Development Issues and the Ethiopia Situation Chapter 6.ppt
1. Chapter Six
Gender and Environmental
Development in Ethiopia
Kassa T. (PhD)
Department of Development Economics
Ethiopian Civil Service University
Email: ktshager@yahoo.com
Telephone: +251911346214
3. Concepts of Gender
• Gender refers to the socially determined ideas
and practices as to what it means to be female
or male.
• In different societies, there are different sets of
rules, norms, customs and practices by which
differences between males and females are
translated into socially constructed differences
between women and men, boys and girls.
4. • These culturally determined gender identities
define rights and responsibilities and what is
‘appropriate’ behavior for women and for men.
• This often results in the two genders being
valued differently, often reinforcing the idea
that women are inferior and subordinate to
men.
5. • Gender refers to socially constructed difference
between male and female. In the society there is
unequal treatment of male and female. For instance
– Male is
• Head of the household
• Manage and control household resources
• Engaged in farming
• Make contractual agreement
– Female
• Child caring
• Food preparation
• Treatment of husband
6. Sex and Gender
Sex Gender
Biological
At birth
Universal (everywhere)
Can’t change naturally
- Only women can give
birth and breastfeed the
children
Social
Result of trained or
educated
Various (different from
societies to societies,
cultures to
Can be changed over
time
- Women can become a president
- men can take a good care of
children
7. • Gender equality means equal opportunities,
rights and responsibilities for women and men,
girls and boys.
• Equality does not mean that women and men
are the same but that women’s and men’s
opportunities, rights and responsibilities do not
depend on whether they are born female or
male.
• It implies that the interests, needs and priorities
of both women and men are taken into
consideration.
8. • Gender inequality represents an enormous
injustice and violation of the rights of half the
world’s population.
• Gender inequality is responsible for a huge
loss of human potential, with costs for men as
well as for women.
• An understanding of the structures that
perpetuate gender inequality and the processes
through which such inequality is manifested is
critical for the formulation of development
policies and programmes.
9. Facts on women’s status
• The following are the major facts of women’s status
– 66% of the world’s illiterate people are women.
– Women provide 70% of the unpaid time spent in
caring for family members. This unpaid work
provided by women is estimated at US $11 trillion
per year – one third of the global GDP.
– Women own 1% of the land in the world.
– Women’s participation in managerial and
administrative posts is around 33% in the
developed world, 15% in Africa and 13% in Asia
and the Pacific.
10. – There are only 5 female Chief Executives in the
‘Fortune 500’ corporations, the most valuable
publicly owned companies in the US.
– Worldwide, only about 14% of members of
parliament are women. 7% of the world’s cabinet
ministers are women.
– In the UN System, women hold 9% of the top
management jobs and 21% of senior management
positions, but 48% of the junior professional civil
service slots. (Source:UN,2003)
11. Benefits of focusing on gender
• Some benefits from focusing on gender in development
– Positive changes in gender relations and more
respectful social attitudes towards women
– More decision-making and political participation by
women in the community
– Women’s increased knowledge of their legal rights
– Greater likelihood that girls would stay in school
– Reduced violence against women
12. – Improved communication and mutual support
between men and women on family planning, HIV
and other sexually transmitted infections
– Increased knowledge by men of women’s health
care issues
– Shifts in attention about shared roles and
responsibilities between men and women in
childrearing, labor, and reproductive health issues
13. Overview of Gender Policy Approaches
• There has been various policy approaches applied in
solving gender inequality. The major ones include the
following:
– Women in Development (GID)
– Women and development (WAD)
– Gender and development (GAD)
14. Women in Development(GID) - Liberal
Feminists (a school of thought )
Liberal Feminists form of feminist theory,
which focuses on women’s ability to maintain
their equality through their own actions and
choices.
Liberal feminists argue that society holds the
false belief that women are, by nature, less
intellectually and physically capable than men;
thus it tends to discriminate against women in
the academy, the forum, and the marketplace.
15. What is the connection between gender and
development?
• In the 1960s and 1970s, two international
concerns emerged:
1.Women’s movements for equal rights
2.Criticisms of development processes.
16. 1. Equal Rights for Women
• Women’s organizations,
especially in North
America and western
Europe, mobilized to
demand:
– equal legal rights
– expanded access to jobs
and other economic
resources a voice in
government policies
– shared responsibility by
men for household work
and child care
17. 2. Development Processes Criticized
• Economists, governments and international
organizations (IOs) defined development primarily in
terms of traditional measures, such as increased Gross
National Product (GNP) and the degree of
industrialization.
