

By Nelathi De Soysa

Sri Lanka, an island nation of some 17 million people, located in the Indian Ocean, has seen considerable progress in human development since its independence from colonial rule in 1948. Indicators such as life expectancy, literacy, and infant, child and maternal mortality are impressive at a national level, and are directly correlated with historically high government investment in basic health and education.

However, the United Nations Development Programme estimates that the overall level of human poverty in Sri Lanka is substantial (National Human Development [NHD] Report, 1998). In addition to this, the report indicates that although the level of gender development in Sri Lanka is higher than average for an Asian country (69%), gender empowerment (compared with modern standards) is relatively low (20%). This despite its being the first country in the world to produce a female head-of-state.

The purpose of this article is to explore disparities between gender development and empowerment indexes, and to highlight hidden realities affecting women in Sri Lanka - realities which are strongly influenced by social, cultural and economic factors.

To begin with, the ongoing war in the country has had a debilitating effect on women and their status in society. Current information reveals that there are 18,657 war widows in the northern peninsula alone, not counting the growing numbers in the south.

Around 22% of all households in Sri Lanka are female-headed. Many of these women have been thrust into the role of breadwinner with little knowledge of income-earning methods and few coping skills. Moreover, the word withawi (for widow) has connotations of a deplorable and pitiable condition. Social isolation are poverty are inevitable for these women, many of whom are widowed at a young age.

Another factor that does not appear in national statistics is the regional variation in female literacy, which has remained at 87% for several years. Urban and rural disparities still exist, and are not represented in national gender development indexes. Female literacy in urban areas is 91%, while the rural rate is 78%. Furthermore, some statistics, such as the 65% rate of anaemia among women, are not even included in some printed documents.

Education is another matter. Although the percentage of Sri Lankan women entering universities increased from 42% in 1989 to 52% in 1999 (bearing in mind that only 1% of the population has access to university education), women are still under-represented in many disciplines, and tend to find employment at the bottom of the employment pyramid.

When they do find work, it is usually in low-status, low-skilled and low-paying jobs in peasant and plantation agriculture. In addition to this, the female unemployment rate, at 22%, is double that of men in Sri Lanka.

Furthermore, a majority of jobs available to women are in the unorganised and informal sectors, which are outside the purview of labour regulations. An example of this is the growing number of women engaged in the garment industry, who are prone to suffer physical disabilities directly linked to long hours of hard labour.

This same fate awaits the women who represent around 76% of the unskilled migrant labour force working in oil-rich countries and South-East Asian countries. Reports in local newspapers highlight tales of woe where many of these women have suffered untold hardships, including beatings, torture and even death, due to lack of cross-border employment agreements and regulatory practices between national governments.

Besides garment workers and migrant workers, the largest proportion of women in the informal sector is engaged in cultivation. A growing threat to the livelihood security of these women is the increasing mechanisation of agriculture.

As a result, the female whose sense of self-worth was linked to her ability to contribute to the productive process now finds herself left out, and her contribution deemed worthless. This reduces her value within the family and community, and must be considered by governments and NGOs [non-governmental organisations] that may opt to promote mechanisation of agriculture as a means of ‘development’.

Discriminatory practices over land inheritance and custody battles further contribute to the decline in self-worth among women in Sri Lanka. In such cases, males are often given preferential treatment. This despite constitutionally guaranteed laws that grant women equal rights with men.

As for the political empowerment of women, it bears mention that both the president and prime minister of Sri Lanka are women. However, this does not necessarily indicate a high political profile for the average woman, nor does it represent the involvement of women in policy-planning and decision-making at higher levels. A recent survey found that women in Sri Lanka do not aspire to be active in politics, which is amply demonstrated by the fact that few women opt for political careers, and fewer still are elected to Parliament at the regional and provincial levels.

All of these factors indicate that there is a hidden dimension to the image presented in printed statistics - a dimension rarely highlighted and only dimly visible to the observer. Within this context it would be only correct to say that, despite impressive human development indicators, Sri Lanka still has a long way to go in fully utilising the skills and talents of its female citizens to move the country’s development and peace processes forward. - Third World Network Features·

About the writer: Nelathi De Soysa is coordinator of the Strategic Planning Unit for World Vision Sri Lanka.

