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The electronic version of this document has been prepared at the Fourth
World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in collaboration with the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women
Secretariat.
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AS WRITTEN


UNITED NATIONS FOURTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON WOMEN
Beijing, 4 - 15 September 1995

Speech by Vice President Peter H. Sullivan
Asian Development Bank

Madam Chair,
Excellencies,
distinguished delegates,
ladies and gentlemen.

On behalf of the Asian Development Bank it is my great pleasure to
address this Fourth World Conference on Women. I join the other speakers
in commending the United Nations Secretariat and the China Organizing
Committee for the splendid arrangements they have made, and thank the
Government of the People's Republic of China for its hospitality as the
host for this event.

The Asian Development Bank is pleased to have been associated with our
member countries in Asia and the Pacific Region in the preparatory work
for this Conference together with the Economic and Social Commission for
Asia and the Pacific. These regional preparations culminated in Jakarta
in June 1994 with the adoption of the Jakarta Declaration for the
Advancement of Women in Asia and the Pacific by the Meeting of Ministers.
The Jakarta Declaration is significant in that it recommends each
government adopt, at the national level, appropriate time-bound and
quantitative targets in each area identified in the Declaration to
accelerate the attainment of the objectives of the Nairobi Forward-
Looking Strategies.

Equality, Development and Peace—the themes of the Nairobi and Beijing
Conferences—coincide with the Asian Development Bank's medium-term
strategic development objectives of economic growth; poverty reduction;
improvement in the status of women; human development; and sound
management of natural resources and the environment. These strategic
objectives are all prerequisites to achieving equality, development and
peace.

Inspired by the heightened awareness generated during the United Nations
Decade for Women and the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies, the ADB, in
1985, prepared and adopted a policy on the "Role of Women in
Development." The Bank's Women in Development policy integrates gender
considerations into all aspects of Bank operations.

In our developing member countries (DMCs), people constitute the
country's main —and most important—resource. Women, of course, account
for approximately half the population. To ignore their needs and
potentials means neglecting and overlooking half of each country's human
resources. The Asian Development Bank recognizes that to achieve the
goals of equitable and sustainable development, women cannot be ignored
and need to be overtly placed on the development agenda of the region.

Aside from recognizing the need to focus directly on women for reasons of
equity and “good development practice”, the Bank knows that its other
objectives, such as poverty reduction, increased income and production,
development of a healthier and better educated workforce, reduction in
population growth and overall sustainable development, cannot be achieved
without increased attention to the needs, concerns and contributions of
women. The increasing recognition of the direct links of expanded
opportunities for women, especially in education and income-generating
activities, with reduction in population growth, improved heath and
education of children, easing of environmental pressures, improved
nutrition, poverty reduction and sustainable development has made it
imperative to seriously address the advancement of women.

It is paradoxical that the Asia-Pacific region is the most dynamic and
rapidly growing region in the world, and yet its women remain among some
of the most disadvantaged in the world. The Asia-Pacific region is
forging ahead at an impressive pace of economic growth. Unfortunately,
the same cannot be said for the large numbers of women who continue to
live in poverty, are illiterate and suffer from poor health,
malnutrition, and low economic and social status. Literacy rates for
females remain as low as 16 per cent in some countries; equally low rates
apply to female school attendance and participation in post-secondary
education. Only 10 per cent of women participate in the formal labor
market, although they make a major contribution to the informal labor
market and to agricultural activities. There is evidence of high rates of
maternal mortality; limited access to safe water and heath services; and
increasing poverty. Women suffer from anaemia; too many births with
inadequate child spacing; long hours of arduous agricultural work; and
walking long distances to fetch water and firewood.

Economic growth in the region has admittedly led to some gains for women,
especially in the areas of education and health. Major improvements in
women's access to education and health services are reflected in the
rapid decline in fertility and mortality rates. But the overall plight of
women in the Asia-Pacific region is lagging behind the economic progress.
It remains unacceptable and must be overcome. Aside from the chronic
problems, new problems are emerging such as: the feminization of poverty;
female child prostitution; exploitation of female child labor; female
infanticide; sex tourism-induced prostitution; exploitation of migrant
women workers; female homicide; and increasing threat and risk of
HIV/AIDS. The significant role that women play in the economic
development of their countries and their contribution to the economic
survival of their famines need to be recognized and rewarded: without the
economic contribution of women, the economic growth experienced in many
parts of Asia would not have been possible. Likewise, without the
economic contribution of women to families, even larger numbers of people
in the Asia-Pacific region would be in poverty today.

