scholarly journals Gender equality in European Union development policy: incorporating women’s voices or confirming hierarchies?

Afrika Focus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Debusscher

This paper examines gender mainstreaming in European Union (EU) development aid towards Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim is to detect how gender (in)equality in Sub-Saharan Africa is framed by the EU by critically assessing the nature and range of the differences between EU and civil society framings of gender (in)equality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the method of Critical Frame Analysis, 28 EU programming documents have been analysed and compared to 10 civil society texts on gender equality. I conclude that the EU’s approach to gender mainstreaming in its development aid towards Sub-Saharan Africa is to a large extent integrationist and predominantly instrumentalist as it is framed as a way of more effectively achieving existing policy goals. The more transformative issues that are put forward by Sub-Saharan African civil society organisations do not t within the EU’s dominant development paradigm that is focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals and does not signficantly challenge gender relations or power structures. The gap between the analysed civil society views and those expressed by the EU can be explained by the EU’s reluctance to include in its policy drafting the promotion of gender equality by civil society organisations. Moreover, the gap seems to have both practical and ideological grounds. Key words: gender equality, European Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, development policy, civil society, millennium development goals, critical frame analysis 

Afrika Focus ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-45
Author(s):  
Petra Debusscher

This paper examines gender mainstreaming in European Union (EU) development aid towards Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim is to detect how gender (in)equality in Sub-Saharan Africa is framed by the EU by critically assessing the nature and range of the differences between EU and civil society framings of gender (in)equality in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the method of Critical Frame Analysis, 28 EU programming documents have been analysed and compared to 10 civil society texts on gender equality. I conclude that the EU’s approach to gender mainstreaming in its development aid towards Sub-Saharan Africa is to a large extent integrationist and predominantly instrumentalist as it is framed as a way of more effectively achieving existing policy goals. The more transformative issues that are put forward by Sub-Saharan African civil society organisations do not fit within the EU’s dominant development paradigm that is focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals and does not significantly challenge gender relations or power structures. The gap between the analysed civil society views and those expressed by the EU can be explained by the EU’s reluctance to include in its policy drafting the promotion of gender equality by civil society organisations. Moreover, the gap seems to have both practical and ideological grounds.


Author(s):  
Vera Lomazzi ◽  
Isabella Crespi

The exploration of the development of the gender mainstreaming strategy and its effect on, European legislation concerning gender equality, from its beginnings to today is the aim of this chapter.The focus is on the role of the European Union in promoting substantive equality for men and women improving legislation in the European Union context and favouring a cultural change in the gender equality perspective. Gender mainstreaming is analysed as the main legislative and cultural shift done for promoting gender equality in all European policies. Gender mainstreaming legislation requires the adoption of a gender perspective by all the central actors in the policy process and, even considering its limits and blunders, and is still the most crucial transnational strategy currently in existence that promotes gender equality in all domains of social life. The legislation enquiries raised at the beginning of the gender mainstreaming implementation process in the EU around 1996 focused on the potential role of the EU in bridging the gap between formal and substantive equality, until nowadays and most recent guidelines, are the issues of the discussion in the chapter.


Author(s):  
Petra Debusscher

Promoting gender equality in EU development aidThe European Commission combines specific funds for women's empowerment with gender mainstreaming in its twin-track approach to gender equality in development aid policies. The strategy is successful in terms of budgets and formal appearance but it is implemented in a limited, interest-guided and expertbureaucratic manner. Furthermore by privileging EU interests the strategy fails to address the needs of the poorest developing countries and it ignores civil society concerns. In practice, the twin-track strategy severely limits the transformative potential of gender equality policies.


2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 325-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigit Obrist ◽  
Iddy Mayumana ◽  
Flora Kessy

In various parts of Sub‐Saharan Africa, malaria is endemic in areas where rain‐fed agriculture implies seasonal mobility from villages to paddy fields. Contributing to the small but growing literature on livelihood and malaria, this article examines the ways in which social actors mobilise, combine and transform capitals on the household and community levels to obtain malaria treatment. It emphasises the structuring force of cultural capital and argues that farmers of the Kilombero Valley in Tanzania develop a remarkable resilience to malaria. However, in spite of all their efforts, the web of resilience they are able to create remains rather weak and should be strengthened through intersectoral collaboration between government and civil society organisations and innovative interventions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek W. Willis ◽  
Nick Hamon

