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UNDER FORMATING     On gender equality and women empowerment: Fundamental Concepts in The United Nations Millennium Project Scientific Task Force Report   Aboubakar YARI & Venus YARI   Abstract   Here we discuss selected topics on fundamental concepts on gender equality and women empowerment as formulated in the report from the Task force on education and gender equality for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. We selected and discussed the topics reversely from last to first. We suggest you read the selected topics in connection with the full report, as formulated by the United Nations Task Forces in reference 1.   1) Gender inequality: a problem that has a solution. Gender inequality is a problem that has a solution.   Two decades of innovation, experience, and activism have shown that achieving the goal of greater gender equality and women’s empowerment is possible. There are many practical steps that can reduce inequalities based on gender—inequalities that restrict the potential to reduce poverty and achieve high levels of well-being in societies around the world. There are also many positive actions that can empower women. Without leadership and political will, however, the world will fall short of taking these practical steps—and meeting the Goal. Because gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions, and market forces, political commitment at the highest international and national levels is essential to institute the policies that can trigger social change and to allocate the resources necessary for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Page 27. [REF 1]   The Biotech tropicana Systems process and technology innovation program is providing our modest contribution toward gender equality, in the resource-poor countries. [REF 2]   [REF 1] Investing In Development:A Practical Plan To Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, at www.xxxxxxx.com [REF 2] The Biotech tropicana Systems at www.bitechtropicana.ucoz.com     2) Gender equality and empowerment of women: The distance between theory and practice.   This report describes practical actions that can be taken within each strategic priority to bring about gender equality and empower women. Within and across sectors, within institutions, and in different country and community contexts, different combinations of these actions have been implemented and shown positive results. The problem is not a lack of practical ways to address gender inequality but rather a lack of change on a large and deep enough scale to bring about a transformation in the way societies conceive of and organize men’s and women’s roles, responsibilities, and control over resources. Essential for that kind of transformation are: • Political commitment by and mobilization of a large group of change agents at different levels within countries and in international institutions who seek to implement the vision of the world. • Technical capacity to implement change. • Institutional structures and processes to support the transformation, Including structures that enable women to successfully claim their rights. • Adequate financial resources. • Accountability and monitoring systems. Pages 20-21;[REF 1] The Biotech tropicana Systems focus our action in providing technical capacity to governments of poor nations of the developing world. [REF 2] [REF 1] Task Force on Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women [REF 2] The Biotech tropicana Systems at www.bitechtropicana.ucoz.com   3) On women empowerment: The Financial Cost   ……….eliminating gender inequality is a multidimensional and a multisectoral effort. For this reason, the financial costs of these efforts are difficult to calculate. An accurate cost analysis is the first step in efforts to mobilize the financial resources needed to implement the various interventions and policy measures that have been proposed. In collaboration with the UN Millennium Project Secretariat, the Task Force on Education and Gender Equality adapted the general needs assessment methodology developed by the UN Millennium Project for estimating the financing requirements of the gender-related interventions. There are several caveats concerning this methodology. First, the needs assessment comprises only some of the actions and strategies necessary to meet the goal of gender equality. Adequate resources alone will not achieve gender equality. Second, a gender needs assessment is possible only at the country level and meaningful only as part of a Goals-based national poverty reduction strategy in which all stakeholders participate. The estimated costs that such assessment yield depend on the interventions to be included, and these need to be locally identified based on nationally determined targets. Third, gender needs assessments should be carried out in conjunction with similar exercises in such other Goals-related areas as education, health, transport and energy infrastructure, water and sanitation, agriculture, nutrition, urban development, and environment. This simultaneous estimation of needs is important to ensure that the total resources capture all gender-related interventions and strategies. The UN Millennium Project approach to assessing the needs for genderrelated interventions follows two tracks. The first track covers gender interventions to meet all other Millennium Development Goals affecting gender equality and empowerment of women, and the second track covers the additional specific interventions to meet Goal 3. The first track includes gender-specific interventions in agriculture, education, health, nutrition, rural development, urban development, water and sanitation, environment, trade, and science and technology. In each area there are interventions that empower women and reduce gender inequality. Three of the seven strategic priorities have been partially included in the needs assessment for specific sectors: postprimary education for girls has been costed as part of the education needs assessment methodology, the provision of sexual and reproductive health services has been costed within the health sector needs assessment methodology, and infrastructure to reduce women’s time burdens has been costed as part of the infrastructure needs assessment methodology. The second track involves estimating the resources for additional specific interventions to meet Goal 3. Examples of specific interventions for Goal 3 that are not costed in any other Goals needs assessment include: • Providing comprehensive sexuality education within schools and community programs. · Providing care services (for children, the elderly, the sick, and people with disabilities) to allow women to work. • Providing training to female candidates in elections at the local, regional, and national level. • Preventing violence against women through awareness campaigns and education, hotlines, and neighborhood support groups. • Strengthening national women’s machineries through increased budgetary allocations and staffing of ministries of women’s affairs and gender focal points in other ministries. • Undertaking institutional reform through sensitization programs to train judges, bureaucrats, land registration officers, and police officers. • Investing in data collection and monitoring activities to track gender outcomes. This needs assessment methodology is now being applied in several countries. The results from Tajikistan, although preliminary, are illustrative. [REF 1] [REF 1] Task Force on Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women   4) On women empowerment: Data collection and progress monitoring   task force suggests several indicators for monitoring progress on the seven Strategic priorities at both the country and international levels. These indicators are intended to supplement, or in some cases substitute for, the indicators chosen by the UN expert group to assess progress during 1990–2015, when the Millennium Development Targets are expected to be met. Although the task force