SEAGAbytes, No. 4

Norway

The Subregional Workshop on Women's Participation in Policy-Making Processes in Rural Communities was held in Gausdal, Norway, 4-10 May 1998. Participants came from 11 Central & Eastern European (CEE) countries and the following topics were addressed: an overview of the Norwegian decision-making system, how women organise to access power, women and local planning, and planning for women's empowerment.

The main objectives of the workshop were for female community leaders to gain decision-making experience from women and men in public service in Norway and also to be trained in FAO's SEAGA methodology as a means of ensuring that planning processes are participatory and gender sensitive. SEAGA tools were used to adapt the Norwegian presentations to the local situation of the participants' respective countries. This workshop provided the first opportunity for the SEAGA tools to be used in the context of rural women's participation in local decision-making and the second opportunity to use SEAGA in the context of CEE countries.

Finland

The International Household and Family Research Conference was held in Finland from the 31 May to 3 June this year, with 23 countries being represented and 130 participants attending. During the course of the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Finnish Home Economics a presentation of SEAGA methods was made to show how SEAGA could be used in livelihood analysis.

Spain

If you have been to Cordoba over the past six weeks well then perhaps you might have seen an article in the Diario Cordoba on the 20/5/98 entitled: "Un curso de la FAO reforzará el papel de la mujer en la agricultura". If you have not visited that part of Spain, then allow us to provide you with some details of a two-week workshop conducted by our trainers in the Agricultural Research and Training Centre. Hinojosa del Duque, Spain, from 18 May to 6 June. This was the first opportunity for the Women in Development (SDWW) department of FAO to work collaboratively with a Western European country in a pilot SEAGA activity. Rural development, with particular emphasis on the needs of rural women, is a major development theme within the agricultural context of this region.

The regional government of Andalucía has placed a high priority on those activities that serve to increase participation by marginalized groups, promote employment and sustainable development, and improve the status of rural women. The training was therefore designed to offer theoretical and practical application of SEAGA principles during the first week and the second week was dedicated to practical application and planning. Five field trips were also organised to allow participants to examine rural development activities in the area and to begin to apply the SEAGA approach in their questioning and subsequent debriefings. Participants became increasingly skilled in identifying areas where gender might affect participation, access to and control of resources and income. Participants left the workshop excited and energised to begin working with SEAGA concepts and plans were made to establish a permanent working group at the regional, provincial and comarcal levels. Everybody agreed that on-going training in SEAGA approaches will be needed in the future and that SEAGA ought to be incorporated cross-sectorally.

Greece

A workshop on microfinance within the context of the SEAGA Framework was held during the 11th international Rural Development Summer School from the 8-13 of June, in Tripoli, Greece. A SEAGA consultant served as a facilitator of the workshop with an independent microfinance consultant. The workshop was structured around the issues raised by participants in their pre-workshop questionnaire and as a result the entire summer school on microfinance was presented through the lens of the SEAGA Framework. Work was designed to specifically concentrate on the Intermediate level of SEAGA, corresponding to micro finance intermediaries such as banks, financial NGOs, credit unions, grassroots microfinance groups etc. and encouragement was offered to participants to draw up action plans, throughout the week. Participants stated that it proved very interesting and useful to look at the linkages between the macro, intermediate and field in the microfinance sector.

Some other participants provided feedback on how they were already successfully using SEAGA methods in their daily work (they had attended SEAGA workshops over the course of the past year).

Thailand

The Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the South Pacific (ESCAP) sponsored a gender training programme for its staff members who are responsible for the formulation of project proposals. The purpose of the training was to build skills in the integration of gender considerations into all such proposals. Two 2-day workshops were held during the week of 22-26 June 1998. A total of about 40 ESCAP professional staff attended at ESCAP's headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand.

The purpose of the workshop was to build socio-economic and gender analytical capacity among staff members who are responsible for the formulation of project proposals. In order to support the above goal, the training focused on a practical application of socioeconomic and gender analysis concepts, methods and tools to actual project formulation papers prepared by workshop participants. The SEAGA package was used to formulate the training programme for ESCAP.

Participants formulated socio-economic and gender analysis questions related to specific ESCAP project proposals based on application of the SEAGA concepts. The analysis questions were formulated as a first step in developing gender-mainstreaming guidelines in various components of project formulation, gender mainstreaming in the policy process and gender mainstreaming in research and statistics. This analysis formed a basis for the development of gender analysis guidelines.

The ESCAP gender training was a very successful effort. Participants were actively involved in the training process and made critical contributions to the workshop. During the workshop, it was apparent that socioeconomic and gender analysis techniques can productively be applied to all sectors and types of activities for ESCAP. Gender considerations were examined for projects focusing on urban crime and corruption, trade and investment, tourism, population, commodity markets, environmental concerns in economic development, membership in the World Trade Organization, local governance and other development issues. Excellent examples of the application of gender analysis were identified during the course of the workshop.

See also SEAGAbytes No. 1 (March 1998), No. 2 (May 1998) and No. 3 (June 1998)

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