Pad distribution program in Kenya

In a very conservative country like Kenya, even menstruation can prevent young girls from going to school. Especially if the girl comes from a poor family and cannot afford pads. Once class mates find out, they ridicule the girls to the point where they become emotionally scared.

Kenya's government has introduced a new budget item to keep girls in school. Starting this year, a four million dollar program will distribute pads to young school girls. From the Inter Press Service writer, Miriam Gathigah describes how women in the legislature put this on the government's agenda.

In their persistent lobbying, the women parliamentarians brought to the fore a problem that could have continued to hinder the education of young girls. Thirteen-year-old Dorothy Akinyi, a standard seven pupil from Kibera, which is arguably the largest slum in Africa, stays at home every time she menstruates.

"Without sanitary pads life at school is difficult. We are subjected to very embarrassing and humiliating incidences, especially from the boys. Tying a pullover around your waist to hide the soiled patch behind your uniform in case the tissue leaks is a dead giveaway. We choose to stay at home," explains Akinyi. But the situation is bound to change for Akinyi and other girls like her. But only if the money allocated for the sanitary wear is spent efficiently.

"This is gender responsive budgeting at work. Being sensitive to the distinctive needs of men and women, while allocating and spending public funds," explains Jacinta Nyachae, executive director of Kenya Aids Law Project and an advocate of human rights.

Her comments come just as Rwanda prepares to host a global high level meeting on increasing accountability and developing effectiveness through gender responsive budgeting in Kigali from 26 to 28 Jul. The meeting is held in conjunction with the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and the European Union.

But girls are not the only ones to have benefitted from a gender sensitive strategy. In a move that has seen women break socio-political economic barriers, the planning and budgeting for the establishment of the ministry of gender and children affairs remains government’s strongest show of its commitment to address gender inequality.

"But gender planning and budgeting is not enough, the rampant corruption across various government ministries is a clear indication that there’s need for tracking and monitoring how these funds are used," explains a source from the G-10 alliance, which is a coalition of women organisations fighting for women’s rights.

Women struggle for land ownership in Africa

Cultural norms have kept women from owning land in Africa. Women more often than men are farming the land while the title is often held by the men. Customs and biased attitudes are often written into African laws that keep women out.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Miriam Gathigah takes a look at another aspect of gender inequality.

The situation is worse for poor women who lack the economic muscle to fight for land ownership against a backdrop of gender-insensitive customary laws that continue to sideline them. Consequently, women still hold a negligible percentage of land title deeds. In Kenya, only a paltry three percent of women have land title deeds and in Tanzania only one percent own land.

"The economy of most African countries depends on women who are deprived of the right to own land. They toil all day on land that they have negligible control over. They sustain the breadbasket regions of many countries that are dependent on agriculture but their labour is unacknowledged and poorly remunerated," says Mwanahamisi Salimu, from Oxfam, Tanzania.

According to Elizabeth Nzioki, who has conducted research on women and land in Kenya: "A key development in Kenya land tenure reform was the issuing of title deeds in the name of the "head of the family". The problem with the legislation is that the titled land is being transferred almost exclusively to male individuals."

The situation becomes very complicated when a married couple separates because in Kenya, the Marriage and Property Act is silent on how land should be divided under these circumstances. In a separation or divorce, because title deeds are in a man’s name, he is usually awarded ownership of the property.

"In Tanzania the situation is not any different, with only about one percent of women with title deeds. It means that the rest of the female population, who form the bulk of the labour force in agriculture, break their backs but have no say in proceeds from the farm," Salimu expounds.

South Sudan's first female car mechanics

The culture of Sudan makes women subject to men in many ways. Women even have to kneel at the feet of their husbands when then they bring water to them.

Three young women are trying to break through the barriers of their culture by training to become mechanics. Once they graduate they will be the first women to work in this trade in Sudan's history.

From the Guardian, writer Laura Powell introduces us to the barrier breakers.