The above article first appeared in TOGETHER (April-June 2000, ‘Gender development in Sri Lanka: a peek behind the statistics’).

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Globalisation heightening gender inequalities

by Mithre J Sandrasagra

About Gender. New York, 10 Oct 2000 (IPS) - Third World delegates are expressing fears that globalisation is leading to increased inequalities between men and women.

“Despite new initiatives and commitments, the sad reality is that the situation of the world’s women is progressively deteriorating due to globalisation,” Ramachandra Reddy of India told a meeting of the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee of the General Assembly this week.

A number of speakers at the ongoing consultations of the General Assembly have drawn attention to the link between development and the rights of women.

Reddy pointed out that “societies with the greatest gender equality had grown the fastest, and it must be recognised that gender equality is critical to the development process”.

“The link between gender equality and development means that marginalisation of women must be stopped, along with the continued feminisation of poverty,” Reddy added.

Globalisation, a process whereby owners of capital are enabled to move their capital around the globe more quickly and easily, has resulted in the removal of state controls on trade and investment, the disappearance of tariff barriers and the spread of new information and communications technologies.

Andres Franco of Colombia, speaking on behalf of the Rio Group of Latin American and Caribbean nations, said “the opportunities created by the process of globalisation have opened clear avenues for development, but in some cases its benefits have not been equitably distributed, thereby impeding efforts to promote the advancement of women, particularly those living in poverty.”

Reda Bebars of Egypt, stressing that the advancement of women would not be achieved by passing legislation, said that social development on the national scale must be strengthened and a climate conducive to development must be created if the goals set in Beijing [at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women] are to be realised.

Problems of inclusion stem from the fact that women are very differently positioned in relation to the markets in different parts of the world. In certain places, where women are socially excluded from leaving their homes, the challenge is to find ways for women to participate. In other places, the challenge is to create markets which are more friendly to women’s participation.

Ilham Ibrahim Mohamed Ahmed of Sudan condemned the debt burden carried by developing countries, economic sanctions, arbitrary measures and denial of access to new technological developments as obstacles to the growth of women’s rights.

Women remain very much in the minority among Internet users and still face huge imbalances in the ownership, control and regulation of new information technologies.

“The gains of globalisation have not been equitably distributed and the gap between rich and poor countries is widening,” said Zhang Lei of the People’s Republic of China.

The gains of globalisation thus far have for the most part been concentrated in the hands of better-off women with higher levels of education and with greater ownership of resources and access to capital.

“Work in China and Vietnam shows that globalisation has brought new opportunities to young women with familiarity with English in new service sector jobs, but has made a vast number of over-35-year-olds redundant, because they are either in declining industries or have outdated skills,” Swasti Mitter of the UN’s Women Watch Online Working Group on Women’s Economic Inequality said.

Lei emphasised that most of the world’s poor were women and that poverty had become a major impediment to their development.

International commitments such as the Beijing Platform for Action and the Copenhagen Programme of Action addressed some of the problems of globalisation. However, it was pointed out that solutions proposed for women in these documents were largely microeconomic, with particular focus on enabling poor women to obtain access to credit, presumably to begin small businesses.

But many drawbacks have been identified to the use of microcredit as an enabling tool. One study in Bangladesh found that among female borrowers, a majority reported an increase in verbal and physical aggression from male relatives after taking out loans.

Other studies in Bangladesh have drawn attention to the fact that women run the risk of losing control of the loans to male relatives because they are culturally excluded from participating in markets outside their homes to buy inputs and sell outputs, according to the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

According to UNIFEM’s latest biennial report, over the past two decades the process of globalisation has contributed to widening inequality within and among countries, and has been punctuated by economic and social collapse in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and countries in transition (in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union) and by financial crises in Asia and Latin America.

“If a wider range of people are to gain, globalisation must be reshaped so that it is more people-centred instead of profit-centred and more accountable to women,” the UNIFEM report stresses.

