EN FRANÇAIS

By Christopher Mason
Governance Village Contributor

MONTRÉAL - In an overfilled conference room at a downtown Montréal hotel, Rita Soares-Pinto, a fellow with the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation, addressed the audience with a question: "Who in the room feels more could be done to promote gender equality and women's rights?"

That a roomful of hands rose in the air is perhaps not surprising given that the room was full of academics, NGO and government workers who specialize in women's rights issues.

But as this group gathered to discuss Canada's efforts to promote women's rights through international development, the reaction also illustrated the widely (and strongly) held belief that Canada is not living up to its potential and obligation in promoting gender equality abroad.

The conference - "Women's rights and gender equality in Canadian cooperation: Challenges and perspectives" - was principally organized by the Association québécoise des organismes de coopération internationale ( AQOCI) and the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation to take stock of the gender equality policy adopted by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) a decade ago.

In 1999 CIDA redrew its policies on supporting women's rights issues by incorporating that sector into its broader funding projects - essentially mainstreaming women's rights - rather than treating it as a stand-alone issue.

But 10 years on, there is a growing consensus that because it has been folded in amongst an array of development issues, in both Canada and abroad, the voice of gender equality is getting lost in the din of voices representing other aid sectors.

"Gender equality is an invisible process," said Myriam Gervais, an adjunct professor at McGill University who led a two-year review of CIDA's gender equality initiatives.

CIDA revamped its gender equality funding a decade ago in light of a 1995 UN World Conference on Women held in Beijing that declared gender equality as a basic human right that should not be seen in isolation as a women's issue alone.

That standpoint led several countries and agencies to adopt new stances on gender equality programming - a stance that many now say is drowning the voice of women's rights issues.

In a 2006 report called "Where is the Money for Women's Rights" by the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID), the authors called for a re-thinking of gender equality funding and programming.

"Mainstreaming, initially promoted by women's rights groups as key to integrating gender equality throughout organizations and programs, has not had the desired consequences of strengthening action in respect of women's rights," the report said. "We see instead cases where mainstreaming has led to cutting of gender equality specialists and women-specific programs."

This trend has not gone unnoticed within the development community. Many women's organizations feel their causes would attract greater attention and support if CIDA set aside funding for gender equality-specific projects.

"We're integrated in ways that are not to our liking or in our interests," said Molly Kane, until recently the executive director of Inter Pares, a Canadian social justice organization.

As for the effectiveness of CIDA's policies, the mainstreaming of gender equality funding has made it difficult to track the progress of support. The most current figures available show overall funding of programs that list gender equality as an objective (amongst others) has risen from C$87 million in 1999-2000 to C$108 million in 2005-2006.

However, funding for projects that list gender equality as a sole objective has actually decreased in that time, from C$34 million to C$26 million annually.

"We are a work in progress," said Diana Rivington, CIDA's director of equality between men and women who was in charge of the agency's 1999 gender policy review.

In addressing the Montreal conference, Rivington did not say whether CIDA is considering (or would consider) re-establishing gender equality as a stand-alone issue. But she did defend the current gender policy as "strong", adding that CIDA knows there is much progress to be made before reaching an acceptable level of support.

"We're not there yet," she said.

The under-funding of gender equality programs is of course not solely a Canadian issue. Globally, organizations pushing for improved women's rights continue to struggle for basic funding.

Experts describe a cyclical effect whereby global funders increasingly prefer large, one-time donations rather than smaller, more widely-dispersed donations. But most women's organizations do not have the capacity to accept such large donations, and cannot build themselves up unless they receive the funds to do so.

A survey released in 2008 by AWID found that two-thirds of women's organizations have annual budgets of less than $50,000. That proportion has remained unchanged in recent years.

"Donor communities and women's organizations need to break the cycle that keeps these organizations so small and under-funded," said the report, titled "The State of Women's Organizations".

Referring to the AWID report, Joanna Kerr, director of policy and outreach for Oxfam Canada and formerly of AWID, said that most women's organizations report they need to double or triple their budgets before they will have the resources to be effective.

Kerr called on funders like CIDA to set aside money specifically for capacity building so that women's organizations can build themselves up to effectively absorb larger donations. At the moment, she said, the donor community is too focused on one-time, project-specific grants that can have little long-term impact on women's organizations and the work they do.

"Much of the funding we get, or give out, is inflicted with what we call 'projectitis'," she said.