4th Asia-Pacific
Urban Forum in Hanoi (12-14 October 2005)
Symposium E: Gender Equality
Symposium E looked at good practices in promoting gender equality.
The deliberations were not limited to education1
but also addressed a variety of other gender issues and their
implications for different MDGs. Presentations were made by Ms
Felomina H. Duka, Secretary General of the Huairou Commission,
on the Local-to-Local Dialogue Initiative of the Huairou Commission
and by the President of Hanoi Women’s Union, Ms To Yen Khanh,
on Hanoi’s policies and strategies for promoting gender
equality.
Ms Duka introduced the Local-to-Local Dialogue Initiative of
the Huairou Commission. In 2003-2004, the Commission in partnership
with UN-HABITAT initiated a methodology in which grassroots women’s
groups enter into dialogue with local authorities towards formalizing
and institutionalizing community and women’s participation
in local decision-making to ensure a more transparent, accountable
and effective distribution and utilization of local resources
for basic service delivery and other priority areas. Among the
outcomes of these dialogues were so far the promotion and implementation
of the Gender and Development Code in Quezon City, the creation
of village Women’s Desks, the appointment of DAMPA2
leaders as focal persons for women concerns in villages, a breast
examination programme targeting 17,000 women, as well as the provision
of classroom buildings for more than 1000 students.
Next, Ms To Yen Khanh spoke on the measures that Hanoi City had
taken in recent years to further gender equality in the fields
of education and training, employment as well as leadership. These
included collecting gender disaggregated data, providing economic
opportunities for women, conducting training courses on leadership
skills and gender, increasing the quality of comprehensive education
through upgrading facilities and conducting teacher training,
media campaigns related to women cadres’ work, and disseminating
role models.
The achievement record of Viet Nam was quite remarkable. By June
2005, for example, 100 per cent of the women below 40 were literate
and 35 per cent of all postgraduates in the city were female.
Besides, from 2001 to 2004 the rate of female unemployment had
decreased from 7.6 per cent to 6.5 per cent. Sixty percent of
all loans were given to women and 100 per cent of poor women-headed
households had access to credit. Moreover, women constituted about
one third of the members of the People’s Council on city,
district and commune level. However, the majority of women were
still engaged in low paid and unstable work. Other challenges
that remain were: gender stereotypes and a preference for boys,
a high abortion rate, domestic violence, trafficking in women,
and HIV/AIDS transmission.
Following the presentations, participants compared the strengths
and weaknesses of formal government institutions with those of
grassroots organizations and discussed the need to look at different
budgeting strategies such as gender budgeting or the Filipino
budget allocation of 5 percent to see which was more effective
under which conditions. An innovative “nationalization”
of Millennium Development Goal 3 was reported from Viet Nam: ensuring
that the names of both husband and wife jointly appear on land
documents had been set as one of the country’s targets.
Notes: 1. The MDGs concentrate on eliminating gender
disparity in educational enrolment. 2. A grassroots organization in the Philippines
comprising 95 member organizations and an estimate of 136,500
individuals.