“Growth cannot be assumed to automatically ‘trickle down’ to the poor. It can in fact trickle up to create greater inequalities,” Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director of UNIFEM, emphasised.

In January 2000, a total of 116 UN members had submitted national action plans to fulfil government commitments to the Beijing Platform for Action. The majority focused on education and training, women in power and decision-making, women and health, and violence against women. However, few plans established comprehensive, time-bound targets for monitoring such progress, and most made no reference to sources of financing for the actions agreed.

“Indicators show that 13 countries - of which Albania, Burundi, Iraq, Liberia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia and Tanzania are a few - are in the same shape or worse off today than they were in 1990, and for almost 40 countries the data is insufficient to say anything, which probably reflects an even worse situation for women,” according to Social Watch, an NGO watchdog system aimed at monitoring the commitments made by governments at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen and the Beijing World Conference on Women.

“Legislation existing on paper is only one side of the story, since rights must be put into practice - millions of women still face a daily struggle for their human dignity,” Eva Latham of the Netherlands lamented.

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Redefining the role of women in Indonesia

About Gender. Notice: You can find the original article here:
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Redefining the role of women in Indonesia
After being suppressed for so long, the women of Indonesia are finally finding their voices again.
by Abdul Razak Ahmad

THE stereotypical, traditional role of the Eastern woman goes thus: She is the stalwart of the household, deeply pious, succumbing to the unquestioned authority of her husband, and sacrificing everything for the children. She is a demure wife, great cook, endless source of maternal wisdom. Full stop.

See how she thrives in a society where everyone is content, a society overwhelmed by economic progress.

Now throw everything off-kilter: put in a political revolt, mass rape, spiralling crime, loss of her husband's livelihood and extreme financial difficulty.

In short, throw out all the traditional 'societal protection' afforded to her and consider: Shouldn't the role of the woman be redefined to deal with the new challenges facing her?

It's now happening in Indonesia, and is the primary force motivating many women's groups and non-governmental organisations. If anything, women are becoming prime victims of Indonesia's economic and political difficulties.

Well-defined has the woman been for so long in Indonesia: in order of importance, she is firstly wife, then mother, then household economic supervisor. Only after these three responsibilities have been discharged does she become a member of society. Last and least, she is citizen of the state.

This is the role of women as dictated by the state. The ideology, enshrined in Indonesia's National Gender Ideology, has long governed policies regarding women's issues. 'We totally reject this ideology because any woman living outside this limited scope is considered deficient,' says Ita Fatia Nadia, director of Kalyanamitra, a women's issues NGO based in Jakarta.

Women - prime workforce

Kalyanamitra, Sanskrit for 'friend of woman', was founded in 1984, one of the few NGOs at the time that dealt with women's issues. 'Independent organisations were outlawed under the New Order administration,' and the government-sanctioned bodies set up to deal with the plight of women, 'were too politicised to be of any use whatsoever,' Ita said.

Since the 1970s, when Indonesia opened up to foreign investment, women became the prime workforce for factories set up by the multinationals. Working for relatively low wages, 'women were reduced to cheap labour', said Ita. The economic collapse that preceded the end of the Suharto administration has led to the loss of one out of five jobs.

'More women are now forced to seek employment to keep the family going and to bear the rise in the increased prices of most items,' she said.

'But there are still no laws to protect against sexual discrimination in terms of unfair wages and lack of proper employment benefits for women in Indonesia,' she added.

The economic crisis has resulted in a weakened and volatile local currency. This, added to the International Monetary Fund's insistence that subsidies be scrapped, has resulted in an escalation in the cost of basic food items. To this end, Kalyanamitra recently established a food cooperative, providing essential items at low prices for poor urban women. The co-op now has 6,000 members.

Although the crisis began as an economic problem, it soon sank into the political collapse of the Suharto administration. The gaping vacuum has resulted in violence, some of it targeted at women.

Women from certain ethnic groups (mainly Chinese) have become the targets of mass rape. Ita rejects the notion posed by critics that the push for greater freedom in Indonesia is a dangerous luxury which will only lead to chaos in terms of ethnic conflicts, as the rapes seem to indicate.

