WomenWatch
Transcending Difference: The United Nations Role
By Sherin Saadallah

UN Photo

One of the most pervasive challenges of development at the turn of the twenty-first century continues to be poverty. The eradication of poverty is a priority within the agenda of national governments, donors and multilateral institutions, especially United Nations organizations, as well as a host of dynamic actors that have gained responsibility for development, and agencies for specific issues within a globalizing world system. It is beyond need to substantiate that women are among the most hard-ridden by poverty, constituting the majority of the world’s poor. This transforms them into the main target group for poverty eradication programmes, strategies and projects. While there is a global commitment to eradicate poverty, the international community should strive to recognize the special needs of women as a focus group and underline the inhibiting factors that are against their being free from the burden of poverty due to gender inequalities and structural factors.

Social values and norms usually set gender roles within a specific cultural context. Thus, gender roles and the levels of inequality vary cross-culturally and from one country to the other. It is the case, however, that some of the basic factors enhancing poverty in general include the limited access to resources-the lower the level of education and awareness, the higher the competition for value services, such as health and nutrition - where women, together with children, figure as the most vulnerable group due to gender differences and inequality. In addition, the way poverty affects women is inherently different from men; hence, in order to bring women out of poverty, it is important to initiate policies and strategies for their empowerment through development that address their specific needs and grievances. Empowerment should be sought as a transforma-tive strategy for poverty eradication.

Poverty, however, is a multidimensional, non-uniform phenomenon. In seeking a comprehensive, holistic definition of poverty that will reflect its multidimensional nature, the human poverty model is based on the “deprivational approach”, in contrast to the “conglomerate approach” adopted in human development analyses of poverty. Such a definition would be in line with major international resolutions for action and assessments.

In line with the Millennium Declaration objectives on development and poverty, the “human poverty” approach and index - introduced within the context of the 1997 United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report - have constituted an inclusive (even though not exclusive) framework. The human poverty approach hereby advocates the definition of poverty as per factors, including living standard, education and literacy, longevity, economic provisioning, and access to health and safe water. In its more extended definition, human poverty includes variables, such as the lack of political freedom and personal security, inability to participate in decision-making and in the life of a community, and the threats to sustainability and intergenerational equity. Thus, its fundamental characteristic, as generally reflecting “basic deprivations in choices and opportunities”, should be taken as given by the United Nations in trying to reach a comprehensive approach to poverty eradication. Other dynamic variables emanating from this framework, such as sector and gender variance, global inequalities and culturally defined variance that lead to different patterns of deprivation, constitute the baseline when analyzing the shape and nature of women’s empowerment, especially within the transformative framework.

Within a likely analytic approach to poverty eradication, one of the most comprehensive frameworks favoured is targeting gender inequality and the empowerment of women. However, empowerment does not occur in a vacuum, and the provision of an “enabling environment” through development efforts is a pre-requisite and a medium for the realization of such an objective. While departing from the classic tradition of assigning development on dynamics of interaction based on the materialist paradigm of “class actors”, the targeted approach should extend to include “non-class actors”, defined as “those groups in society that transcend class lines; most important among them are religious, ethnic or gender-based groups, as well as the single-issue social movements”, and the role of social transformation in enhancing women’s empowerment and capacity to overcome poverty. Within a changing global system, it is very important to revise strategies and policies that aim at poverty eradication. While the incidence of poverty is still high, its pattern is different and its definition has become multiple.

Furthermore, as Z. Oxaal and S. Baden confirm, [Gender and Empowerment, Brighton: Institute for Development Studies, 1997], “adopting women’s empowerment as a policy goal in development organization implies a commitment to encouraging a process of more equitable distribution of power on personal, economic and political levels”, and hence an ameliorated vulnerability to poverty and its structural causes and effects for women as a focus group.

UNICEF Photo/Pirozzi

Gender variance in relation to incidence of poverty to the detriment of women is too strong a sign to ignore. Women are a vulnerable group, in need of an international effort that does not undermine their right to a humane existence, free of the burdens of poverty. The United Nations has always played and continues to play an important role in eradicating poverty. A greater role, however, has to be played by the UN system and organizations for the most hard stricken, namely women. But how can we speak of a poverty eradication plan of action targeting women as a focus group? Even if this seems an unrealistic presumption, the ability to increase the sensitivity to the specific needs of the “women poor” is a possibility, notwithstanding a mission. This may basically be implemented through the incorporation of a gender dimension within the parameters of policy and frameworks for development designed to eradicate poverty. Development may be a key factor, but development without empowerment - and in this case women’s empowerment - shall only deliver half the goals.

With a concerted will for action, the United Nations role in bringing women out of poverty shall be greatly enhanced if the following recommendations are included within its strategy, policy frameworks and development activities:

• The growing need to identify macroeconomic and microeconomic strategies, which tackle causes leading to the gender incidence of poverty, to the detriment and disadvantage of women when compared to men, while targeting gender desegregated economic and developmental policy assessment and evaluation;
• Developing policy, strategies and development frameworks that address the discrepancy in the access to resources resulting from gender-differentiated factors, while enhancing the role of non-class actors (civil societies) in reinforcing the effects of targeted institutional, policy and structural changes that will enhance women’s empowerment, and the access to “choices” and “opportunities” that target poverty eradication;
• Assessing and evaluating the financial performance of different economic models for growth, while attempting to identify those complemented by functional strategies in eradicating poverty that tackle the special status of women along the poverty line;
• Reviewing and enhancing policy and economic strategies and plans, which will allow for the evaluation of women’s unpaid work (e.g. work in the field, rural areas, family-managed business, etc.). Finding possible methods for adding monetary value mechanisms to this important variable within more comprehensive frameworks that address poverty eradication;
• The inclusion of a gender component in all poverty eradication policies, ensuring that the special needs of women are addressed. This shall entail a level of gender mainstreaming, such as ensuring tackling of traditional constructs, and non-class forces and actors reinforcing gender inequality in an original atypical manner;
• The empowerment of women through facilitating their equitable access to resources, choices and opportunities, while ensuring a level of institutionalization and policy changes favourable to gender equality in poverty eradication programmes that may cede a trickle-down effect at the societal level;
• Reaching a level of commitment from member countries to mainstream gender in all national poverty eradication plans and strategies;
• Creating mechanisms for women’s involvement in policy, strategy and decision-making processes that affect their life chances, and access to choices and opportunities throughout their life cycle. This may be supplemented by converting the concept and ethos of women and development to women development per se, thus highlighting the necessity to focus on women’s empowerment and development in particular, in relation to ceding opportunities for the rational use of resources and value services, such as education and health (equally between the sexes), to reach gender equality. Male involvement is a requirement within this process as promoters of women’s development and partakers in attitudinal change that would enhance gender equality; and
• Facilitating the deeper involvement of intra-State and transnational civil society in the process and dynamics of women’s empowerment, especially non-class actors as enhancers for the “enabling environment”, such as women NGO groups advocating a woman-friendly change, empowerment strategy and poverty eradication programmes.

Sherin Saadallah, a PhD candidate at the Institute for International Education at Stockholm University, is an expert in gender and development at the Foundation of Women’s Forum (Kvinnoforum), Sweden.