Outline for the day Problem tree

Your methodology / time line

Gender and environment

Exam: April 18

Documentary (The End of Poverty?) – this Wed @ 7 pm @ t

Readings (Earth Democracy – pages 1 – 23)

Next unit: 3rd unit: NRM per resource

Bring in an article to discuss next week – for your research

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What about indicators?

indicators should: Be developed within an accepted conceptual framework. Be clearly defined and easy to understand. Be subject to aggregation. Be objective. Have reasonable data requirements. Be relevant to users. Be limited in number. Reflect causes, processes or results

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What about indicators?

SMART Specific Measurable Aggressive but achievable targets Relevant Time-bound

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What about responses? See handout

Example: river water quality A number of policy instruments, such as in situ treatment and water quality

standards, could have positive or negative impacts on the state of the water quality.

Other impacts can come from the effects of municipal taxes driving as urban growth, infrastructure development reducing sewage discharges and food import programmes to compensate for a reduction in fish as a food source.

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Example policy instrument scan for water quality of rivers

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To summarize

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Problem tree analysis: Why?

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Problem tree:Identify the problem

Whose problem? – perceived as such by the communityThe following are the basic steps that should be followed with the community, in

developing the cause-effect analysis leading to the identification of focal problems and their solutions through the problem tree:

1.Identify, define and select specific main problems or undesired situations within the project scope;

2.For each specific main problem selected develop a problem tree;

3.For each problem tree carry out a comprehensive cause-effect analysis of the situation identifying the focal problems;

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Class exercise Draw a tree.

Write the problem on the trunk of the tree.

What are the causes of the problem? social, economic, and political causes including attitudes, behavior, and other factors

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Your methodology Lacking in detail

Examine the questions Detail the tools

See: Livelihoods and Ecosystems Dealing with Complexity in Rural Development and Agriculture Resources and References (on the web)

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Gender and Environment

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Readings for this section Changing women’s roles, changing environmental knowledges: evidence from

Upper Egypt (on the web) Gender and the environment: readings from the book – gender and natural

resource managementplease read chapter 1 , and optional: chapter 2, chapter 7 , and chapter 10

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What is gender? Gender is defined as a “culturally specific set of characteristics that identifies the

social behavior of women and men and the relationship between them” and is regarded as an analytical tool in the study of the socio-economic process.

Gender refers to the socially constructed roles played by women and men and assigned on the basis of their sex. Over time, these roles can change with economic and social developments.

Gender equality implies inclusion and full participation of both men and women in all areas of private and public life. Gender mainstreaming is a strategy to bring gender equality issues into the mainstream of decision-making. Societies tend to have an innate male bias; policies often inadvertently result in gender inequality.

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Theorizing gender and environment Experiences of the environment are differentiated by gender through the

materially distinct daily work activities and responsibilities of men and women. Consequently…

Gender is thus understood as a critical variable in shaping processes of ecological change, viable livelihoods and the prospects for sustainable development.

However

Relational perspectives on gender purport to give greater emphasis to the dynamics of gender, emphasizing power relations between men and women over resource access and control, and their concrete expressions in conflict, cooperation and coexistence over environments and livelihoods.

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Gender and environment Women's Action Agenda 21

effectively linked concerns with women and gender with environmentally sustainable development

both having been traditionally marginal issues on the development agenda

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Why Does Gender Matter?

Seager (1995):

1. Environmental institutions are gendered

2. Individual environmental behaviour is gendered

3. Men and women have different relationships to the environment

4. Environmental degradation has a different impact on men and women

5. Environmental action / conflict / discourse is gendered.

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Gender equality and gender mainstreaming As mainstreaming focuses on gender equality as a goal rather than women

as a target group, women’s development is not viewed as a sector; but rather, equality issues are integrated into sectoral analysis and not confined to isolated programmes.

The main components of an effective mainstreaming capacity include: clarity about and commitment to the goal of gender equality; incorporation of gender issues in the planning and decision-making process; and availability of gender-disaggregated data.

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Since the relationships between increased employment and income, and economic empowerment and gender equality are not straightforward

Therefore: economic activity is not a sufficient condition for gender equality and, not all employment is empowering.

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Gender equality and economic activity Economic equality is definable as “the ability of men and women to support

the same standard of living for themselves over their lifetimes”

increased income for women does not necessarily lead to an improvement in their bargaining power in decision-making

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Gender-aware economic analysis 24

(a) At the macro level -- women’s unpaid labour must be included in the measurement of the size of the economy, in order to account for the total contribution of women to economic output and to assess the opportunity cost of resource transfers between sectors;

(b) At the meso level (Government departments, intermediary institutions, product and factor markets) -- a need to recognize that neither resource allocation processes nor markets are gender neutral;

(c) At the micro level, inequalities within the household regarding divisions of labour and decision-making constrain women’s access to and control over resources and the returns of their labour.

Source: Sally Baden, “Gender issues in agricultural liberalization”, Bridge (development-gender), Report No. 41, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1998, www.ids.ac.uk.

Theoretical reflections on environmental policies and their gender impacts

The disregard of women’s everyday-life

Different patterns of time use

Different share of non-market and market activities

Different kind of work

Environmental policy tends to take women’s time for environmental activities for granted

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Theoretical reflections on environmental policies and their gender impacts

The disregard of the needs of vulnerable groups:

Pregnant women, small children and elderly people are vulnerable groups, women are the main

carers

Risk definitions, threshold limits and critical amounts are oriented to the needs of a middle-aged

healthy man

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Theoretical reflections on environmental policies and their gender impacts

The “feminization of environmental responsibility”:

Women as “nurses to the ill environment”

The burden of environmental responsibility is assigned to women

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Theoretical reflections on environmental policies and their gender impacts

The lack of “shaping power” of women:

Gap between the responsibility for the environment that is assigned to women and their real influence

Lack of shaping power (Schultz/Weller 1995):

What is the shaping power of women? the power to frame problems and fashion solutions, the power to create and shape knowledge, new technologies and environmental strategies and

planning the possibility of influence on decision making processes the possibility of influence on the technical design of products or technologies

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Conclusions for an environmental policy

Environmental policy should (at least)

take into account the different every-day needs of men and women

take into account the different needs of especially vulnerable groups

develop concepts of shared responsibility and

increase the shaping power of women, especially with respect to all forms of decision-making.

