IFUW Briefing Session at UNESCO
UNESCO Offices in New York City
25 February 2011
IFUW has a strong team with UNESCO in Paris and wishes to strengthen its ties with UNESCO.
This is the first time that UNESCO is coming to the Commission on the Status of Women. It will do round tables with:
Labour unions on the priority theme
"Your UNESCO-IFUW Round Table will be very very high-level," said Gulser.
The UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, will be arriving on Saturday. [http://www.unesco.org/en/general-conference-35th-session/] She is very keen on Gender Equality. There are two priorities at UNESCO:
Africa
N.B. UNESCO was the only UN entity to have Gender Equality as a priority at the time. There were other unique features of the UNESCO Strategic Plan:
It is results oriented.
It identifies specific goals plus results and indicators plus a budget for achieving the results.
In 2009 everything changed overnight. The Director-General is a feminist who is not afraid of saying so. Often when women move up they stop taling about Gender Equality because the get "smiles and negative snickers" from the men in the room and so they shy away from mentioning it.
This Director-General said that she ran on a platform of Gender Equality and intended to do organizational change, and she took it from Planning to Platform. That is symbolic and significant.
Gulser noted changes happening in her own situation:
They started picking up the phone when she called.
They began responding to her emails.
Very importantly, they knew the importance of the high-level support that is not just lip-service.
UNESCO is currently planning initiatives for the last two years of the Strategic Plan (i.e. 2012 - 2013) plus for the next six-year period. The Director-General asked for Actions, Results and Budgets since those are needed for receiving funding.
There is a significant increase in positive direction in
Budget already identified (was usually from 3 - 9% but is now at 20%)
Specific analysis that looks at data
Very important not to make things worse for women
UNESCO is best placed to bring about this change because of its two mandates:
Culture
Another important feature of the UNESCO Strategic Plan:
The goal is to have parity in gender by 2015.
For the first time, there is already parity at UNESCO at the senior management level which is the very top level: 5 women and 5 men.
At UNESCO, women hold the senior positions of Assistant Director-General in Sciences, Geographic Commission, Administration, Priority of Africa and Gender Issues (the senior management position held by Gulser).
UNESCO has 192 Member States.
There is a goal of building peace in the minds of all people.
We are very happy with the creation of UN Women.
We will work with UN Women to promote the UNESCO policy.
UNESCO also works for
Peace and Security
Culture for Development - mentioned also in the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals).
Developed gender mainstreaming training programmes, with basic training on-line and advanced training available in the field. (Also available in CD format). One section deals with how to advocate for gender equality.
Gulser Corat:
Went first to Belgium, and then to Canada where she did a PhD as a political economist
Taught for 24 years in Canada and also worked at CIDA
In 2004 returned to Europe to work with UNESCO
Has always done Gender Equality work "because when I asked questions they always took me to men for the answers. I thought that was not right!" So one of her teachers asked her to do a course in it and she did "Women in Developing Economies" at Carlton University.
Questions/Comments from IFUW Delegation:
1. How can NGOs help? Gulser:
Accredited NGOs are there but the UN interaction is with governments. That's what exists at UNESCO.
NGOs have to keep pushing - e.g. GEAR was a driving force behind UN Women
Culture permeates everything. Science and technology are not isolated but are in the context of culture.
Gender "rules" vary from country to country.
In science it is worst in engineering. I had the shock of my life when I went to Canada and found only one or two women in the Canadian university engineering programmes - and they were often foreign students. In Turkey the number of women exceeded the number of men in all disciplines. ("Maybe the Turkish men were off fighting or something!")
At UNESCO we have a different approach which is on life-long learning with a focus on having a voice.
UNESCO is responsible for global monitoring. Parity is being reached at the primary education level. The transition to secondary and at secondary levels has worsened over the last 10 years and is becoming "alarming" because of economic/financial issues, and because of the choice by parents of educating boys over girls. Gender-based violence is also an issue.
UNESCO is not a development agency. We do policy advice. We give governments and cultural institutions both policy dialogue and solutions.
About 4% of the GDP of developed countries goes to education and of that, about 89% of it is for teachers' salaries.
Huge discrepancy between money for military purposes and for education.
UNESCO is establishing private sector partnerships (e.g. with Hewlett-Packard, I-Tunes, even the Women's Tennis Association where we have Venus Williams and Billy-Jean King as spokespersons for UNESCO).
Tell us where we can find money; tell people to contact us; tell us what you want; encourage people to look at what UNESCO is doing.
Partnered with l-Oreal and they give science scholarships that are now available in 60 countries - both international and national scholarships.
In Southeast Asia we do a lot of work in relation to HIV/AIDs for trans and bisexuals and homosexuals.
In Latin America there are science and tech women grads but when they graduate they go to Europe. Women do 20 - 39 hours of domestic work in addition to 30 - 50 hours of office work.
The Director-General is the first woman D-G ever elected. She wants to help other women reach high positions.
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