The time has come for the Asia-Pacific region to pay its debt to the
women of the region. Greater investments in women's education, health and
income-generating opportunities are urgently required, as well as
improvements in women's social and political status. It is time for the
Bank and its DMCs to take more serious efforts and greater strides
towards achieving an overall improvement in women's economic, social and
political status.

It is now 20 years since the first 'United Nations World Conference on
Women' in 1975 drew world attention to gender issues, and 10 years since
the adoption of the 'Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies for the
Advancement of Women Towards the year 2000.' We have gathered here in
Beijing to look back and appraise the achievements and failures of the
last two decades, assess what still needs to be done and make a
commitment to accelerating the advancement of women by the year 2000. The
contribution of women in Asia and the Pacific Region has to be overtly
acknowledged; their potential enhanced; their needs and concerns
addressed; and specific measures instituted to respond to their unequal
economic, social and political status. This gathering is a conference of
action—as is evident in its title—Action for Equality, Development and
Peace. Action in the form of concrete measures is needed to bring the
vision of the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies well within the reach of
the countries in the Asia-Pacific region by the 21st Century.

The Bank, for its part, is committed to improving women's economic and
social status, both within the Bank and in its DMCs. Over the last two
years, the Bank has increased its number of women professional staff by
more than fifty per cent, and the effort to increase the percentage of
women among the professional staff, which constitutes only 12 per cent,
is continuing. The Bank itself still has a long way to go towards
achieving the desired gender balance and gender equity.

In regard to our DMCs, the issue of “women in development”—or WID—
received an added boost in 1992 when it was included as one of the Bank's
five Medium-Term Strategic Development Objectives alongside overall
economic growth, poverty reduction, human development (including
population planning), and sound management of natural resources and the
environment. The inclusion of WID as one of the five Bankwide strategic
development objectives has led to a refocussing of direction and a
qualitative shift in emphasis from a focus on project-specific activity
to “mainstreaming” activities.

The early initiatives of the ADB largely focussed on stand-alone women-
targeted projects and specific women's components in selected projects—
mainly in the agriculture and social sectors. The inclusion of WID as one
the five Bankwide strategic objectives means that women's development has
been elevated and included as part of the Bank's overall development
agenda. Greater emphasis is now placed on incorporating gender
considerations into all aspects of the Bank's operations, including
gender analysis in the Bank's country operational strategy studies and
country assistance plans. Women in development-related analytical work in
economic and sector studies is being promoted, as is gender analysis in
all projects, including those in the so-called “hard” sectors—for
example, physical infrastructure. Attempts are being made to encourage
and ensure that women and development concerns are not dealt with in
isolation or marginalized and compartmentalized. Instead, we are trying
to ensure that the needs and concerns of women are considered
systematically in all our program and project activities.

For example, the potential impact on women of our program loans is now
considered to ensure that any likely negative impacts are removed or
eased by building in appropriate safety nets. We are learning that the
rapid advances in technology and industrial production, the transition
from centrally planned to free market economies, and the increasing power
of global financial markets are impacting differently on men and women.
There is some evidence that the rapid economic and social changes may be
affecting women more severely and adversely—especially poor women.

The Bank's country operational strategies that are formulated for each
individual DMC now include information that clearly identifies and
elaborates on how the Bank intends to promote women's development in the
country. Each study deals with the likely negative effects on women of
the overall country strategy that is formulated, and suggests ways to
alleviate such effects. Women in development country briefing papers are
prepared as background documents for guiding our operations in these
countries. To date, Women in Development Country Briefing Papers have
been prepared for 18 of our DMCs and a further 5 are currently under
preparation. The inclusion of gender considerations in the Bank's
macroeconomic work is seen as the key to ensuring that gender issues are
systematically addressed in all Bank operations, since it is the country
operational strategy that sets the stage for future Bank activities in
the developing member country.

Beyond this, the ADB is providing greater assistance to its developing
member countries to improve the status of women through projects designed
to increase the opportunities for women to earn income and to obtain
credit, and gain improved access to education and health services. Some
examples of investment projects that have specifically targeted women
include two NGO Microcredit Projects in the Philippines for a total of
$38 million, approved in 1988 and 1991, that provided credit through
accredited NGOs to disadvantaged rural dwellers, including women, for
micro and cottage industries; a Microcredit for Women Project in Nepal
approved in 1993 for $5 million, which will similarly provide credit to
women for agricultural production and cottage industries; a Women's
Health and Safe Motherhood Project in the Philippines for $54 million
approved in 1994, which will accelerate the rate of improvement in
women's health by providing services that will reduce morbidity and
mortality among women, especially during pregnancy; and a Primary
Education for Girls Project in Pakistan, for $64 million, approved in
1989 which provides increased educational opportunities for rural girls
through the provision of 800 Community Model Schools for girls.

