Preparation for the Expert Group Meeting – Oct. 6-9, 2008

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The Expert Group on the priority theme will be meeting in Geneva in early October. Here is a summary of the Aide-Memoire for the meeting.

Abstract – Aide-memoire for Expert Group meeting
In accordance with its multi-year programme of work for 2007-2009, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will consider ‘The equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/ AIDS’ as its priority theme during its fifty-third session from 2 to 13 March 2009. The United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) in collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) will convene an Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on this topic from 6 – 9 October 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Commitments on the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/ AIDS have been made at many international meetings. The key statements are reviewed in the full-text of the Aide-memoire and are drawn from the following: the 1994 Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo); the 1995 World Summit for Social Development(Copenhagen); the 1995 Beijing Platform of Action from the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing); the outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-First Century (2000); Agreed conclusions of the Commission on the Status of Women since 1996; The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); the agreed conclusions on the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against the girl child, of the Commission on the Status of Women (2007).

The issues to be discussed:

The Expert Group Meeting (EGM) will examine the issue of equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/ AIDS. For purposes of the discussion, the word ‘responsibilities’ will be used to cover a wide range of activities at the household and community levels. Women and men are assigned different and unequal responsibilities with different and unequal access to the necessary resources to decision-making opportunities to carry out these responsibilities. Women in many societies assume the major tasks at the household level, which in turn, restricts their ability to participate in the workforce and the public sphere. The unpaid care-giving by women and men is very often based on relations of kinship and family, but also takes place through other relations and institutions, such as markets (e.g. domestic workers, nurses, preschool education teachers) and the voluntary/not-for-profit sector (e.g. home-based care networks).
The EGM will explore the causes of unequal sharing of responsibilities between women and men in the public and private spheres and identify its consequences on the structure of the labour market, governance and decision-making at all levels. It will also explore ways to address these consequences and propose policy responses.

It will discuss in detail gender stereotypes and unequal power relations, the unequal sharing of responsibilities between women and men at household level, in the public sphere, the equal sharing of care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS and legislative and policy responses to promote the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men in all areas.

The overall objective of the EGM is to facilitate an exchange between experts on strategies for the promotion of the equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men. Experiences gained, lessons learned and good practices will be highlighted and concrete recommendations developed.

At the moment, the list of experts for the meeting has not been posted. A background paper and papers from the invited experts will be posted on the DAW website and referenced here once they become available.

For full text of the AIDE-MEMOIRE see the Daw Web site.

Summary of DAW online discussion

Summary of OnLine Discussion held this summer on the DAW website:
The online discussion ran for four weeks. Contributions serve as a resource to the work of the Commission on the Status of Women to develop concrete recommendations on the major theme of equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men, including caregiving in the context of HIV/AIDS.

The themes discussed in the first three weeks:
1. Gender stereotypes and equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men in the private sphere

Participants shared a wide consensus that women and girls bear a disproportionate share of household responsibilities, across all cultures and levels of development, and that cultural norms and stereotypes are among the root causes of inequality between women and men….
One consequence of this unequal distribution is that women and girls have less access to resources and income-generating opportunities, with lower income and less time resulting in women also having less say over household labor, resource and income allocation decisions, as well as limited involvement in the public sphere, especially in terms of decision-making…
Both women and men can perpetuate the traditional -and unequal- division of labor between women and men and the gender stereotypes associated with them. Men may resist changes in gender roles because they benefit from patriarchal systems….

2. The effects of unequal sharing of responsibilities on women’s full participation in the public sphere

Very little attention is paid to the social and developmental importance of women’s care work in the household, either in national income accounting systems or in state and community planning. Enhancing data-gathering on women’s participation in the market and household spheres would make for better-informed public policies. Linking knowledge gleaned from gender-aware studies (e.g. time use surveys) to policy-making was somewhat of a gap in the online discussion, partly because many participants were unfamiliar with such efforts….
As women throughout the world have increased their involvement in paid work, there has been very little re-distribution of their unpaid caring and other household responsibilities. This has resulted in what many term the “double” or “triple” burden: with women involved in paid work outside the household maintaining their roles as the primary caregiver within their families. …

In some countries, women have subcontracted out their caring responsibilities by employing foreign domestic workers. In others, higher income urban families employ
low-income women or girls from rural areas to take up this work. This result highlights how the divisions among women, by race, class and nationality, can act as an obstacle to transforming … stereotypes…

3. HIV/AIDS and equal sharing of responsibilities between women and men
As pointed out by a number of participants in the discussion, the very nature of our topic about the split between women and men presumes that all families are headed by a co-habitating male-female couple. Increasingly, this is not the case for countries across the development spectrum, as female-headed households have been on the rise globally, and the proportion of elderly households has risen in the developed world….