Nura Koleji rubs her toe in the ochre dust, hugs her knees to her stomach, and keeps her eyes firmly downcast – until we hit on the one topic she is bubbling to talk about. It is not how she fled her village of Lanya when AK47-wielding soldiers arrived from the north during the Sudanese civil war. Nor how they kidnapped her brother to train him as a child soldier; how she watched as they picked out victims and shot them; or how her two uncles were among those butchered in front of her.

It is not even the topic I am here to speak to her about – why she decided to train as a mechanic. What really riles Nura is men's dominance in the workplace. Last week South Sudan, became an independent country following a 22-year war that ended in 2005. And in this brand new country, women such as Nura are keen to see changes.

"We have a saying that one hand is not enough to clap. It's true," she tells me. "We need both sexes, not just one. There's an hereditary attitude in my village that women are weaker. I ignore those words and despise the people who say them because I have louder words in my heart telling me I am strong."

Nura is not an activist; she has never heard the word "feminist". She is a 20-year-old, softly spoken Sudanese girl, wearing oil-slicked blue mechanic's overalls. When she graduates next year she, along with three other female classmates, will have defied the odds to become the first women mechanics in South Sudan.

By the time we meet at 9am, I've dressed, had breakfast and negotiated the potholed roads of Juba, Southern Sudan's de facto capital, to reach the technical college, a secondary school where the 470 students (85% of whom are boys) train to become electricians, bricklayers, carpenters or mechanics. Nura, meanwhile, has collected water from a borehole, swept her family's compound, poured tea for her six younger siblings, revised, and picked mangoes before her two-hour walk to school. After classes finish at 3pm, she will sell the fruit at Juba market and put the earnings towards her £41-a-year school fees.

As her 16-year-old classmate Pamela Daniel says: "If you live here, everything is a struggle. But if you don't struggle, you may as well spend your life asleep because nothing will come to you."

Nura chose this profession partly because she loves cars, partly because she would love to drive (but has neither the money nor facilities to learn), and partly because she wanted technical skills and a trade, rather than a traditional academic education. One motive, however, supersedes the rest; Nura believes there are no female role models in Southern Sudan and her ambition is to become the first.

Politics can be a problem for women in Zimbabwe

Women are growing increasingly frustrated with their government in Zimbabwe. The women want to have a political voice and involvement, yet they find that the government only wants involvement under their own terms.

An article from the Inter Press Service looks at this conflict in Zimbabwe. Women are courted for their support and involvement in issues the government itself wants. Whenever they speak up to criticize life or politics they are instead thrown into prison.

Writer Ignatius Banda talks to several women who chose to keep their identities secret for fear of government reprisal. They say that the double standard forces many women into silence and apathy.

Activists argue that politicians and "political correctness" have hijacked women’s push for equal opportunities. This, they say, has pushed to the periphery or even outlawed gender activism, save for the daredevils who tackle government head-on.

"Just look at how many women have ended up behind bars in the past few years for daring to take to the streets and speak out about the violation of their rights," Thelma Dube told IPS. Dube spoke in the wake of nationwide police bans on street marches planned for this year’s commemoration of International Women’s Day.

Women like Dube – a gender activist with a Masters degree - are now afraid to identify themselves as "feminist activists" because, she says, of the "backlash" this has invited from men.

"I do not see many women, educated or not, coming out in their numbers carrying banners and demanding to be heard even with this talk in government about respecting women’s rights," Dube said.

In February, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) activists were arrested in Bulawayo before they even took to the streets, while others were arrested alongside prominent pro-democracy activist Munyaradzi Gwisai for treason early this month, allegedly for being part of a group that was plotting "Egypt-style" street protests.

According to a Mar. 1 WOZA statement, the women arrested in Bulawayo were held under appalling conditions with the rights group alleging that their arrested members were subjected to torture by the police.
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Although the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development has been at the forefront of pushing for women’s economic empowerment and constitutional guarantees for gender equality, rights groups like WOZA say this is not enough.

"It is difficult for some of us to digest such messages as we are always arrested for marching and campaigning for the right to feed our children and send them to school," said a WOZA activist who also asked that her name not be used. She has already been arrested on several occasions in Bulawayo.

