Gender Equality Mainstreaming Digest – November 2017 Issue
Here are the highlights of this month’s Gender Equality Mainstreaming Digest! Click HERE for the full version.
Image from Transformations display by Ontario Council for International Cooperation. Transformations is an award-winning collaborative photojournalism project intended to increase dialogue and further understanding of international partnerships that address complex global challenges. See below for more info.
Highlights:
Opportunities and Upcoming Events:
New e-learning course on ‘Open Data and Research Data Management in Agriculture and Nutrition’ – The GODAN Action network will soon be delivering a new e-learning course on ‘Open Data and Research Data Management in Agriculture and Nutrition’. The course will run from the 13th November to 8th December 2017, and is open to infomediaries, policy makers, administrators, project managers, researchers and scientists working in the area of agriculture. This e-learning course aims to strengthen the capacity of data producers and data consumers to manage and use open data in agriculture and nutrition. One of the main learning objectives is for the course to be used widely within agricultural and nutrition knowledge networks, in different institutions. The course also aims to raise awareness of different types of data formats and uses, and to highlight how important it is for data to be reliable, accessible and transparent.
Registration is now open until 5th November.
Gender Summit in North America – Do you want your company to benefit from gender and diversity? It’s been shown that gender diversity has a positive effect on team innovation, relationship building and financial performance.
Plan to attend the Gender Summit on November 6-8, 2017 – Montreal, Canada. The conference theme is EMBRACING PLURALISM AND THRIVING THROUGH DIVERSITY – SHAPING SCIENCE AND INNOVATION. Why should you participate?
- Develop national, regional and global communities as agents of change.
- Develop evidence-based consensus on the actions needed and the ways of implementing them in specific national or regional contexts.
- Demonstrate positive effects of gender balance and gender diversity in research and innovation process.
- Demonstrate how integrating gender dimension in research and innovation content improves quality of results and outcomes.
- Promote gender aware solutions to societal problems, e.g. urban quality; human adaptation and climate change; food security; transport and mobility.
This Month’s News:
G7 SCIENCE MINISTERS’ COMMUNIQUÉ, Turin, 2017 – Some key components of the communiqué related to gender:
We recognise that researchers provide a crucial contribution to the socioeconomic growth of our societies. We commit to supporting our research communities, in particular women, youth and other underrepresented groups, through training, motivating others to follow. Researchers can help promote the advancement of knowledge and diffusion of new technologies throughout our societies and economies, so as to allow people and firms from all sectors to take full advantage of the benefits of innovation.
We recognize the need of expanding women’s participation in science and innovation, and reaffirm the importance of the actions agreed at the G7 Science and Technology Ministers’ Meeting in Tsukuba in 2016 on this topic. In order to have female researchers further participate and lead in science and innovation, we acknowledge the importance of promoting institutional changes and policy environments where women enjoy equal opportunities to develop and make full use of their abilities and advance their career prospects.
Women-Led Farming Model Wins 2017 United Nations Equator Prize – The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) recently announced the winners of the 2017 Equator Prize, recognizing 15 local and indigenous communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The 15 winners were selected from a pool of 806 nominations across 120 countries for protecting, restoring, and sustainably managing nature to achieve local sustainable development. Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) in Maharashtra, India, won for its unique, women-led, and climate-resilient agroecological farming model.
Operating at the nexus of gender, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture, SSP trained and supported 20,000 women to engage as farmers, entrepreneurs, and leaders during 2016 alone.
Research and impact studies in SSP’s programmatic areas show that when women are supported as decisionmakers and innovators, there are multiple spin-offs: women farmers go beyond their farms and embrace the larger goal of community leadership while protecting natural resources such as water, trees, and biodiversity.
Transformations – Transformations is an award-winning collaborative photojournalism project intended to increase dialogue and further understanding of international partnerships that address complex global challenges. Through individual and organizational stories, the Ontario Council for International Cooperation invites you to actively engage in a new narrative on international cooperation and solidarity. See Transformations photos from Nepal, Tanzania, and Peru.
Reports Publications and Resources:
Energizing Equality: The Importance of Integrating Gender Equality Principles in National Energy Policies and Frameworks – A recent report, Energizing Equality: The Importance of Integrating Gender Equality Principles in National Energy Policies and Frameworks, found that nearly one-third of national energy policies and frameworks include gender considerations. Of the 192 energy plans, policies, and strategies from 137 countries studied, more than 60 percent do not mention women or gender at all. Almost all that did—57 out of 61–come from developing countries, with sub-Saharan Africa leading the way with 32 frameworks.
The report, which was produced by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Gender Office in collaboration with ENERGIA and with support from USAID, analyzed data from IUCN’s Environment and Gender Information (EGI) platform to identify unrecognized opportunities to advance a gender-responsive approach within the energy sector’s policy and planning design.
The report shows that women and men have distinctly gendered roles in the production, distribution, and utilization of energy in households and markets. The report finds that these impacts on women’s lives are reflected in many of the energy frameworks of developing countries, which cite cross-cutting issues like energy poverty, where women have limited access to and options for fuel; time poverty, where lack of energy access limits women’s available free time; and the negative impacts of both on women’s health and wellbeing.
Rising energy prices—which increase the costs of transport, heating, cooling, and electricity–also affect women and their families in developed countries.
The Impact of Fair Trade on Gender: A review of research evidence 2009 -2015 – One of the identified impacts of fair trade is on gender equality: Enhanced gender equality and intergenerational sustainability in rural communities. [pg. 12] See Chapter 9. “In conclusion, evidence of Fairtrade impacts on gender equity tend to derive more from qualitative studies and to focus on women’s voice and role in governance structures rather than on differential economic impacts on women. Some studies have found direct benefits to women producers in terms of increased recognition of land ownership, membership of associations and access to better prices. Much of the evidence suggests that improvements in the voice and role of women within producer organisations and hired labour situations resulting from adherence to Fairtrade Standards may be more formalistic in nature, and that such requirements may struggle to impact on actual gender norms and power relationships. Existing gender norms in the communities and cultures in which Fairtrade operates also has an important role in determining the impact of Fairtrade on gender equity.” [pg. 39]
Canada urgently needs to diversify in science, tech, engineering and math: report – Stereotypes represent a major challenge to getting more women into male-dominated fields like science, technology, mathematics and engineering, known collectively by the acronym STEM, according to a new report released by Ryerson University.
The Faculty of Science at Ryerson University and the Canadian Science Policy Centre are delighted to release the report “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: Forging Paths to Enhanced Innovation”. This report highlights key insights and unveils action-oriented, effective strategies that leverage EDI in STEM to advance innovation in Ontario. These findings are from the May 29th roundtable which was among the first ever in Ontario to facilitate dialogue, share knowledge and seek best practices among various sectors.
The State of Food and Agriculture Report 2017 – The 2017 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture has been released. This year, the theme of the report is “Leveraging food systems for inclusive rural transformation”.
The new report looks at how population growth, increasing urbanization, technologies, and climate change are transforming rural and urban areas, and how the world’s food systems are evolving. The report concludes that fulfilling the 2030 Agenda depends crucially on progress in rural areas, which is where most of the poor and hungry live today, and outlines a strategy for how agriculture and rural economies in developing countries can provide prosperity.
The Gender Equality Mainstreaming (GEM) Working Group of the Agricultural Institute of Canada gathers information and articles on an ongoing basis on gender equality mainstreaming within agriculture, scientific research, rural development, climate change, organizational development and international development. The views and opinions presented are not necessarily representative of AIC.
Back issues of the GEM Digest are available here.