We’re lucky in this country to have a development strategy called Gender and Development (GAD), formulated in the early 1990s, and that since 1998 called on all government departments, agencies, and instrumentalities to devote at least five percent of their total budgets to GAD programs, projects, or activities.
What was the thinking behind this? It was born out of the recognition that development was limping along on one male leg, and that the female half of the population was less productive in conventional economic terms, under-represented in most sectors of public life, and in general, living situations of inequality with men.
The GAD strategy, therefore, aimed to unlock women’s potential for “nation building” as the landmark 1992 law called it.
Now how to go about doing this is the tricky part, starting with dismantling barriers to women’s full and equal participation, designing support systems and activities, and including the liberation of men from old, unproductive and/or biased mindsets and behaviors.
A social revolution in short, and difficult, as the need to move towards new ways of being is often hard to understand and appreciate.
Government agencies and departments are obliged to have a GAD component in their respective total budgets, and often need help to identify GAD interventions, not being schooled in gender analysis or in GAD budgeting to determine what to charge either fully or partially to their GAD budget component.
To help them navigate this process, they have the help of a Provincial GAD office. Thus, the recently- drafted Annual Investment Plan of the Province listed many excellent initiatives for women’s economic empowerment, health, education, gender-based violence interventions, and even sports development.
However, a number of projects that were questionable, with budgets fully charged as GAD, slipped in.
How does the establishment of a hospital storage area for infectious wastes and body parts contribute to women empowerment? Or how does a perimeter fence, a barangay road, many waterwork system improvements, electrification, and a boardwalk in tourism sites, or the purchase of CBC reagents, for example, increase women’s capacity to participate in nation- building?
In most cases or if at all, only a partial attribution to GAD might be considered, even if compliance could be argued. After all, if the GAD policy didn’t exist, these are tasks the government would have to do anyway.
The problem in all this is that resources in the tens of millions are budgeted in this way which could be used for programs and projects that could more directly produce the positive GAD impacts intended by this policy.
For example, one crying need is for strong programs that address the sad reality that the Philippines has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in the Asean region, disrupting young lives, creating burdens for families, perpetuating poverty and underdevelopment.
Comprehensive programs are needed for rural women often living in more difficult situations than their urban sisters.
Programs are needed to raise men’s levels of understanding and cooperation on the gender issues that created the disparities that the GAD strategy seeks to address.
Programs are also needed for men struggling with issues of alcohol abuse or a propensity for acts of violence.
The Province should also have a more comprehensive sex -disaggregated database.
Responsiveness and impacts should be key, and not only compliance at whatever level.
Towards this end, discussions will be held among stakeholders to try to map out projects and programs for a more substantive GAD component in the Province’s next Annual Investment Plan.
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Author’s email: h.cecilia7@gmail.com
