| Description and
overview of the Directorate:
- The operational framework The new AU dispensation
vis-à-vis promotion of gender equality heralds a new era
in the way gender issues are thenceforth to be managed on the
continent, and goes a long way towards valorizing efforts and
initiatives in this regard. Article 4(1) of the Constitutive Ac
mandates the Union to function in accordance with the principle
of “promotion of gender equality”, and, according
to Article 8 of the Statutes of the Commission of the Union, ultimate
responsibility for gender mainstreaming within the Commission
lies with the Chairperson. To facilitate execution of this mandate,
Article 12(3) of the Statues provides that a mechanism “shall
be established in the Office of the Chairperson to coordinate
all activities and programmes of the Commission related to gender
issues”. The Women, Gender and Development Directorate,
(Gender Directorate) is that mechanism - it is the vehicle via
which the Commission advances the principle of gender equality
through gender mainstreaming.
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- Rationale and general objective
To date the women of Africa, like women elsewhere, have not been
included as full, equal and effective stakeholders in processes
that determine their lives. For example, women continue to have
less access to education than men; they continue to have less employment
and advancement opportunities; their role and contribution to national
and continental development processes are neither recognized nor
rewarded; they continue to be absent from decision-making; and,
although they bear the brunt of conflicts, women are generally not
included in peace negotiations or other initiatives in this regard.
The general objective of the gender programme of
the AU is to redress the inequities inherent in such a situation,
and thereby ensure that women and men have equal access to factors
needed for their equal and unhindered participation in development
and other processes that shape and define their conditions of life
and work.
- Programmatic thrust and activities
The AU gender programme involves both stand-alone women’s
empowerment programmes, as well as programmes to incorporate gender
into all the activities of the Commission. In this regard, the
Gender Directorate has a two-fold approach to its work. First,
a women-targeted women-in-development approach which recognizes
that women are starting from a more disadvantaged position than
men, and, therefore, seeks to remove the obstacles that women
suffer. This is in order to empower women so as to enable them
to compete on a level of equality with men. The second is a more
holistic, all-encompassing gender-and-development approach, which
seeks to ensure that women are part of mainstream activities as
equal stakeholders with men.
The first approach involves activities that
include specialist women’s empowerment programmes such
as women and education; women and health; women and poverty
eradication; women in agriculture; women, trade and the economy;
women in the peace process; women in politics and decision-making;
the gender dimensions of ageing, and women within the NEPAD
process, among others..
The second approach involves activities directed at ensuring
that the Commission takes gender into consideration in all its
work, so that the needs of both women and men are taken into
consideration across the whole spectrum of AU activities, so
as to enable both men and women to benefit equally.
In other words, both the women-in-development
and the gender-and-development approaches being adopted by the Gender
Directorate are informed by and drew from the African and Beijing
Platforms for Action.
- Core functions
In line with the preferred approach of the gender
programme of the Commission, the core functions of the Gender
Directorate are: gender mainstreaming; coordination; advocacy;
policy; performance tracking, monitoring and evaluation; gender
training and capacity building; research; communication, networking
and liaison.
This is in addition to the specialist programmes
that are undertaken within the women’s empowerment framework
in line with the need to even out the playing field that is currently
disproportionately skewed in favour of men, as already indicated
above.
In undertaking its work, the Gender Directorate
continues to follow-up on, and consolidate, activities that have
been successfully pursued by the OAU in the past. These include,
among others, the AU Policy Framework and Plan of Action on Ageing;
the Draft Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’
Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa; the Addis Ababa Declaration
on the Eradication of Harmful Traditional Practices; the African
Women Committee on Peace and Development; the Plan of Action on
Enhancing the Participation of Refugee, Returnee and Internally
Displaced Women and Children in Post-Conflict Reintegration, Rehabilitation,
Reconstruction and Peace Building; and the Kampala Declaration
and Plan of Action on the Empowerment of Women Through Functional
Literacy and Education of the Girl-Child.
In undertaking its work, the Gender Directorate
also continues to place emphasis on partnership, both internally
within the Commission, and externally with the other stakeholders.
Externally, this involves outreach activities directed at bringing
in more actors to buy into and push the continental gender agenda
forward, thereby making the gender programme of the Commission
both more grounded and more relevant to the actual needs of its
constituency. Internally, such an approach entails ensuring that
whatever programmes the Commission offers to its Member States
and other stakeholders are already engendered by the time they
leave the Commission, so that the Commission leads by example,
as it should.
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