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Tools for gender mainstreaming to eradicate the bias inherent in social attitudes and to assess the

contribution of men and women to the agricultural sector, decision makers and analysts must acquire relevant skills through training in gender-sensitive analysis and participatory approaches.

(a) Statistics – designed to include gender-disaggregated data (where relevant) and with appropriate data collection methods; (b) Surveys – to trace current gender relations; (c) Cost-benefit analysis – carried out with a gender perspective in order to weigh the pros and cons of the impact of policies on both sexes; (d) Research – to identify current issues and trends in a specific area; (e) Gender impact analysis – to pinpoint the differences in the impact of specific policies or action plans on men and women.

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gender as relational: involving the interaction of men and women, structured through norms and institutions, reconfigured through individual agency

Work has centered on

gendered property rights (water and land)

gender dynamics in local participation in development programmes and community-based institutions

the micro- and macro-politics of collective action

geographical mobility ; gendered environmental knowledge

livelihoods and resource use ; history

and dynamics of gender in policy discourses and within environmental departments of development agencies

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Gender and Natural Resources Management gender is NOT primarily relevant only within households (a view that is

often stated in mainstream environmental and political ecology research)

gender is salient within policy and practice across a variety of scales, and within institutions central to natural resource governance, from gendered property relations to the gendered positions of actors within organizations charged with governing or managing natural resources.

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Gender in the neo-liberal agenda There are links between economic reform (doi moi), natural resource management

policies and gender in Vietnam, where privatization of coastal aquaculture has brought about a transformation of resource access and control.

Because of gender biases that run through the new institutional arrangements associated with economic reform, this process has built on and reinforced social hierarchies within communities, and converged with a wider reassertion of patriarchal power and family ideologies in Vietnam to create gendered exclusions around access to natural resources.

Despite women's expanded role during the war years, gender biases in the reform process itself, coupled with a revitalization of male-dominated kinship relations, are undermining any gains achieved.

Gendered power is thus multi-scalar and is at work in various ways and at various levels.

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homework Please email me, based on the readings (and you can read more) – how:(1) what

new light/perspective you’ve attained re: gender and environment?(2) what are the many multi-sectoral links between gender and NRM?(3) how it applies/you can apply it to the Arab world?

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‘gender in agriculture and agro-processing in Lebanon.’ UN – ESCWA. 2001 The Beijing Platform for Action (1995), an agenda for women’s empowerment, calls on

Governments and active players to promote a policy of gender mainstreaming.

Gender mainstreaming focuses on gender equality as a goal and not women as a target group.

Inadequate gender-desegregated data is a major constraint to a full understanding of the roles and responsibilities of women in the agricultural sector. Specifically, the data on Lebanon regarding the status of women in agriculture and agro-processing is inadequate and based largely on surveys that vary in their assumptions and use of analytical techniques.

As a consequence, available statistics are often inconsistent and cannot therefore provide a reliable basis of comparison.

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Gender and agriculture – in Lebanon the risk of poverty is higher among rural women than among men.

Usually women have a harder time coping with and overcoming poverty.

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Gender and agriculture in Lebanon: bias in access to resources Women do not buy land and inheriting land, especially agricultural land, is

restricted for women by (sectarian) law and/or by social norms; land ownership is predominantly exclusive to men.

Women’s access to credit is restricted by the unavailability of land title as collateral. Training, extension services and technological innovations do not normally target the needs of women and women are seldom encouraged to participate.

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Gender and agriculture: household income Women tend to spend more of their income on food, education and health.

As traditionally women’s loan repayment rate is higher than men’s, donor agencies and NGOs have actively pursued female clients. Group lending has become a common venue for extending credit in both rural and

urban areas— especially to women. The advantages of group lending include: a reduction in institutional transaction costs; encouragement of the poor—women, in particular—to work in groups for financial and social reasons; and a better repayment record because of peer pressure and group solidarity.

Rural women often supplement the family income by producing dairy products and food preserves.

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Gender and food security the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) maintains that

women play a crucial role as producers of food, managers of natural resources and prime executors of household food security maintaining the three pillars of food security,

food production, access to available food and nutritional security. women often face social, cultural and economic constraints that impair their

ability to carry out this role.

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Gender and food security: obstacles Food production

insecure land tenure, inability to use land as collateral for credit, lower educational level, and insufficient agricultural extension programs geared towards

women farmers

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Gender, poverty and rural development Despite its shrinking contribution to gross domestic product (GDP), the

agricultural sector remains the mainstay of a relatively high proportion of the labour force in Arab countries

Work is defined by The World Women 2000 “the participation of individuals in productive activities for which they either receive

remuneration (in cash or in kind) for their participation or are unpaid because they are contributors to a family business enterprise. It also includes subsistence production of goods for their own households and non-economic activities such as domestic work…”

In Western Asia - 34 % of the female labour force are contributing family workers, and therefore unpaid, as compared with only 7 % of the male working force.

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Gender, poverty and rural development

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Sources of useful data (a) Labour force surveys

(b) Poverty assessments

(c) Household sample surveys

(d) Agricultural censuses

(e) Other sources: studies in international journals, university thesis and research projects may be useful sources of information.

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