LATINAM: Women's Network Fights for Non-Sexist Education Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Jun 14, 1999 by repem@chasque.apc.org ************************************ VOICES RISING VOL1. SPECIAL ISSUE 1999 *********************************** The International Gender and Education Office (GEO) of ICAE creates VOICES RISING Email: repem@chasque.apc.org Tel/fax: 5982 403 05 99 Address: Colonia 2069 11200 Montevideo, Uruguay ******************************************* 1.JUNE 21ST :LET`S CELEBRATE THE INTERNATIONAL DAY ON NON-SEXIST EDUCATION. **************************************** Dear all, Greetings from the Gender and Education Office. Here below find a report on REPEM (Popular Education Network Among Women) actions on Non Sexist Education during the last 9 years. GEO congratulates REPEM on its outstanding performance on this field and we would like you to join REPEM and GEO in this celebration, please share with all of us any anecdote or project on non-sexist education, though it is a Latin American initiative it can and should be widely spread around the globe. __________________________________ June 21st 1999 NON-SEXIST EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL DAY Red de Educacion Popular entre Mujeres The long way to the XXI century Which is the difference between saying "man is approaching the XXI century" and "mankind is approaching the XXI century"? For those who work for more just and equitable relationships between men and women there is great difference. Invisibility is the first step to deny power, discriminate and condemn to hunger and poverty. Making the female half of mankind invisible through language and formal and informal education is a daily, universal, and flagrant action. It implies a war weapon against women which specially affects the poorest ones. Ten years ago Red de Educacion Popular entre Mujeres (REPEM) gathered in Paraguay to decide the declaration of the 21st. June as The International Day on Non-Sexist Education. It was the starting point of a one-decade campaign, devoted to reach the new millennium with the following statement: women's (particularly from popular sectors of Latin America and the Caribbean) right to have access to a democratic and non-sexist education, free of stereotypes which discriminate women at work, at home and at social and political level. This campaign, which started in 1989, bore fruit. The creation of didactic games, the publication of books and videos, the calls for competition between teachers and communicators, the issue of illustrated material, were an important part of such campaign. At present, we can assure that the effort to promote non-sexist experiences in formal education, which aim at gender equality, has multiplied. At the beginning and during the development of the initiative, members of the network, in different countries, participated in the reconstructing policies of adults' education within the context of permanent education. In all cases, actions aimed particularly at poor girls and women, who constitute the most affected, part when governments make state reforms which reduce their functions with no alternatives for social exclusion. Free and high quality "education for everyone, either male or women" was promoted taking adults particularly into consideration, in view of the educational reforms that took place together with tax adjustment during the 80s. These short-term reforms, put at risk the full training of male and female workers and dismiss the possibility of influencing the strategic objective of fully incorporating gender democracy into education and men's and women's lives in the region. During this decade, REPEM has increased its capacity to promote an education with gender perspective, supporting the work done at the Gender and Education Office (GEO) of the Women's Programme of the International Council of Adults' Education (ICAE). At present, REPEM not only has its own materials, programmes and tools, but it has also taken several monitoring, follow-up, lobby and advocacy actions, particularly in the educational field, for the incorporation of this perspective into public policies. Social Summits: tools and commitments The UN "social summits" cycle of the 90s and several actions taken by world-wide women's movements gave rise to conceptualisations and proposals to improve living conditions and relationships between men and women. The International Conference on Population and Development ( Cairo, 1994), the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995), the 4th. World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) and the V International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V), summoned by The UNESCO Institute for Eduction in Hamburg, in 1997, provided civil society organisations with the necessary tools to monitor and follow-up the fulfilment of the commitments assumed by governments in pursuit of social justice. For non-governmental organisations concerned about social development and gender equality, Social Watch, an initiative created in 1995, constituted a strong means of monitoring those policies with direct impact on women, and, in general, on people living in poor conditions. Situation indicators, "distance to the goal" indicators, and "political will" indicators, evaluate, according to the country, the progress and difficulties so that international agreements really start improving the quality of life of men and women around the world. In this context, DAWN (Development Alternative for Women of a New Age) network, founded in 1985 by feminists from the South hemisphere, has intensified its efforts to work with regional networks so as to attain its objectives of research and support to global advocacy of women's organisations at international conferences in Macroeconomic issues. Social Watch and DAWN are two stimulating experiences for REPEM's work and, particularly, for the creation of its own indicators. At the International REPEM-GEO Seminar, which took place in Bolivia, in 1998, for the follow-up of the commitments assumed by the governments of the region in Beijing and Hamburg, they agreed to apply indicators of situation and of political will, for the comparison, follow-up and evaluation of the steps taken regarding adults' education. Indicators: How much is being done and how much we want to do The level of progress of government plans and programmes, in the implementation of diffusion campaigns, preparation of materials, research work, and any kind of promotion activities regarding adults' education and gender, will be measured by REPEM-GEO with a group of indicators created by Maria Bonino, a Uruguayan sociologist. These are the above-mentioned indicators: a. Existence of specific training programmes for women, developed by governmental organisations among civil servants, training of female microentrepreneurs and/or community leaders. b. Incorporation of contents which provide for equity and equality in gender relationships, into the curricula of formal education at different levels. c. Incorporation of sexual education with equity and equality in gender relationships, into the curricula of formal education at different levels. d. Level of progress attained regarding the purpose of reducing women's illiteracy in the year 2000 to one half of the illiteracy registered in 1999, in each country. e. Women's level of education from 14 years old onwards, for certain years. f. Level of scope, according to sex, of Literacy and Basic Adults' Education Programmes in certain years, based on the percentage of enrolled people and the potential demand. g. Level of inequality between men and women regarding education levels for certain years. h. Existence of mechanisms to help pregnant women and young mothers in the access to formal and informal state education. i. Existence and diffusion of adult educational programmes, close to potential populations, with adequate schedules and flexible systems. j. Existence of specific training courses for unemployed women or for employment retraining. k. Generally speaking, at the meeting held in Bolivia in 1998, REPEM-GEO found out that the possibilities of complying with what was agreed in Hamburg in 1997 were restricted due to the weak support provided by Latin-American governments for adult education. The little importance given to education and gender perspective in employment and training programmes, is particularly alarming. REPEM`s contribution Aiming at women's empowerment, during the last year of the campaign started in 1989, REPEM reinforced the strategic objective settled in 1995: to strengthen the political and proposing role in the follow-up of the World Action Platform deriving from Beijing. Therefore, its intention is to reinforce action in the main lines defined for the 1997 - 2000 period: a. To guarantee gender justice and equal opportunities for men and women in public policies, contributing to the extension of citizenship exercise and gender education of young and adults. b. To promote the proposing role of civil society and the state in the drawing, implementation and evaluation of public policies and gender oriented educational programmes. c. Increase women's capacity to propose, resolve and exert political pressure, in the popular economy field. In the next evaluation of the five-year period elapsed since the International Conferences on Population and Women (Beijing + 5 and Cairo + 5) REPEM will furnish the last ten years' achievements and its commitment at the end of the century. The long path of negotiations, transactions, struggle and conflict, followed for more than 25 years in order to attain social justice in gender, was also the path for the creation and strengthening of several women's networks around the world. Among those networks, the popular education ones strengthened their capacity to analyse and propose and, during the last years, to turn into spokeswoman before governments so as to exert pressure and negotiate their proposals, knowing where to do it and the outcome that will be obtained. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytfem-06.19.99-16:54:19-30261