"Marches that are pro-government are allowed but not ours, which are basically apolitical, so it is difficult to take the gender affairs ministry seriously," she said.

International Women's Day

This International Women's Day serves as a reminder on how much women can fight poverty, yet often they are not allowed to. Women can do much with just a little help. Poor women often put any food or money they receive back into their families, often neglecting themselves. They have proven over time to be a better investment than men.

Still many women are prevented from making any progress. Maternal health is still woefully inadequate throughout the globe. Women face the prospect of death from the natural process of childbirth. Also, many women are subjected to violence and rape. Many are can even smuggled across boarders to be bound into slavery.

A couple of stories that we found today examines this paradox for women. First from the Guardian, Caroline Harper of the Overseas Development Institute describes some of the challenges for women and also gives one sucess story.

But we have to be realistic about the patchy progress in embedding gender concerns into development initiatives, and in promoting women's and girls' economic, political and social empowerment. While there has been impressive progress on girls' access to education, maternal mortality rates remain shockingly high in much of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia – representing the greatest global health disparity between industrialised and developing countries.

Similarly, while the recognition of rape as a weapon of war is a step towards ending impunity, the levels of violence against women, within and outside of conflict, remain appalling. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, rampant sexual violence against women is the norm in parts of the country. More than 32,000 cases of rape and sexual violence have been registered in South Kivu province alone since 2005. Violence in supposedly safe spaces for girls, including schools, is also a widespread problem, putting at risk girls' educational opportunities.

We urgently need political commitment to foster gender equity, backed by adequate and sustainable funding. Again, we have to be realistic. Such commitment and funding will be hard to secure in the wake of the global economic crises, with aid budgets in many donor countries being scaled back, and competing budget demands in developing countries exacerbated by the food and financial crisis. But it is essential to adequately finance initiatives for women and girls and pinpoint new ways to meet the MDGs by ensuring that gender is centre stage.

One major problem is that we still don't know enough. While there is plenty of information on what causes gender inequality in development, our collective knowledge on what works remains fragmented, under-researched and under-documented. What we do know is that progress on inequity around the globe is often spearheaded by civil society groups that are capitalising on their in-depth local knowledge and the creativity of local women, girls and their communities.

One example is the locally run Adolescent Girls' Adventure education programme in Bangladesh, which has increased employment, improved school enrolment, delayed early marriage, improved health knowledge and, very importantly, enhanced the mobility of teenage girls to reduce their social isolation. More than 250,000 girls in 58 districts in Bangladesh are now enrolled, and its success will start to be replicated across sub-Saharan Africa this year.

While local change is welcome, we also need change at the national and international levels, with a gender lens integrated systematically into policy and programme development.

Finally, commentator Don Cayo of the Vancouver Sun describes why women are a great investment in fighting poverty.

Give a poor woman a fish and odds are that, just like the man in the adage, she'll eat it -though she's also likely to share it with her family. But give her a loan, even a very small one, and she's apt to open a seafood restaurant. Or a cellphone kiosk. Or a market garden. Or ....

This economic reality -not just a donor's instinct to try to redress a gross imbalance of wealth and power -explains why women are the focus of so much international development work today. Simply put, they most often turn out to be a better investment than men.

This is not to say poor women are all inherent entrepreneurs. But a characteristic shared by the poor the world over is that they do work hard, very hard, in pursuit of what few opportunities come their way. And this willingness to work, plus the greater tendency of women to share with and spend on their families, also colours many other aspects of development.

For example, if you want to improve the quality of life in a really poor part of the world, few things will pay a better dividend over the medium or long term than educating girls, who, in virtually all developing countries, are certain to get far fewer learning opportunities than their brothers.

Not only is a society sorely handicapped in its efforts to progress when half of its potential workforce is marginalized, but, once again, women around the world have demonstrated that, when they get a little economic clout, they direct it toward more practical priorities.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Opinion+Investment+poor+women+good+health+pays/4400439/story.html#ixzz1G1c1YD1h

Video: Women March on 100th International Women's Day

From the Associated Press, a video about a Philippine march to commemorate International Women's Day.

