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Ms Chairperson, co-speakers, distinguished guests, and
colleagues. I would like to
begin by expressing my condolences and sympathy to those of you who have
experienced a loss of loved ones due to the tsunami or other crises and
disasters which have recently hit countries in
Asia
and the Pacific.
We have all been moved by compassion and by admiration for
the courage and fortitude of the women, men and families coping to rebuild
their lives and by the commitment of all those who reach out to assist
them. So this year on
International Women’s Day it is most appropriate that we take a moment
to look at how our response and our assistance – from UN agencies,
governments, and community-based groups – is enabling women to overcome
all of the challenges this calamity has brought them and how we are
enabling women to be actors for change and rehabilitation in their own
families, communities and public policies.
The ILO, as many of you are aware, focuses on the promotion
of fundamental labour rights, and the creation of more and better jobs and
social protection. The ILO’s
practice of social dialogue is an important tool for this effort,
bringing together governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations,
as well as representatives of community organizations and academic
institutions.
In this panel I would like to share with you WHY and HOW the
ILO puts gender into the mainstream of recovery work to better the lives
of women and men in the aftermath of natural or human-caused disasters.
The
Tsunami waves hit all within its reach: men, women, girls and boys,
nationals, migrant workers and tourists without distinction by age, sex,
colour, or income. However,
for the survivors, the ability to respond, to rebuild, to change
livelihoods, to get help is not the same for everyone. Experience
worldwide has shown us that gender is a key factor in how disasters affect
people within communities and therefore gender must also be a critical
factor in guiding subsequent relief, rehabilitation and development
action.
WHY
do disasters have different effects on different people?
One reason is because disasters tend to sharpen any existing
inequalities.
First, there is the inequality of safety and security. The chaos
and disorder that follows such catastrophes leaves women and girls
vulnerable to violence and sexual abuse.
Second, there is the inequality of being heard.
Because of their poverty or low socio-economic standing, women and
girls may not be able to get the relief aid and resources they need or to
be able to voice their needs when decisions are made about their future.
Third, there is the inequality of work. The death or injury of a
male breadwinner may force women to accept dual roles, as the family
income earner as well as the main care-giver for children, the elderly,
the sick, and the newly disabled.
This is compounded by a fourth inequality:
A lack of skills and work experience puts women at a
disadvantage in the labour market, which in times of desperation puts them
at special risk of trafficking, prostitution, debt bondage, and other
kinds of exploitation.
Finding
out the facts is vital in any crisis response.
We need to base our response on understanding how these underlying
factors of gender inequality play themselves out in the specific affected
communities and target our actions accordingly:
To
take just a few examples from the tsunami-affected regions in
Asia
…
·
In
Sri Lanka
, many women are facing
having to go into wage or self-employment for the first time. A survey of
affected households revealed that many women are aware that they lack the
skills for employment and they need assistance in identifying appropriate
job and livelihood opportunities.
·
At the same
time as more women need to look for income-earning activities outside the
home, they can no longer depend on the extended family support system for
child and other care work. The tsunami calamity has led to an increase in
single parent households, and many need support to balance income-earning
and household care duties.
·
The loss of
homes, work places and land affects women in poverty
disproportionately hard because, generally, they have less access to
resources and because labour arrangements are often negotiated by men. In
countries where women are not adequately represented in decision-making in
the public sphere this works seriously to their disadvantage, such as in
Banda Aceh
Indonesia
.
·
As many of
my co-speakers have pointed out or will discuss in more detail, disasters
create stress and stress easily gives rise to violence, discrimination and
exploitation. Women in
general, are vulnerable to violence in times of upheaval, especially if
they are young, and live and work in insecurity. Men’s psychological
needs are often overlooked which can lead to violence and depression if
not addressed.
·
Migrant
families are also at high risk. In
Thailand
, many migrant fishermen
died leaving their families without income.
Migrant workers in hotels, restaurants and the entertainment
industry –women and men alike - suffered greatly.
Many who had registered with the local authorities as migrant
workers lost their documents when homes or workplaces were destroyed and
it has been difficult for them to obtain new permit papers.
