$10.2 million for gender training, research
THE Japan Women in Development Fund, through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has handed over $10.2 million to fund a new gender training and research project.
The Centre for Gender and Development Studies (CGDS) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) has also put up funds for the project, designed to expand the gender curriculum content at the university.
Under the project, a number of tutors and researchers will engage in a certificate course in gender analysis, while students unable to afford the full cost of the programme, will get tuition support.
The project will also see the development of a database of research on gender-based violence and other related issues.
Pauline Knight, director at the Planning Institute of Jamaica, Dr Barbara Bailey, coordinator, CGDS and Gillian Lindsay-Nanton, resident representative, UNDP signed the document for the project last Thursday.
Hailing the partnership between the UNDP, the university and the Japanese Government, Lindsay-Nanton, said the project fits within the ambit of UNDP efforts worldwide to help governments “overcome conventional conceptions of gender and the role and treatment of women in society”.
Jamaica, according to the UNDP resident representative, despite major progress made over the last 30 years, “ranks among those countries yet to cross certain critical thresholds”.
She said that “over the past decade, issues of violence against women, domestic violence, male enrolment and performance in educational institutions and the inadequate level of female representation in high level public and private institutions”, have occupied public attention.
It was against this background Lindsay-Nanton said, that noted scholar and Harvard University lecturer, Professor Orlando Patterson, in a lecture last year highlighted the issue of gender and gender biases as one of the three most critical issues to be addressed in Jamaica, as it seeks to move forward.
She noted also that “gender biases have helped to create a situation in Jamaica where the rate of unemployment in 2001 was 10.3 per cent for men, compared with 21.0 per cent for women.
The biases, she stated, have also led to under-representation in the political system, over-representation of female-headed households among the poor in the society, a sharp and alarming increase in the rate of HIV/AIDS infection among women in Jamaica and incidences of rape and domestic violence, among others”.
The gender training and research project, it is anticipated, will help Jamaica eliminate gender biases and come to terms with gender issues that are critical for development.