has not recommended the adoption of new international or country-level targets for the seven strategic priorities, countries may wish to set their own quantifiable, time-bound targets for establishing progress on each of the seven strategic priorities. Millennium Development Goal 3 includes four indicators for tracking progress: • The ratio of girls to boys enrolled in primary and secondary education. • The ratio of literate females to males among 15- to 24-year-olds. • The share of women in wage employment in the nonagricultural sector. • The proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments. The indicators proposed for tracking Goal 3 are insufficient to track all seven strategic priorities and suffer from several technical shortcomings. To address these limitations, the task force suggests 12 indicators for countries and international organizations to use in monitoring the progress toward Goal 3 (box 1). At the international level, the task force recognizes the importance of a focal point in the UN statistical system to bring together the various gender indicators and recommends the continuation of the Women’s Indicators and Statistics Database (WISTAT) series, which served this purpose. The Trends in the World’s Women, which was based on WISTAT, should also continue to be published on a quinquennial basis. Pages 17-18. [REF 1] The Biotech tropicana SMARTubtVALUE CHAIN database is designed to contain sex-segregated data applicable in gender equality projects. [REF 2] [REF 1] Task Force on Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women [REF 2] Biotech Tropicana, Inc FACILITATOR/PROJECTS at www.btfacilitator.ucoz.com   5) Ensuring women empowerment in the resource-poor settings: The seven strategic priorities     The concept of empowerment is related to gender equality but distinct from it. The core of empowerment lies in the ability of a woman to control her own destiny (Malhotra, Schuler, and Boender 2002; Kabeer 1999). This implies that to be empowered women must not only have equal capabilities (such as education and health) and equal access to resources and opportunities (such as land and employment), they must also have the agency to use those rights, capabilities, resources, and opportunities to make strategic choices and decisions (such as are provided through leadership opportunities and participation in political institutions). And to exercise agency, women must live without the fear of coercion and violence. To ensure that Goal 3 is met by 2015, the task force has identified seven strategic priorities. These seven interdependent priorities are the minimum necessary to empower women and alter the historical legacy of female disadvantage that remains in most societies of the world: 1. Strengthen opportunities for postprimary education for girls while simultaneously meeting commitments to universal primary education. 2. Guarantee sexual and reproductive health and rights. 3. Invest in infrastructure to reduce women’s and girls’ time burdens. 4. Guarantee women’s and girls’ property and inheritance rights. 5. Eliminate gender inequality in employment by decreasing women’s reliance on informal employment, closing gender gaps in earnings, and reducing occupational segregation. 6. Increase women’s share of seats in national parliaments and local governmental bodies. 7. Combat violence against girls and women. These seven priorities are a subset of the priorities outlined in previous international agreements, including the Cairo Programme of Action and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The recommendations made in these international agreements remain important for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, but the task force sees the seven priorities as areas needing immediate action if Goal 3 is to be met by 2015. Although empowerment and equality should be enjoyed by all women and men, the task force believes that action on the seven priorities is particularly important for three subpopulations of women: • Poor women in the poorest countries and in countries that have achieved increases in national income, but where poverty remains significant. • Adolescents, who constitute two-thirds of the population in the poorest countries and the largest cohort of adolescents in the world’s history. • Women and girls in conflict and postconflict settings. [REF 1] The Biotech tropicana SMARTprspTECHS alleviates complexity of the "empowerment” and "equality” concepts to make them amenable to the poorest areas of the resource-poor settings. [REF 2] [REF 1] Task Force on Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women [REF 2] The Biotech tropicana "LIFE STORE”/PRODUCTS at www.btstores.ucoz.com     6) On gender equality and empowerment of women: achieving goal 3.     How can the global community achieve the goal of gender equality and the empowerment of women? This question is the focus of Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals endorsed by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 and of this report, prepared by the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality. The report argues that there are many practical steps that can reduce inequalities based on gender, inequalities that constrain the potential to reduce poverty and achieve high levels of well-being in societies around the world. There are also many positive actions that can be taken to empower women. Without leadership and political will, however, the world will fall short of taking these practical steps—and meeting the goal. Because gender inequality is deeply rooted in entrenched attitudes, societal institutions, and market forces, political commitment at the highest international and national levels is essential to institute the policies that can trigger social change and to allocate the resources necessary to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.PP_1. Like race and ethnicity, gender is a social construct. It defines and differentiates the roles, rights, responsibilities, and obligations of women and men. The innate biological differences between females and males form the basis of social norms that define appropriate behaviors for women and men and that determine women’s and men’s differential social, economic, and political power. The task force has adopted an operational framework of gender equality with three dimensions: • The capabilities domain, which refers to basic human abilities as measured by education, health, and nutrition. These capabilities are fundamental to individual well-being and are the means through which individuals access other forms of well-being. • The access to resources and opportunities domain, which refers primarily to equality in the opportunity to use or apply basic capabilities through access to economic assets (such as land or housing) and resources (such as income and employment), as well as political opportunity (such as representation in parliaments and other political bodies). Without access to resources and opportunities, both political and economic, women will be unable to employ their capabilities for their well-being and that of their families, communities, and societies. • The security domain, which is defined to mean reduced vulnerability to violence and conflict. Violence and conflict result in physical and psychological harm and lessen the ability of individuals, households, and communities to fulfill their potential. Violence directed specifically at women and girls often aims at keeping them in "their place” through fear. [REF 1] Gender equality and the empowerment of women is a sub component of the Biotech tropicana SMARTprspTECHS poverty reduction stratregy program. Our SMARTprspTECHS are aligned with guidelines and recommendations set forth by the task forces under the United Millennium Development Project. [REF 2] [REF 1] Task Force on Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women [REF 2] The Biotech tropicana "LIFE STORE”; Products at http://www.btstores.ucoz.com/

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