Expanding frontiers in gender and development
7 March 2011 10:00-12:30 (GMT+00) - Public event
March 8 2011 marks the centenary of International Women’s Day, a day that celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women, and also serves as a reminder of the inequities still to be addressed. This event will aim to identify new frontiers in important areas of gender and development including gender-based violence, climate change, economic and social empowerment, and governance, with the possibility for highlighting promising new initiatives and the potential to go to scale.
Speakers:
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead - Opposition Spokesperson for International Development
Ms Nisreen Alami - Programmes Advisor, UN Women
Dr Sajeda Amin - Senior Associate, Population Council, Bangladesh
Professor Maxine Molyneux - Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London
This year is also significant as it will see the launch of UN Women, a higher status and better-resourced UN entity to tackle gender equality issues globally, at a time when the gender-related challenges in achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 appear especially daunting. While there have been significant achievements in terms of girls’ access to education, maternal mortality rates, especially among teenage girls, remain frighteningly high in much of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Political commitments backed by adequate and sustainable funding flows are urgently needed but especially difficult to secure in the current post-3F global crisis environment.
Nevertheless change is happening around the globe, in many cases spearheaded by initially small-scale civil society initiatives, capitalising on deep context-specific knowledge and the creativity of local women, girls and their communities. It is precisely this type of innovation that the ODI Exploring and Expanding the Frontiers of Gender and Development seminar series has sought to highlight.