• Even when the GNP went up, millions of people
remained poor, and gaps between urban and rural
people and men and women often widened.
18. • Also, although GNP measures the sum of all
goods and services produced by a country’s
nationals, the statistics used often do not
reflect productive activities that are especially
important for women, who may work, for
example, primarily in subsistence agriculture.
19. United Nations Development Decades
The FIRST UN Development Decade (1961-70)
The First UN Decade did not emphasize gender roles,
but in 1962 the General Assembly directed the
Commission on the Status of Women to report on the
role of women in the development plans of member
governments
The SECOND UN Development Decade (1971-1980)
The Second UN Decade called for incorporation of
women into the total development effort
20. • The convergence of Women’s issues and
Development problems led to the growth of the
“Women in Development” (WID) field of study and
policy advocacy.
• WID advocates argued that:
– the benefits of development had not reached
women;
– in some economic sectors women’s position was
undermined;
– women should be integrated into the design and
implementation of development programs
through legal and administrative changes.
21. • WID advocates sought to change development
practices by pushing governments and international
organizations to:
– include women in development projects
– respond to specific concerns and problems of
women
22. • The Women in Development approach - the
belief was that women had not only been left
out of development but had also become even
more disadvantaged as a result.
• The Women In Development approach
believed the central issue to be the absence and
exclusion of women from development
programs and approaches.
23. • Women played a central role in the life of their
community and particularly within their family
as mothers, educators, care providers and as
workers.
• This approach supported the solution of
integrating women into development programs
in order to improve women’s access to
resources and their participation in
development.
24. • Lucille Mair, Secretary-General of the 1980 Copenhagen
conference summarized the growth of WID:
– Women had been a missing link in development, now they were being
found; they could actually be a valuable resource, indeed were half, or
more, of a nation’s human resources, no longer to be wasted.…
– The prospect of steering women from the margin to the mainstream
was as exciting to some would-be developers as to female recipients
of such policies and programs.
– “Women in Development” became the Decade’s overnight
catchphrase, a seductive one (attractive/catch eyes) , which for a time,
at least, could avoid the question of what kind of development women
were to be drawn into.
25. Contribution of WID:
• The emphasis on incorporating women into
development processes succeeded in:
1. focusing attention on the shortcomings of development
policies practiced in the 1950s and 1960s;
2. expanding the documentation, including sex disaggregated
data, on women’s roles in economic and social systems;
3. establishing goals and plans for improving women’s status
around the globe;
4. increasing the representation of women in official
government positions
5. changing many inequitable laws that discriminated against
women;
6. mobilizing women at the grassroots level around the world.
26. • Critique and Limits of WID:
– Accepted traditional liberal economic theory about the nature of
development;
– Assumed women were not already integrated into economic production
– Influenced by American feminism: accepted existing social and political
structures
– Assumed all women had common problems and interests;
– De-emphasized the family and community contexts affecting women’s
activities;
– Often resulted in separate projects for women apart from broad
development programs;
– Non-confrontational, thus failed to transform the fundamental status of
women.
27. – This approach made demands for women’s inclusion in
development, but it did not call for changes in the overall
structure or economic system in which women were to be
included.
– The WID approach concentrated very narrowly on the
inequalities between men and women and ignored the social,
cultural, legal and economic factors that give rise to those
inequalities in society.
– WID focused on women almost exclusively and assumed
that women were outside the mainstream of development.
28. Women and Development
Emergence of WAD Approaches
• Emerged from a critique of the modernization theory and the WID
approach in the second half of the 1970s
• The theories and policies that emerged from this rethinking became
known as “Women and Development” (WAD).
Theoretical base :
• Draws from the dependency theory
Focus:
• Women have always been part of development process-therefore
integrating women in development is a fairy story/untruth
• Focuses on relationship between women and development process
29. • The Women and Development approach arose in
opposition to WID in the latter part of the 1970s and argued
that women had always been part of the development
process, where the work women undertook both inside and
outside the household was vital to the survival and
continuance of society.
• WAD saw both women and men as being disadvantaged by
the global economic structures, including class issues and
the way wealth was distributed.
• WAD therefore argued that the integration of women into
development was to their disadvantage and only worsened
their chances of equality.
30. Contribution:
• Accepts women as important economic actors in their
societies.
• Women’s work in the public and private domain is
central to the maintenance of their societal structures.
• Looks at the nature of integration of women in
development which sustains existing international
structures of inequality.
31. Limitations:
• Fails to analyze the relationship between patriarchy, differing
modes of production and women’s subordination and
oppression.