Phone apps for women at the bottom of the economic pyramid

A mobile phone for someone in the bottom of the economic pyramid can open up a whole world of opportunity. Job opportunities, mobile banking, literacy and health applications can all be made available on the phone, and for someone in the under-developed world, access to these apps can be life changing.

Yet there is an unequal access to mobile phones for women in the underdeveloped world. Mobile phone ownership rates are 20 to 35 percent lower for women compared to men. This inequality is despite the efforts of NGOs to give phones to the poor.

An article in the Scientific American describes a new program that gives phones and application to women to help empower their lives. The "mWomen Program" was launched by the advocacy group called Groupe Speciale Mobile Association. Writer Robin Lloyd describes some of the apps that this program makes available to women in the under-developed world.

Dozens of mWomen programs and apps already exist in the field, often conceived and implemented by local women. Program directors, organizers and field workers are comparing notes and sharing strategies via the GSMA, online bulletin boards and in-person gatherings such as a tech salon in New York City organized in September by MobileActive.

Attendees at the New York event learned of a recent pilot program in Africa to introduce cell phones and a text message–driven community bulletin board in 15 villages in Senegal that helped local women post messages and share educational information about malaria. The villages lack running water and electricity, but 58 percent of residents had used a mobile phone. Staffers with the Jokko Initiative trained locals how to navigate the bulletin board by mapping its phone tree—with labeled sticks on the ground. The bulletin board and phones freed the women of the need for men to read and type their messages for them. Erica Kochi, part of the initiative via Jokko-partner United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says that women's literacy and numeracy went up as they used the phones to share information and calculate savings at the market.

Anne Roos-Weil described Pesinet, a women-run mobile service she co-founded that brings health care to infants in Mali—where one in five children dies before age five, usually from malaria, measles or respiratory diseases—along with other countries in Africa. For a monthly fee of $1 (equivalent to a day's wages), subscribers are visited weekly at home by a Pesinet agent who weighs newborns and asks the mother questions about diarrhea, fever and other health matters. The agent sends the data via a Java mobile phone app to a server accessed by nearby doctor who assesses the child's health. The doctor then recommends a visit to the clinic if necessary, where the child receives a free medical exam and half-price medication for the diseases that kill most children.

Pesinet's subscription base has increased 70 percent since January, and subscribers almost uniformly find it affordable and satisfying. But it needs to double its enrollment to 1,000 subscribers to cover its expenses.

Funding for nonprofits and NGOs can be unstable and subject to the whims of donor nations and individuals. Enter telecommunications companies, along with their customer bases and business models. Telecoms can build a program aimed at social welfare that will take as long as a decade to pay for itself, long after a start-up's donor patience or grant money might run out.

"Telcos have to think of the business angle as well as the social angle," says Shainoor Khoja, managing director for social programs for Roshan, the leading telecommunications service provider in Afghanistan, with 3.8 million active subscribers. "Sometimes NGOs seem to focus on the social angle only, which is their role, without something being sustainable. It's a real problem." Roshan is 51 percent owned by the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development, so it balances mandates for development and profitability. The company was the first in Afghanistan to post a billboard that featured a picture of a woman.

"Straight-out business-wise we are firm believers that putting a mobile phone in the hands of every woman and girl is essential," Khoja says. "We see the mobile phone as not just one communication tool—we see it as much more. Because the minute you put a voice phone in the hands of the woman, you empower her and also give her access to financial services, information, literacy, safety to pursue a livelihood—a whole variety of things that you and I would take for granted, because we have a phone."

Focusing aid on women

From IRIN, a story about shifting aid priorities to focus on women.

Just days before the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) summit, Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s International Development Secretary, announced a change in direction, putting women and children at the centre of its aid policy. This shift will double the number of female and newborn lives saved by 2015, Mitchell will tell the assembled heads of state in New York on 20-22 September.

Progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment is critical to progress on the MDGs overall, say specialists, and the UK leadership will be calling for collective international action on this issue at the summit.

According to a report by Martin Greeley at the Institute of Development Studies, “... There is increased recognition of the linkages between gender equality and achievement of all the MDGs. For example on MDG4, on child mortality, given the role of women as primary care givers to children; MDG6 on HIV and AIDS, on account of the interaction of gender inequality and the spread of the virus; and MDG7 on water, sanitation and the environment, given among things, women’s disproportionate role in water provisioning.”

But even though there is awareness, few resources are directed at gender-based programming, posing the greatest risk to MDG attainment, writes Greeley.

Indeed, maternal mortality is the MDG with the lowest success rate, despite new figures showing a 34 percent decrease from an estimated 546,000 in 1990 to 358,000 total deaths in childbirth and pregnancy worldwide in 2008.

“The progress is notable, but the annual rate of decline is less than half of what is needed to achieve the MDG target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by 75 percent between 1990 and 2015. This will require an annual decline of 5.5 percent. The 34 percent decline since 1990 translates into an average annual decline of just 2.3 percent,” according to the World Health Organization.

Room for improvement

Belay Ejigu Begashaw, director of multisectoral NGO The MDG Centre, in East & Southern Africa, in Nairobi, told IRIN: “The maternal health numbers are embarrassing; maternal mortality is not even covered by the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria]. But there have been other achievements, such as in education, even if the ratio of girls in secondary school [and university] is still bad.”

Poverty is the main cause, with household chores and lack of appropriate sanitation like toilets among the principal reasons why girls do not attend secondary school, even though a secondary education is particularly important for women’s empowerment.

Funding is key to making progress by 2015, and the combination of the 2008 economic crisis, food and fuel price crises, has set back the MDG cause significantly, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, which started from a very low base, says Begashaw. Oxfam estimates that an extra US$37.5 billion a year is needed for agriculture and food assistance alone.

Another aspect of the financial crisis, according to Oxfam, is how it hit women’s work: “Governments have responded to job losses in textiles and garments industries, largely of women, by channelling fiscal stimuli into construction, which largely employs men.”

Oxfam’s research found women doing additional paid work in the informal economy, and maintaining or increasing their unpaid, caring work in the home.

Indeed, according to an ODI report: “Time poverty affects both MDG6 (combat killer diseases) and MDG7 (environmental sustainability). It can prevent women accessing healthcare, if clinics are far away, and affordable childcare is unavailable. Similarly, environmental degradation can exacerbate time poverty, if women and girls travel long distances to find supplies of firewood and water.”

But key to tracking progress on gender equality and accurately assessing the success of respective MDGs is disaggregating data; failure to do so “masks the gender dynamics of poverty”, states The Lancet report.

Way forward

The UN admits progress has been uneven and many of the targets will be missed in most countries. According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010: “An estimated 1.4 billion people were still living in extreme poverty in 2005. Moreover, the effects of the global financial crisis are likely to persist: poverty rates will be slightly higher in 2015 and even beyond, to 2020, than they would have been had the world economy grown steadily at its pre-crisis pace.

“Gender equality and the empowerment of women are at the heart of the MDGs and are preconditions for overcoming poverty, hunger and disease. But progress has been sluggish on all fronts - from education to access to political decision-making.”

One of the key criticisms of the MDGs as they were set out in 2000 is the emphasis on poverty at the expense of gender, equity, social inclusion and human rights, and it is these aspects that are being targeted by activists in New York.

In addition, they largely ignore gender-specific issues such as harmful traditional practices, including female genital mutilation/cutting and child marriage, gender-based violence, and unemployment among young women – all issues addressed by Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, in her first interview as new head of UN Women. She also noted that, of all the MDGs, those relating to women had shown the worst performance to date.

“They [women] don’t have the same opportunities as men regarding the most essential human rights. Women are discriminated [against]. Their rights are violated. There are still some places where women are mutilated. There are places where women can receive terrible punishments.”