And in the last week other issues, wrap up and recommendations for future action were developed.

Key recommendations of participants
A. Education.
Education was by far the most commonly discussed countermeasure to the perpetuation
of the types of gender preferences and norms that maintain the unequal division of responsibilities between women and men, and girls and boys. Formal, informal and grass-roots education were all cited as key to re-directing employers, teachers, health-care workers, parents, spouses, and children-both boys and girls- away from the stereotypes that underlie gender inequality in the private and public spheres.

B. Strengthen men’s and boy’s involvement in care work.
Involving more men and boys in care work will make it more visible, and create more support for women, girls and families. Methods discussed for achieving this goal included: formal and informal education to counter the types of socialization that inhibit men from participating in care work; instituting parental leave for men; encouraging men to become involved in paid care work, including that provided to families infected/affected by HIV/AIDS. Incorporating men in the provision of care would serve as an example and slowly change gender stereotypes….

C. Public policies.
Support caregiving.
Governmental or other types of public institutions should provide social services that support care. Examples include early childhood education (before age five), longer school days, affordable and accessible healthcare, nursing homes and parental leave for BOTH mothers and fathers. Another type of support that States could offer is financial support for caregivers, such as state-sponsored caregiver allowances, pensions, tax incentives, or special benefits for caregivers (e.g. travel, healthcare or food). These types of programs should be designed to avoid creating a sub-class of (women) workers that does little to address the fundamental inequality between women and men in providing care.

Directly raise women’s political participation.
Methods discussed included more public education and advocacy aimed at raising women’s local political participation; quotas or affirmative action in elected and appointed offices (particularly at the local level, where women’s traditional roles in unpaid work are often strongest and can be addressed most directly); and ensuring that the political workplace is “woman-friendly”. In addition, obstacles to women’s full and equal participation in decision-making need to be uncovered and remedied (for example, meeting times (no meetings at night); safe transport to and from meetings; making sure women have equal access to spaces where decisions are taken; creating a political culture that welcomes both women and men).

Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB).
GRB encompasses a number of budgetary activities and analyses which include: comparing program expenditures by their different impacts on men and women; employing time use surveys to understand the relationship between national budgets and household time use; general gender-aware policy appraisal; or using sex-disaggregated data and gender sensitive indicators to assess public program impacts. Means need to be utilized to make GRB more effective as well…

Create multi-level alliances.
While participants often focused on a particular level of public intervention (e.g. community versus local NGO versus national government), some emphasized the importance of linking together the efforts of all of these stakeholders as essential for the success of any program. …

E. Data.
The importance of collecting and publicizing sex-disaggregated data and time use surveys was repeatedly pointed out as essential for raising the visibility of care work, the differences between the amount of unpaid and paid work of women and men, and making more effective public policy decisions.

Areas for more discussion and research
A. Men as caregivers.
Very little is known about the prevalence or needs of single carer households headed by men. Likewise, we might ask whether there are any barriers to men’s participation in care work.

B. The role of the state.
Participants in general recognized NGOs and grassroots groups as social change agents, and as supporters of those infected/affected with HIV/AIDS, than they were about the State…. It would be fruitful to have future discussions on the State as the entity with a unique responsibility for creating an enabling environment for supporting public and private care and for redistributing care resources (e.g., when taxation finances caregiver allowances or defense spending is cut to finance education funds).

For full text of the summary of the online discussion see this site.

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Greetings! On this blog, you’ll find updates to the planning process of the fifty-third Commission on the Status of Women session.

Expect a planning Wiki to be on its way. We look forward to hearing from you.