Background: Ambitious goals have been set to eradicate malaria by the year 2040. Given the high poverty levels and the intense levels of malaria transmission in sub-Saharan Africa, suppressing malaria in rural agricultural communities in these regions will be one of the greatest challenges to achieving malaria eradication. This study has two objectives. The first is to estimate how eradicating malaria by 2040 would affect agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa. The second is to identify where additional research is needed to develop better estimates of how eradicating malaria by 2040 would affect those households. Methods: Using agricultural census data and malaria morbidity data, we developed estimates of the number of malaria cases in 2018 among agricultural households with fewer than 10 hectares of land for 35 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. By combining these estimates with additional evidence from the literature, we analyzed how achieving malaria eradication by 2040 would affect indicators related to four Sustainable Development Goals: health, poverty, education and gender equality. Results: Our analysis found that achieving malaria eradication by 2040 would prevent approximately 841 million cases of malaria and thereby decrease the number of lost workdays among agricultural households by approximately 3.2 billion days. Eradicating malaria by 2040 would also increase the number of school days attended by children by 1.5 billion days while also reducing the number of caregiving days provided by women for malaria cases by approximately 1.1 billion days. Conclusions: This article analyzes the impact of eradicating malaria among agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa using indicators related to four of the Sustainable Development Goals. Enhanced data collection efforts related to these four indicators would facilitate more rigorous estimates of how eradicating malaria would affect these indicators over the next two decades.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek W. Willis ◽  
Nick Hamon

Background: Ambitious goals have been established to eradicate malaria by the year 2040. Suppressing malaria in rural agricultural communities in sub-Saharan Africa represents one of the greatest challenges to achieving malaria eradication given the poverty and high intensity of malaria transmission in these regions. The objective of this study is to examine how suppressing malaria among smallholder agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa over the next two decades will affect progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.Methods: Using agricultural census data and malaria morbidity data, we developed estimates of the number of malaria cases among smallholder agricultural households for each country in sub-Saharan Africa. Using these estimates as well as additional data from the literature, we analyzed how achieving malaria eradication by 2040 would affect indicators related to four Sustainable Development Goals: health, poverty, education and gender equality.Results: Our analysis found that achieving malaria eradication would prevent approximately 1 billion malaria cases and thereby decrease the number of lost work-days among agricultural households due to malaria morbidity by approximately 3.8 billion days. Eradicating malaria by 2040 would also increase the number of school days attended by children by 4.5 billion days while also reducing the number of caregiving days by women for malaria cases by approximately 1.9 billion days.Conclusions: This article analyzed the impact of eradicating malaria among smallholder agricultural households in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of four of the Sustainable Development Goals. Greater recognition of the non-health benefits of achieving malaria eradication could catalyze the agricultural sector to intensify their contributions to eradicating malaria.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUIS MAH

Abstract The European Union (EU) is one of the world´s leading donors in official development assistance (ODA) to give a strong weight in the relationship with recipient partner countries, in particular with those that are more dependent on it. Besides the material weight of its funding, the EU has retained historical ties and influence in diplomatic, political and economic terms in many of its ODA recipient partner countries (particular in Sub-Saharan Africa). Since the 2000s, the EU development policy has not only undergone major structural changes in its institutional framework but also has started to face a new international aid scenario. This paper explores why a normative-based EU development policy is being challenged by reformed EU institutions and a new global order, and how the EU is attempting to respond to this context in face of the deepest recession since the end of the Second World War.


Author(s):  
Kh. Rionidze

The topicality of this issue is related to the fact that the EU is founded on a set of values, including equality. Nowadays the attitude towards women in the society is significantly different from that of men. Unfortunately, inequality does not decline over time. The basic idea of gender equality is to provide both women and men with the same rights, opportunities and conditions for full-fledged development. The article is devoted to the dimensions of the principle of gender equality in the European Union, which is important for Ukraine due to the conditions of European integration. The dimensions of gender equality cover the political, economic, civil, social and cultural spheres of our live activity, including achieving gender equality in employment, equal pay for equal work, gender balance in decision making, harmonization of professional and family life, education and «gender mainstreaming». That is why research and analysis of gender equality's dimensions in the EU and defining the legal aspects of their regulation are relevant to the legal system of Ukraine. Over the past few decades, the EU has notably worked for equal treatment legislation, gender mainstreaming and specific measures for the advancement of women. Moreover, the EU has defined the following dimensions of gender equality: equal economic independence for women and men; equal pay for work of equal value; equality in decision-making; dignity, integrity and ending gender-based violence; and promoting gender equality beyond the EU. The dimension of gender equality is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and social spheres, so that women and men benefit equally and the inequality is not perpetuated. Although the EU has achieved positive results in protecting human rights, the work is still continuing in this direction. The idea of gender equality is an integral part of equality as a general principle, development and peace in the world. Without this principle, it is impossible to establish the basis for democracy, freedom, justice and tolerance. Recently, the principle of gender equality is getting paramount importance for Ukraine, as one of the conditions for successful European integration.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aron Buzogány

This article analyses the development of the EU's external civil society agenda and how this is interpreted by various actors. Using qualitative interviews carried out in Ukraine, Georgia and Brussels, the article shows how the EU's external civil society agenda has developed in parallel with the EU's internal ‘governance turn’. Changes in this narrative from a partnership-orientated role towards a more political watchdog-role for civil society organisations are (re)interpreted differently by EU actors, EU-based civil society organisations and those in the neighbourhood countries. By focusing on localised interpretations and the inherent contradictions this policy produces, this article shows that civil society's new watchdog role is not only directed towards controlling domestic governments but also the EU.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document