UNDP Turkey has started to train the UNDP Turkey staff, project partners, beneficiaries, and decision makers on gender mainstreaming, within its project, which aims to engage more strategically in exploring the impact UNDP is making on the important gender issues in Turkey.

“Gender Mainstreaming in UNDP Projects” training was been held on 10 March 2006. After a brief explanation of “Gender Mainstreaming” and its history, what needs to be done for the ongoing gender projects to protect gender equality was discussed and exemplary situations were given.

As defined by the United Nations, gender mainstreaming is: “… the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It 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 societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated.”

With this point of view, under the gender-mainstreaming project, all relevant applications, including UNDP’s gender projects, were re-examined, results of these applications were approached from a different perspective and there have been striking outcomes. As an example, one of the Turkish Government’s social security policies requires at least 30 workers in a work place for an employer to be obligated to insure workers. However, most of the women in Turkey work in places where there are less than 30 workers, which shows that the Government do not consider how its policies would affect women. Similar again, UNDP’s projects on women’s empowerment and capacity building end up putting women in a position where she has to work for a superhuman 18-hour, even if she works at home. Another problem is that while women are enabled to earn money, it is not followed whether she has control over it.

The most important outcome of the training was that it is needed to be sure that applications affect men and women equally and we have to take decisions by asking questions such as who is the policy-maker for gender equality, what are the aims, whether they empower women or putting her in a worse situation, are there any gender-distinct data for these policies.

Training was given by the President of Ankara Branch of Association for Training and Supporting Women Candidates (KA-DER) İlknur Üstün, Ankara University Women's Studies Centre expert Dr. Aksu Bora and KA-DER Ankara Branch International and EU Affairs Coordinator Dr. Selma Acuner.

UNDP’s “Mainstreaming Gender in UNDP Deliverables & Services” Project

Although a middle income country, and one where EU accession figures prominently, in terms of its Gender Empowerment Measurement Turkey ranks 73rd out of 78 countries, placing it behind Iran and Pakistan. According to the 2004 NHDR for Turkey, very significant gender disparities exist, especially in the less developed parts of the country (the southeast and eastern Anatolia). Moreover, there are significant violations of women's human rights, such as honour killings and domestic violence, throughout the country. UNDP/Turkey historically worked to address these issues of gender in its programming, most recently through the Millennium Development Goals as well as through increased efforts in 2004 at joint programming with other UN agencies. Given the scope of the gender related disparities however, it was deemed essential that the capacity of the Country Office be assessed and that greater attention be called to mainstreaming gender into the three programming areas of the Country Office - namely Poverty Reduction, Environment, and Democratic Governance.

The outcome of the mainstreaming gender project objective will be the institutionalization of gender mainstreaming within the practice and culture of the Country Office and its external partners. To achieve this objective, the project has four main components:

1. A review of UNDP Turkey's programmes and projects, reviewing needs and potentials in gender mainstreaming;
2. The development and delivery of replicable training programmes to UNDP Turkey staff, project partners and beneficiaries, and decision makers;
3. The development and publication of a Gender Equality & Mainstream Handbook relevant to the Turkish context;
4. An international exchange between UNDP Country Offices for the exchange of lessons learned and best practices.

The project is expected to raise awareness on the issues surrounding gender equality and mainstreaming and offer practical solutions to implementation and common challenges. By placing the concepts in real contexts, the UNDP Country Office, its government and non-governmental partners, as well as its programme beneficiaries, will benefit from sustainable and effective approaches, documented in an original Handbook on Gender Equality & Mainstreaming at the end of the project.

For more info: http://www.undp.org.tr/Corporate%20Gender%20Strategy.asp