'The rapes were not racial. They were targeted at Chinese women, yes, but investigations have shown that such a planned and systematic mass rape of the women was part of a strategy to plant fear in the Chinese community.'

Ita claims that since the fall of the New Order administration, certain 'parties' have been out to create chaos, 'so they can step in with the excuse of restoring order'. And while 'certain parties' is a familiar term which denotes the ubiquitous anonymous bogeyman, Ita is more specific with the culprits responsible.

Elements within the military

A team was recently set up to offer help to the victims of violence. In the course of its investigations, the team - consisting of Kalyanamitra, the Jakarta Social Institute, the Nadhatul Ulama Muslim Organisation and the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM, or Komisi Nasional Hak Asasi Manusia) - found similarities between the rape of Chinese women last May and other mass rapes which occurred in Acheh and East Timor.

'We found that, in most cases, the likely suspects consisted of elements within the military,' said Ita. 'We concluded that the rape of Chinese women last May was part of an organised system of terrorism. In fact, most recent human rights violations in Indonesia are part of desperate efforts to preserve the status quo.'

Kalyanamitra is now lobbying for compensation for the victims, witness protection and bringing the guilty parties to justice.

A phone call temporarily disrupts the interview. The distraught mother of a student activist shot dead by the military during last November's demonstrations is on the line, seeking help and support.

The softspoken Ita later apologises for the disruption. She reasoned that the crisis has resulted in a widening of the scope of activities which organisations like hers have had to deal with, such as offering solace and comfort to mothers who have lost their sons due to the violence.

'Pressing issues, you understand,' she says feebly, with a tinge of sadness in her eyes.

Almost every student activist interviewed has had a friend either shot dead or arrested by the authorities. Some journalists have either been imprisoned at some point of their career for 'subversion' (which in Indonesia can mean eight years for reading the works of banned authors), or had colleagues or friends who have suffered equal, if not worse, treatment.

I make this observation and ask whether this is worth the cause being fought for.

She does not answer the question directly. Instead, she tells me how Kalyanamitra, along with another organisation called Kaum Ibu, set up mobile kitchens to prepare meals for the university students during the demonstrations which led to Suharto's downfall.

'The response was beyond our wildest imaginations. Mothers would drive to our logistics centre and donate their time and money for the project.'

She remembers one mother who couldn't afford to donate, but offered to help man the kitchen.

'She told me that she could not be with the student demonstrators, so her effort was her little contribution in restoring justice to Indonesia.'

It reveals a political awareness, long repressed, but one which finally manifested itself in almost every citizen fed up with decades of oppression.

It explains why the movement has been successful so far, and why there is still hope in Indonesia. 'The students are at the forefront of the changes we are demanding, and they would never have succeeded if not for our support.

'They know they can rely on us in times of trouble. After all, we are their mothers,' she said.

From mothers to housewives to farmers to entrepreneurs to workers to social activists to students, the women of Indonesia are finally finding their voice again. In doing so, they are reasserting their role as nation-builders. (Third World Resurgence No. 103, March 1999)

Abdul Razak Ahmad is with the Malaysian daily, the New Straits Times, in which the above article appeared (29 December 1998).

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Gender

About Gender. Notice: You can find the original article here

Gender comprises widely held beliefs, expectations, customs and practices within a society that define ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ attributes, behaviours and roles and responsibilities. Gender is an integral factor in determining an individual’s vulnerability to HIV infection, his or her ability to access care, support or treatment, and the ability to cope when infected or affected by HIV.

Gender norms, for example, often dictate that women and girls should be ignorant and passive about sex, leaving them unable to negotiate safer sex or access appropriate services. Gender norms in many societies also reinforce a belief that men should seek multiple sexual partners, take risks and be self-reliant. These norms work against prevention messages that support fidelity and other protection measures from HIV infection. Some notions of masculinity also condone violence against women, which has a direct link to HIV vulnerability, and homophobia, which results in stigmatisation of men who have sex with men, making these men more likely to hide their sexual behaviour and less likely to access HIV services. (See "Women and Girls" and "Men who have sex with men" for more specific information on the impact of gender inequality on vulnerability to HIV).

