Introduction to Week 3 discussion
Topic 3 theme: "Examining Policy Gaps - how to bridge the gap between transport policy and gender policy and translating policy into practice"
Dear colleagues,
Welcome to the third week of gatnet’s Gender and
Transport discussion. I am called Nite Tanzarn, your moderator for this
week’s discussion. The
discussions over the past two weeks have confirmed that transport can
play a central role in promoting gender equality and equity and that if
transport
interventions are to be effective, they have to take gender into
consideration. One of the concerns that came out of the discussions was
that transport is many times not responsive to gender.
Many countries are signatory to international instruments such as the
UN
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), the Beijing Platform of Action, the Millennium Development Goals,
and Commonwealth Plan of Action on Gender and Development all of which
are intended to promote gender equality and equity as well as women’s
empowerment. These global commitments have been translated into practice
at the national level through operational and legal frameworks including:
national gender policies, national action plans on women, national
machineries for mainstreaming gender, gender sensitive constitutions and
gender statutes. Some countries have gone a step further and translated
these global and national commitments to gender equality and equity into
practice in the transport sector.
However, there is concern that these policy commitments to gender, by
the
transport sector, remain paper tigers and “evaporate” during
implementation.
This week’s topic focuses on “Examining policy
gaps: how to bridge the gap
between transport policy and gender policy and translating policy into
practice”. The discussion will be handled at two levels:
i) I have designed a short questionnaire click here
that should take you not
more than 10 minutes to fill. The purpose is to examine the policy gaps
and
to enable comparisons across countries; and
ii) an interactive discussion focusing on the following:
1. How can gender be made explicit and verifiable at institutional and
operational levels including phases of transport policy formulation?
2. How can gender sensitivity be translated into action at planning as
well
as the project level?
3. What lessons have been learnt from experiences of mainstreaming gender
in
other sectors in general, and the transport sector, in particular? What
are
some of the good practices that can be replicated in, or adapted/adopted
by
the transport sector?
4. What are the challenges of mainstreaming gender in the transport sector?
How can these be addressed?
Just to add my voice to Eric’s, one week is insufficient to discuss
any of
these issues but since we have started the discussion going, we hope we
shall be able to keep up with the momentum.
PS. ICT failed me. Our server was down so I could not send out my message
in
time.
Nite Tanzarn
Email: ntanzarn@ss.mak.ac.ug,
tanzarn@yahoo.co.uk
