"Much
progress has been achieved in the advancement of
women - from better legislation to greater participation,
from the Cairo Conference on population and development
to the Beijing Platform for Action, from economic
empowerment to intellectual emancipation. But for
the majority of the world's women, daily life remains
a difficult and sometimes dangerous struggle. The
objectives of gender equality, development and peace
that remain at the heart of the international agenda
for women's advancement are still far from being
achieved." UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on the
occasion of International Women's Day, 8 March 2001
Women have made some remarkable gains since 1995:
they are living longer and healthier lives; they
receive better schooling; they are more economically
active; and more women have the franchise than ever
before. Despite these gains, worldwide, women continue
to predominate among the ranks of those living in
poverty and who suffer from illiteracy, dislocation,
violence, poor nutrition and ill health. According
to United Nations estimates, they still lag behind
in virtually all aspects of life.
In
many countries, the feminization of poverty has
made it increasingly difficult for women to eke
out an existence for their families. The lack of
basic services and poor infrastructure impact women
the most because they, much more than men, deal
with water, sanitation, fuel and waste management.
While women are most often the direct managers at
the household level, they are subject to exclusion
in decision-making forums at the local and national
levels. Thus, even though they suffer the consequences
of inadequate housing, they often lack the means
to fix it.
Aware of the exclusion of women in urban planning
and governance, the Habitat Agenda calls for gender
equality in human settlements development. To reinforce
this commitment, Habitat has placed women at the
centre of their two strategic campaigns: the
Global Campaign on Urban Governance and the Global
Campaign for Secure Tenure. These campaigns
are meant to provide strategic points of entry into
the implementation of the Habitat Agenda. Both campaigns
feature the increased role of women in the social,
economic and political spheres, and meeting the
needs of women will be the key measure of their
success.
The Global Campaign on Urban Governance advocates
the active participation of both men and women in
urban planning as a way of achieving sustainable
development. The policy on women and good governance
aims at increasing the representation of women in
the decision-making process and focusing greater
attention on the human settlements issues of concern
to women.
In cities across the globe, women's participation
in public and private institutions is minimal. According
to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
women hold only 12 percent of the seats in national
parliaments worldwide. At the local leadership level,
the figures range from less than five per cent in
parts of Sub-Saharan Africa to 40 per cent in parts
of Europe. It is not only representation of women
in the political arena that must increase, but the
professional arena as well. This means having more
women bankers, architects, urban planners, environmentalists,
and so on. The goal is to have more women in leadership
positions so that women's needs and problems are
not overlooked.
Similarly, the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure
strives to ensure that women have equal rights to
own and inherit land and property. One of the most
problematic areas for women in many traditional
societies is their inability to inherit land. Even
in modern societies where women have the legal right
to acquire, manage and dispose of property, customary
practice still inhibits women from exercising their
legal rights. The situation of women in conflict
zones is further exacerbated by their inability
to inherit. Many women whose husbands and parents
have been killed find themselves and their children
dispossessed.
Aware of the importance of providing women with
security of tenure, Habitat has been working with
Governments, local authorities and other Habitat
Agenda partners to ensure women's access to land
and property. For example, laws have been passed
in Rwanda giving women the right to inherit property.
This was particularly important because, after the
civil conflict, an estimated 60 per cent of the
survivors were women who had no recognized right
to inherit land or property.
Ultimately, the question is not whether women should
be involved but rather how. In an effort to promote
positive initiatives taken in countries throughout
the world, Habitat has designed a user-friendly
best practice database. It includes many examples
and best practices that show how women can be successfully
integrated into the process of human settlements
development.
The Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) Bank
in India is an excellent example of how mainstreaming
women decision-makers has worked to benefit ordinary
women. SEWA Bank was set up to provide credit at
reasonable rates to low-income women who were often
charged exorbitant rates at normal banks. These
women repay their loans and spend the money to improve
their families' status. Such improvements include
expanding their informal businesses, educating their
children and improving housing.
The involvement of women architects in an urban
planning project in Austria is another best practice
that exemplifies the positive effects of incorporating
women into urban governance. A group of women designed
a model project in which a section of Vienna's suburbs
would be exclusively planned and designed by women
architects. The objective of the project was to
make the manifold facets of women's everyday life
an essential criterion of the design. The result
is that 359 housing units will be constructed with
women-friendly facilities, such as rooms to store
prams on the ground floor, the placement of kitchens
as the central place of housework, and the inclusion
of social spaces to enhance neighbourly relations.
In Nicaragua, a local non-governmental organization
(NGO), Habitar, supported communities in their negotiations
with the Government to obtain land titles of 8,862
plots in seven neighbourhoods benefiting 21,000
people, especially poor families and women-headed
households. A similar best practice in Sri Lanka
helped facilitate the construction of low-cost housing
for poor families, especially women-headed households.
The Sri Lanka Reclamation and Development Corporation,
with financial support from the EMACE Foundation,
relocated squatters who had lived along the Dehiwela
canal bank for over thirty years. The main objective
was to provide settlers with grants in order to
assist them in obtaining land tenure for a plot
of land and then to help them build their own houses
on a self-help basis.
Habitat has concluded that full implementation of
its Agenda will require an enhanced role for women.
For this to happen, the participation of women must
be encouraged and supported at all levels. At Istanbul
+ 5, the draft 'Declaration on cities and other
human settlements in the new millennium', which
has yet to be finally negotiated and adopted by
Member States, will recognize the need to "promote
gender equality and the empowerment of women as
effective ways to combat poverty and to stimulate
development of human settlements that are truly
sustainable."
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