The All-Girls G-20

From CTV, a group of women plan on having a All-Girls G-20 summit ahead of the real one in Toronto this summer.

Supporting female farmers with more data

Women in Africa make up 60 percent of the agricultural workforce, and they grow between 60 to 80 percent of the food. Yet the female farmers don't know who each other are, and have little cooperative opportunities to help each other out. This is due in part because a lack of data on women growing food, not even the governments and NGOs know who they are.

From the IPS, writer Mantoe Phakathi introduces us to a new data collection tool that might help the female farmers to network efforts.

African governments now have the tools to conduct such surveys, thanks to the FAO. The U.N. agency has devised an Agri-Gender Statistics Toolkit that will help countries gather more information on differences between men and women in agriculture and contribute to agricultural development.

Launched in April, the toolkit provides the analytical framework needed to collect data on the nature of women and men’s agricultural work, their access to resources and exposure to food insecurity.

"With more specific information, policy makers can provide greater support to those who lack access and control over agricultural resources and help women to achieve greater equality and food security," said Diana Tempelman, toolkit author and FAO senior officer for gender and development.

Tempelman emphasised that sex-disaggregated data collection is a new area that has been developing based on an increasing understanding of the relevance of knowing the impact of gender relations on individual, family and national development.

The fact that the toolkit was developed in response to a request from the African Commission on Agricultural Statistics (AFCAS) is a positive sign that governments are recognising the contributions of both women and men to agricultural development and the need for planning that takes this into consideration.

Although there has always been data on men and women, this has mainly been collected for the purposes of determining the sex and age composition of populations, education, health, certain sections of formal employment and other sectors.

"But there is scope for improving the availability of socio-economic data reflecting all men and women’s involvement in development and their specific constraints and opportunities," said Tempelman.

Tragedy sheds light on the child brides of Yemen

From NPR, a story on the child brides of Yemen. A tragedy to one such bride may spark a change in law against the practice.

A few stories on gender inequality in Afghanistan

UK blogger Myriam Meech works for the charity Hagar International to build and operate a shelter for women in Afghanistan. The country is largely recognized as the most oppressive place for women even after Taliban rule. As one of the longest serving workers for Hagar, Meech's blog contains some stories about her work and the women she meets in Afghanistan.

We found out about the blog through the UK newspaper The Newmarket Journal. Writer Robert Andrews used some touching blog posts in forming the profile on Myriam Meech.

I was touched by one shocking story Myriam told about a young girl in Kabul.

"She was begging in the streets of Kabul and when she got invited into someone's home she was raped by a group of three men," Myriam said.

Fear often drives these girls away from their home as the consequences of being raped are seen as a disgrace to the family.

As a result of the rape, the girl gave birth and is now being supported by Hagar representatives.
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In Britain we would like to think that these problems would be tackled by some sort of social support service but in Afghanistan, special people like Myriam are left to pick up the pieces.

Her internet blog titled: Reflections from Afghanistan records her observations, particularly the case of the 13-year-old girl Hagar has helped.

An extract reads: "Both mother and child are doing very well.

"The young mother has been through so much and to see her now, beaming over this beautiful new born baby wrapped up in a hand woven blanket, is a beautiful sight.

"I went down to the basement where the music was playing loudly and saw several of the girls using the exercise bikes – our newly furnished gym.

"There was a lot to celebrate that morning.

"I walked down the stairs it was hard not to move a little to the music, which was met with some excitement from the young girls.

"Then, unexpectedly, one of them started to dance and soon enough a dance party broke out in the basement with more girls taking to the dance floor, clapping to the music as one by one they took turns to dance.

"The boys stayed upstairs, eating their breakfast clearly ignoring us (which was a good thing!) Some of the women have not danced since the Taliban took over.

"It was such a powerful moment and one which will stay with me forever I can't describe it a perfect moment."

Face of poverty in Asia is female

A new report from the United Nations was unveiled yesterday that describes the development process of Asia. It says that many economies in Asia have been able to cut poverty in half to meetMillennium Development Goal number 1 by 2015. The report points out that the progress has been uneven, often leaving women behind.

from the IPS, writer Diana G. Mendoza attended the report's unveiling.