If they had not registered, their situation in the country became
even more precarious. In
either case, many migrant workers were unable to collect accumulated
wages, were afraid to ask for basic humanitarian assistance, and had no
means of listing or identifying disaster victims. It was especially
difficult for wives and children of missing or killed workers to
re-establish their legal status and be protected under Thai law. The
situation for a migrant -sending country like
Sri Lanka
is very different but
again the consequences for women are especially burdensome. The government
there has received requests from families to recall their overseas
breadwinners because they are needed at home to cope with the care
responsibilities following deaths of adult family members.
This may deprive families of alternative sources of income at the
same time as local livelihood opportunities have literally been washed
away.
The
good news in dealing with disasters is that women have proven to be
engines of recovery alongside men in dealing with disasters.
As society’s last safety net, women have proven to be resilient,
resourceful, innovative and pro-active in extreme conditions.
However,
we are often faced with a paradox: Women and their children are widely
shown in the media when portraying the horrible effects of disasters and
calling for donations. Beyond
their appeal in the eyes of the camera, in contrast, experience has shown
that women, all too often, become invisible in relief and recovery
programmes. It is the duty of development organizations – at
international, national, and community levels - to ensure that women can
participate in and benefit from reconstruction on an equal footing with
men.
HOW
to do this effectively? We have learned many good lessons about
integrating gender in recovery measures.
I am going to remind you of just six of them:
FIRST, it is sometimes thought that a trade-off is needed
between speed of action and addressing vital gender concerns. But this has
proven to be counter-productive to long-run sustainable recovery.
Attention to gender concerns up-front pays off in long-run well-being of
families and communities.
SECOND, we need to take into account existing gender
relations not only among end-users but also among service providers and
policy-makers. We need to look
first at ourselves and ask…
-
Is our own staff or leadership gender responsive?
-
Can men effectively reach women end-users of services we are trying
to provide, or is there a need for female extension workers?
-
Is training or sensitization or specific gender expertise needed
before we move on to develop and implement measures effectively?
THIRD, we can ensure that any crisis-response measure results
in a win-win situation for both women and men.
It has been proven time and again that women’s empowerment leads
to the advancement and development of everyone in society.
However, ingrained perceptions and insecurities may lead to
resistance among men and women in decision-making seats of power. This
resistance needs to be transformed, upfront, into commitment to
cooperation.
FOURTH, we can involve women and men equally in
reconstruction planning, implementation and monitoring to ensure that
their strategic interests are represented. We
can deliberately involve women’s groups at all levels and ensure that
women can take decisions alongside men in areas where they might be
traditionally side-lined, such as on decisions on infrastructure
investments.
FIFTH, we must decentralize decision-making and
implementation, making sure that we do not do for others what they can
better do themselves. But in this effort we must avoid adding to
women’s unpaid workload – we must avoid inadvertently contributing to
any impression that women’s work is volunteer work. We
can recruit and pay women for their contributions alongside men, for
example in labour-based infrastructure reconstruction.
And we can set an example by offering services that help the women
we employ deal with their care-giving responsibilities.
SIXTH, we can make a long-run difference in the lives of many
women by making sure that skills training programmes and business
development services avoid gender stereotyping.
Instead of even inadvertently reinforcing traditional male- and
female-dominated career choices in our reconstruction work, we can open up
more and different occupations in more industries for women and for men.
Friends and colleagues and honoured guests, this is what I
would like to share with you: The
ILO, as all other UN agencies, believes it is vital to carry out gender
analysis and planning in any development work.
This has become known as the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy, a term
adopted in the Beijing Platform of Action during the 4th World
Conference on Women in
Beijing
.
Here at ILO in
Bangkok
, we refer to this as GEMS.
Women are jewels and what they can contribute to development is
brilliant. They need to be
given the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from our disaster
relief efforts on an equal footing with men.
In all of our work, we are taking sure and steady steps to
fight discrimination and poverty and gender stereotyping.
To the extent that we have learned and taught these lessons, the
easier it is to respond appropriately and effectively in emergency
situations. And the better we
have done our work on a day-to-day basis to empower women, the easier our
job will be to help them rebuild their lives and livelihoods in the
aftermath of disaster.
The recent experience of the response to the
earthquake and tsunami shows us that people are willing to walk many miles
and contribute from the bottoms of their hearts and their pocketbooks to
rebuild the lives of those who were hurt. In the ILO we firmly believe
that societies become wealthier in material and spiritual terms when women
and men can benefit and participate equally in development. I would like
to call on all of us today, on International Women’s Day, to
redouble our efforts to make this a reality.
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