• Discourages a strict analytical focus on the problems of
women independent of those of men since both sexes are
seen to be disadvantaged with oppressive global structure
based on class and capital.
• Singular preoccupation with women’s productive role at the
expense of the reproductive side of women’s work and lives.
• Assumes that once international structures become more
equitable, women’s position would improve.
• WAD doesn't question the relations between gender roles
32. • This approach was criticized for assuming that
the position of women would improve if and
when international structures became more
equitable, thereby underplaying the role of
patriarchy and not adequately addressing the
question of social relations between men and
women and their impact on development.
33. Gender and Development (GAD)
• Criticism of the limits of WID led to new ways of thinking about
development in the 1980s and 1990s.
• Represents a coming together of many feminist ideas.
• The theories and policies that emerged from this rethinking became
known as “Gender and Development” (GAD).
Theoretical base:
• Influenced by socialist feminist thinking.
Focus:
• Offers a holistic perspective looking at all aspects of women’s lives.
• It questions the basis of assigning specific gender roles to different sexes
34. GAD approaches argued that:
• Development processes in poor countries or less-
developed countries (LDCs) were deeply influenced by
the inequitable structures of the international
economic system.
• Women have always been integrated into
development processes, but those processes
essentially flawed.
• Men, as well as women, are hurt by development
programs that do not alter repressive class, ethnic, and
racial structures.
35. • One cannot assume women’s solidarity across class
and racial lines, but patriarchal values and institutions
may oppress women in every social-economic
category.
• Development policies should not isolate women’s
productive or reproductive roles: they are intertwined
in women’s lives.
• Women are agents of change and must organize
politically.
• Successful development does not “target” women, it
empowers them.
36. • It very obviously looks at the impact of development on
both men and women – supporting the equal
participation of both women and men in development
and emphasizing equality of benefit and control in
everyday events.
• GAD is not concerned with women exclusively, but
with the way in which gender relations allot specific
roles, responsibilities and expectations between men
and women, often to the detriment of women.
37. • GAD focuses on the social or gender relations
(division of labor etc.) between men and women
in society and seeks to address issues of access
and control over resources and power.
• It emphasizes both the reproductive and
productive role of women and argues that it is the
state’s responsibility to support the social
reproduction role (mostly played by women) for
caring and nurturing of children.
38. • GAD treats development as a complex process
that is influenced by political, social and
economic factors rather than as a state or stage
of development.
• This approach is about empowering those who
are disadvantaged in a community and
enhancing and changing their lives for the
better.
39. • “Empowerment” is a relatively new term for
the long-standing recognition that women and
disadvantaged men must be organized to
make a difference in the structures of power
that confine them to secondary status
• Empowerment may be defined as:
A process through which women and men in
disadvantaged positions increase their access to
knowledge, resources, decision-making power, and
raise their awareness of participation in their
communities, in order to reach a level of control over
their own environment (World Food Program, 1998).
40. • Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
helped to organize women at the local and
regional level.
• By the 1990s, NGOs seeking to empower
women from the local to the international
level had organized in nearly every country of
the world.
• Their importance has been acknowledged in
international NGO forums that have paralleled
the United Nations conferences on women.
41. • Most governments have established women’s
commissions or bureaus to help formulate policies to
improve the legal, political, economic and social status
of women.
• The success of these policies may be seen in the
Gender Empowerment Measure.
• Global conferences contributed to a more powerful
recognition of the crucial role of women in sustainable
development, environmental issues, and human rights.
42. Major International Conferences
Rio Conference 1992
• The Rio de Janeiro conference on the environment and development
(1992) acknowledged women’s roles in protecting the environment,
and the special impact of environmental degradation on women.
Vienna Conference 1993
• The Vienna conference on human rights (1993) included “women’s
rights as human rights”.
Cairo Conference 1994
• The Cairo conference on population and development (1994)
addressed women’s needs for access to health, maternal care, and
family planning facilities.
Beijing Conference 1995
• The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995) built on
earlier international conferences, national government efforts, and
lobbying by NGOs to develop gender-sensitive strategies in its
Platform for Action.
43. Contribution
• Does not exclusively emphasize female solidarity-
welcomes contributions of sensitive men.
• Recognizes women’s contribution inside and
outside the household, including non-commodity
production.
• It gives special attention to oppression of women
in the family by entering the so called `private
sphere’
• It emphasizes the state’s duty to provide social
services in promoting women’s emancipation.
44. • Women seen as agents of change rather than as
passive recipients of development assistance.