The Asia-Pacific Regional Report 2009/10, titled, "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals in an Era of Global Uncertainty," said "most countries across Southeast Asia have reduced extreme poverty by half, but the other half has a woman’s face."

Across the region, some countries have managed to cope with multiple threats of economic crisis, health shocks and pandemics, and natural disasters, but most are still hurting from the impact of these crises and have yet to cope with the little time left to realise the development goals they pledged to achieve by 2015, the report added.
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Among vulnerable populations in the region, women are among those likely to be hurt most by the impact of the crisis on poverty in the region. According to the report, this sector constitutes the majority of Asia’s low- skilled, low-salaried and temporary workers – part of the flexible workforce that can easily be left behind during economic downturns.

Many of them have lost their jobs in export manufacturing, including garments, textiles and electronics – and in tourism and related services. Employers are also more likely to lay off women workers if they consider that they are not the primary heads of households.

Women form nearly two-thirds of the total Asian migrant population, said the report. Yet, they have little protection.

In most Asian countries, less than 20 percent of female workers belong to labour unions. The loss of female income is likely to have a greater impact on welfare, as women tend to spend a greater proportion of their income on meeting the basic needs of household members.

Dr Heyzer cited the Philippines as one of the countries in the region that has achieved gender parity and maintained economic stability while dealing with the economic crisis, but it is still wanting in protection for women in migration and employment.

"Migration patterns of Filipino women are phenomenal, and although they helped caution the economic crisis through remittances, but they do not receive the care that they need," she said.

She also said the Philippines registered a five percent growth rate in its remittances, totaling 17 billion pesos (368.72 million U.S. dollars) in 2009. This helped push the growth of the South-east Asian country’s national economy from three percent in 2009 to 3.5 percent in the first months of 2010, she said. Yet, she noted the disturbing problem of de-skilling, where educated and professional Filipino women are forced to work as housemates and domestic helpers in other countries.

Gender bias 'increases poverty'

from The BBC

Inequality at home between men and women leads to poorer health for the children and greater poverty for the family, says a new study.

The UN children's agency, Unicef, found that where women are excluded from family decisions, children are more likely to be under-nourished.

There would be 13m fewer malnourished children in South Asia if women had an equal say in the family, Unicef said.

Unicef surveyed family decision-making in 30 countries around the world.

Their chief finding is that equality between men and women is essential to lowering poverty and improving health, especially of children, in developing countries.

The conclusions are contained in the agency's State of the World's Children 2007 report.

Lack of opportunities

"There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

"Discrimination against women of all ages deprives the world's children - all of them, not just the half who are girls - of the chance to reach their potential."

The report points to a greater lack of opportunities for girls and women in education and employment that contributes to disempowerment and poverty.

Where men control the household, less money is spent on health care and food for the family, resulting in poorer health for the children.

For example, in Ivory Coast and Ghana, it was discovered that when women's income increased for whatever reason, they spent the extra on more food for the family, whereas an increase in men's income made no significant difference, Unicef said.

In many households across the developing world, Unicef found that women are excluded from health-related decisions.

Children in these families are more likely to be undernourished as the family spends less on food, Unicef said.

Gender equality in family decision-making in South Asia would lead to 13.4m fewer malnourished children, a 13% reduction, the report said.

Decision-makers

Women also work longer hours than men across the developing world, spending much of their time, even when in paid employment, on household chores, the report said.

In many families where women work, daughters are taken out of school to perform domestic chores and take care of other children.

Increasing employment and income-earning opportunities for women would increase women's household power, Unicef said.

For example, the agency found that whoever has the greater share of household income and assets decides whether those resources will be used to meet family needs.

The status of women in the family is paralleled in the political world, Unicef said.

Women's involvement in government tends to result in policies that are focused on children and families.

But, the report said, women are under-represented in legislatures around the world due to lower levels of education, social attitudes and their greater work burden.