Gender inequality both fuels and intensifies the impact of the HIV epidemic and is most effectively addressed on the national and community level. In the context of HIV prevention, treatment, care and mitigation, this reinforces the need for interventions that are directed at individual people. Reducing gender inequality requires changing social norms, attitudes and behaviours through a comprehensive set of policies and strategies.

At the 2006 High Level Meeting on AIDS, all member states of the United Nations have pledged “ to eliminate gender inequalities, gender-based abuse and violence” and to “increase the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of health care and services, including, inter alia, sexual and reproductive health, and the provision of full access to comprehensive information and education.”

Furthermore, as part of the same resolution, all member states of the United Nations have also pledged to “ensure that women can exercise their right to have control over, and decide freely and responsibly on, matters related to their sexuality in order to increase their ability to protect themselves from HIV infection, including their sexual and reproductive health… and to take all necessary measures to create an enabling environment for the empowerment of women and strengthen their economic independence; and in this context, reiterate the importance of the role of men and boys in achieving gender equality;

UNAIDS identifies actions that must be taken to change the structural and sociocultural underpinnings of stigma and discrimination, and these are also essential to addressing gender inequality:

Priority actions to address gender inequalities

• Top leadership at every level of society must speak out against stigma, discrimination, gender inequality and women’s empowerment
• Laws and policies that protect women and girls against sexual violence, disinheritance and gender discrimination of all kinds, including harmful traditional practices and sexual violence in and outside of marriage must be enacted, publicized and enforced.
• Women must be adequately represented in policy-and decision-making on AIDS.
• Laws and policies that directly address gender inequality and bias against people perceived to be at heightened risk for HIV, including sex workers and men who have sex with men, must be enacted and enforced.
• Changes in laws and policies must be accompanied by adequately funded “know your rights and social mobilization campaigns against gender inequality and HIV related stigma and discrimination; the campaigns should involve organizations of people living with HIV along with all other elements of civil society in their planning and implementation.

UNAIDS supports Governments to:

• Enact and enforce legislation, policies and programmes that protect the rights of women and girls in terms of gender equality and freedom from violence.
• Expand access to sexual and reproductive health care programmes and integrate HIV into these.
• Promote campaigns and community dialogue to change harmful gender norms, engage men and boys and eliminate violence against women and girls.
• Keep girls in schools and make schools free of sexual violence and exploitation.
• Implement economic empowerment schemes for women, including women care-givers.
• Implement social support programmes for care-givers and orphans, which also engage men and transform care-giving roles.
• Build the capacity of women’s organisations and gender equality organizations as key partners in the development of national AIDS strategies.
• Incorporate gender dimensions into monitoring and evaluation activities, ensuring that data is disaggregated by sex, age and marital status.

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Why doesn’t the other gender care about Gender?

About Gender. Notice: You can find the original article here

Thirty years on, it is proving harder than many of us had hoped for gender and development policy and practice to move beyond familiar stereotypes – women as abject victims or splendid heroines, men as all-powerful perpetrators.

Axioms abound: ‘women are the poorest of the poor’, ‘women give more priority to others – men invest more resources in themselves’, ‘women live in a more sustainable way than men and cause less climate change’, ‘women are the antidote to the financial crisis’.

Representations of men are limited and limiting. The ready association of the words “men” and “masculinity” with brute force, brash competitiveness and brazen prerogative makes those on the receiving end of the exercise of masculine power decisively female.

These complaints about Gender promoting gender stereotypes come from the journal Contestations, in an article by the always thought-provoking Andrea Cornwall and Emily Esplen. They call for moving beyond stereotypes and actually involving Men in the cause of better lives for Women. They wonder why they have few male takers for their recommended actions:

Why … do we see so few men actually taking up these actions – even the men around us who declare themselves sympathetic allies?

Along with lots of bad reasons that don’t reflect well on men, it could also reflect a few men put off by a cause that, according to the authors, perpetrates the “all men are evil” stereotype.

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