• Stresses the need for women to organize
themselves for a more effective political voice.
• Recognizes that patriarchy operates within and
across classes to oppress women
• Focuses on strengthening women’s legal rights,
including the reform of inheritance and land laws.
• It talks in terms of upsetting the existing power
relations in society between men and women.
45. Practical Gender Needs and Strategic
Gender Interests
Practical needs:
• Short-term, immediate (e.g. clean water, food, housing, income)
• Unique to particular women (i.e. site specific)
• When asked, women can identify their basic needs.
• Involves women as beneficiaries/participants
• Problems can be met by concrete and specific inputs, usually
economic inputs (e.g. water pumps, seeds, credit, employment)
• Is potentially successful in ameliorating the circumstances of some
women
46. Strategic interests :
Long-term
• Common to all women (e.g. vulnerability to physical violence, legal
limitations on rights to hold or inherit property, difficulty of gaining access
to higher education)
• Women are not always in a position to recognize the sources or basis of
their strategic disadvantages or limitations
• Solutions must involve women as active agents
• Must be addressed through consciousness raising, education and political
mobilization at all levels of society
• Improves the position of all women in a society
• Has the potential to transform or fundamentally change one or more
aspects of women's lives. This is called 'transformatory potential' of the
project/policy
47. Women in Ethiopia
• From her birth, an Ethiopian female in most
families is of lower status and commands little
respect relative to her brothers and male
counterparts.
• As she grows older, she is valued for the role she
will play in establishing kinship bonds through
marriage to another family, there by strengthening
the community status of her family.
• She is taught to be subservient, as a disobedient
daughter is an embarrassment to her family.
• Low status characterizes virtually every aspect of
girls’ and women’s lives.
48. • Given the heavy workload imposed on girls at
an early age, early marriage without choice,
and a subservient role to both husband and
mother-in-law, girls and women are left with
few opportunities to make and act on their
own decisions.
49. Ethiopian National Policy of Women (ENPW)
• The constitution articulates on the rights of Women and gave special
emphasis to women’s’ rights. It constituted that women are entitled
to:
– have equal rights with men in the enjoyment of the rights and
protections guaranteed by this Constitution to all Ethiopians,
– have equal rights with men in respect to marriage,
– have the right to the benefit of affirmative action undertaken for
the purpose of introducing corrective changes to such heritage.
– be free from the influence of harmful customary practices.
– maternity leave with full remuneration.
50. – demand that their opinions be heard on matters of national
development policies, on plan and project implementation and in
particular, on projects affecting their interests.
– acquire, administer, control, enjoy and dispose of property.
– They shall, in particular, have equal rights with men regarding
the use, transfer, administration and control of land. They shall
enjoy the same rights with men with respect to inheritance.
– right of access to education and information on family planning
and the capability to benefit thereby so as to protect their good
health and prevent health hazards resulting from child birth
51. • Ethiopian National Policy of Women (ENPW), which was issued
in 1993, is targeted at the following major aims (NPOW, 1993):
– Facilitating conditions conducive to the speeding of equality
between men and women
– Facilitating the necessary conditions whereby rural women can have
access to basic social services and to ways and means of lightening their
work load; and
– Eliminating step by step, prejudices as well as customary and other
practices that are based on the idea of male supremacy and enabling
women to hold public office and to participate in the decision making
process at all levels.
• National action plan on gender (NAP) was formulated specifically
to put the commitment to gender mainstreaming
52. • The Goal of the Action Plan is to contribute towards the Attainment of
Equality between Men and Women in Social, Political and Economic
Development, and can specifically be used to:
– Engender the PASDEP and all other government policies and programs
– Sensitize development planners and to hold them accountable for
gender equality
– Monitor and evaluate government's and other stakeholders'
commitment to gender equality
– Promote gender budgeting
– Build the capacity of civil servants who are mainly responsible for the
implementation of the plan
– Recognize women's overall contribution to development
53. Environment and Development
• The two are inseparable, why???
• Environment can be defined from different
perspectives: economical, biological, etc.
What is Environment?
• Our Environment is our surrounding.
• This includes living and non-living things around us.
The non-living components of environment are land,
water and air.
• The living components are germs, plants, animals
and people.
54. • From economic perspective, it is a set of all
factors with which a living subject interacts,
and of all surroundings which encompass it
• From biological view, it is the surroundings of
an organism or a species, eventually the
ecosystem in which an organism or a species
lives
• In general, environment is a system which
provides natural surroundings for the
existence of organisms (including humans)
and which is a prerequisite for their further
evolution.
