Education
A Place at the Table: Afghan Women, Men and Decision Decision-making Authority
Are women in Afghanistan really benefiting from the highly touted progress made in their country in the post-Taleban era?
Authors:
B. Bauer; S. Wakefield
Publisher:
Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit , 2005
What constitutes gender issues in the Afghan context? What opportunities exist for improving gender-sensitive programming, policy formulation and indicators of success? This briefing paper acknowledges that Afghan women have made certain gains in the post-Taleban era, particularly in national-level legal and political arenas but also at the local level of development interventions. However, it questions whether ordinary women are feeling the impact of this progress and challenges policymakers and programme designers to reflect on their assumptions about the issues at hand, their chosen responses and measures of success. To overcome the gender issues that Afghan women mostly struggle with, various recommendations are put forward, including: increase the awareness of gender issues in the Afghan context among female and male staff of NGOs and UN agencies; enhance local women's and men's engagement in identifying gender issues specific to the Afghan context; review sector-specific strategies and benchmarks on gender equity against what happens in practice; and allocate resources to the design and funding of long-term gender projects, so that gender is successfully mainstreamed over time.
Document File size: 530 KB