Examples of regional technical assistance grants directed to assist women
include: a project on Education of Women in Asia approved in 1992 for
$500,000, which reviewed the status of women in education in Bangladesh,
Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia and Pakistan and recommended strategies for
advancing women's access to and participation in education; a project on
Regional Initiatives in Social Development and Women in Development
approved in 1994 for $310,000 and administered by ESCAP, which assisted
the DMCs to undertake regional preparatory activities for the Fourth
World Conference on Women; a study to Review the Performance of WID and
Poverty Reduction Efforts in Bank-Financed Projects for $40,000, approved
in 1994, which focussed on devising improved approaches to the design and
implementation of future Bank projects with WID and poverty reduction
components; and a study entitled Addressing Poverty Reduction and Gender
Issues through Human Resources Development, approved in 1994 for
$450,000, which will review the situation of human resource development
in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands and Sri Lanka and develop
operational interventions to address poverty reduction and gender issues.

Regional technical assistance projects to be financed on a grant basis
and directly focussing on women currently under preparation include: a
Low-income Women Entrepreneurs in Asia project for $600,000, to be
implemented by Women's World Banking, which will focus on building the
institutional capacity of local-level women's organizations (WWB
affiliates) and will provide financial, technical and marketing services
and training to low-income women entrepreneurs in the informal sector in
Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet
Nam; and a Socio-Legal Status of Women in Selected DMCs project which
will assess women's legal status in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines
and Thailand and develop strategies towards improving such status.

In the area of country-specific technical assistance directed at women's
issues, some examples include: Seminars in 1990 to Promote Awareness of
Women's Role in Rural Development, to assist Malaysia's rural development
planners and other government officials; and a project for Institutional
Strengthening of the Women's Division of Department of Religion, Home
Affairs and Youth in Papua New Guinea, approved in 1992 for $575,000, to
assist the Government's Women's Division in implementing PNG's National
Policy on Women. Similar technical assistance grants for Institutional
Strengthening of Women's Divisions were approved in 1993 for Indonesia
($600,000); the Republic of the Marshall Islands ($250,000); Vanuatu
($50,000); and in 1994 for Cambodia ($546,000); and Tonga ($100,000).
Technical assistance grants have also been provided to establish and
strengthen databases on women, such as a Socio-economic Database Study in
Fiji for $100,000 approved in 1993; a Gender-Disaggregated Database
System in the Philippines for $220,000 approved in 1992; and a Database
for Gender-Disaggregated Statistics in Western Samoa for $100,000
approved in 1994.

Still, we believe our efforts in the area of women in development have,
so far, been only modest. Let me reiterate that both the Bank and its
DMCs need to do more for women if we are to achieve the gaols of
equitable and sustainable development. Much remains to be done before the
Asia-Pacific region can claim to have achieved the objectives of
equality, development and peace established for the United Nations Decade
for Women and elaborated in the Nairobi Forward Looking Strategies.

Over the next five years, the Asian Development Bank will increase its
activities and program of assistance to promote improvements in the
economic, social and political status of women. We aim to increase the
allocation of resources to women's education, heath care, employment,
income generating activities and access to financial services—including
credit. Aside from projects directly targeting women, we will also
increase our assistance to enhance the welfare of women through the
provision of social services including education, health care, water
supply, sanitation and housing. This will be done through expanding these
services and more effective targeting.

The Bank's shareholders, who are from both developing and developed
member countries, decided in 1993 that the Bank must aim to achieve a
portfolio mix of approximately 50:50 between the number of traditional
growth projects and those addressing social and environmental concerns.
This project-mix is likely to make more resources available to projects
that directly target and focus on improving the status of women in our
region.

Translating the Platforms of Action into concrete, country-specific plans
and programs will be a formidable challenge for our DMCs. The Asian
Development Bank will assist its developing member countries in preparing
strategies and action plans to implement the Global Platform of Action
that is expected to be adopted at this Conference and the Jakarta
Declaration for the Advancement of Women in Asia and the Pacific. We also
pledge to support the efforts of our member countries to implement
national plans of action by providing resources for projects and programs
designed to meet the gaols and targets set for women well into the 21st
Century.

Madam Chair,
Excellencies,
distinguished delegates,
ladies and gentlemen,

the Asian Development Bank is committed to extending assistance to women.
I am certain this historic Conference will contribute to our better
understanding of the challenges we are facing, and yield practical
recommendations for future action. We wish you all greatest success in
this important endeavor and look forward to the results of your findings.