56. Environment and Economic Growth
• There were two broad argument about environment and economic
growth:
– Substitute
– Complementary
• The traditional idea of "the limit to growth" developed by Meadow
et al. (1972) shows the effect of economic growth on the
environment in terms of a trade-off.
• This idea is based on two reasons: the limited capacity of natural
environments to receive the waste generated by the economic
system; and the finite nature of exhaustible resources.
57. • The critics of the limit to growth points to a number of
reasons why there may not be the limit to growth after all.
Among these reasons are:
– positive and increasing income elasticity for environmental
quality;
– changes in the composition of production and consumption;
– increasing levels of education and environmental awareness;
– technological progress; and
– more open political systems.
58. The “Environmental Kuznets Curve”(EKC)
• Kuznets estimated the relationship between economic development
and the distribution of income.
• As economies develop, economic inequality rises, then falls.
• A similar relationship has often been found between economic
development and pollution (environmental degradation).
• Suggests that environmentalists’ concerns about the consequences of
economic development could be wrong.
• After sufficient economic growth, income and environmental quality
improve together.
59.
60. What lies behind the EKC?
• Industrialization and agricultural modernization initially lead to increased
pollution
– Pollution is a by-product of most productive activity
– For the poor, income may be a higher priority than pollution control
– Limited regulation, inadequately enforced (poor public administration,
corruption)
– Ill-defined legal rights (property rights, tort law, etc) provide little
scope for legal redress for victims
– Use of old technology (second—hand machinery and vehicles, etc)
involves more pollution (originally built to weaker standards than now,
and then poorly-maintained)
61. • Environmental sustainability is ensuring the needs of the
present generation without compromising environmental
carrying capacity for the future generation.
• Maintaining environmental sustainability needs not only to
limit pollution but also to ensure eco-efficiency in meeting
the needs of the present generation.
• Sustainable development is “Development that meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland
Report, 1987)
62. Sustainable Development is maintaining a
balance between the human needs to improve
lifestyles and feeling of well-being on one hand,
and preserving natural resources and
ecosystems, on which we and future
generations depend
Improving the quality of life while living within
the carrying capacity of ecosystems
63. Dimensions of sustainable development - the 3-pillar model
SOCIAL
WELFARE
ECOLOGICAL
INTEGRITY
ECONOMIC
DEVELOPMENT
Equity &
Efficiency
Carrying
capacity
Habitability &
Accessibility
Sustainability
SOCIAL ECONOMIC
ENVIRONMENTAL
64. • Protect the environment and at the same time fulfill
economic and social objectives
• Operational criteria:
– Economic objectives should not be maximized without
satisfying environmental and social constraints
– Environmental benefits should not be maximized
without satisfying economic and social constraints
– Social benefits should not be maximized without
satisfying economic and environmental constraints
65. Environment policy in Ethiopia
• Environmental regulations are rules and requirement that
generally cover two things: Pollution control and conservation
management.
• These rule and regulation have their own direct and indirect
impact on private and public investment in developed and
developing countries.
• Effective environmental regulation is integral to
– successful markets,
– an essential ingredient of a vibrant, modern economy.
66. • Unregulated markets would be chaotic, unfair
and unlikely to deliver what people want –
safe, reliable products and a clean environment
in which to live and work.
67. • Objective of environment policy in particular are aimed at:
– Ensuring that essential ecological process and life support
system are sustained biological diversity is preserved and
renewable natural resource are used.
– Improving the environment of human settlement to satisfy
the need of their inhabitants on a sustainable basis.
– Preventing the pollution of earth, air and water.
– Ensuring the participation of the people at all levels in
environmental management activities.
– Raising public awareness on environmental issues.
68. • Various policy and strategies measure has been undertaking
by GoE to promote environmental protection in Ethiopia.
– Environment policy-1996
– Setting up environmental protection agency
– Ethiopian Program of Adaptation on Climate Change
– Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) Strategy
69. The development of a green economy
• The CRGE initiative follows a sectoral approach and aims at
overcoming the challenges of developing a green economy.
• This strategy focuses on four pillars that will support Ethiopia’s
developing green economy:
– Adoption of agricultural and land use efficiency measures
– Increased GHG sequestration in forestry, i.e., protecting and re-
establishing forests for their economic and ecosystem services including as
carbon stocks
– Deployment of renewable and clean power generation
– Use of appropriate advanced technologies in industry, transport, and
buildings
70. Reflection
• What is the practice of the environmental
policies in Ethiopia? What are the
implementation gaps?
