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ADF VIII Donor's Report: Fighting Poverty in Asia : VIII. The Strategy for Implementing ADF VIII
H. Gender and Development81. Donors stressed the need for ADB to accelerate implementation of the Policy on Gender and Development (GAD) adopted in June 1998. Donors concluded that insufficient attention was being given to including gender issues in ADB’s overall lending program. Donors recommended that in ADF VIII ADB increase the number of loans focusing directly on gender equality, and that gender equality considerations are mainstreamed in loan operations. Projects should address gender equality at both the national and subnational levels and across all key economic sectors in a DMC. Projects should be planned, designed and implemented to allow women to achieve their full economic potential and thereby expand the base for sustainable economic growth in a DMC, and to earn incomes and acquire access to social protection that reflects their full contribution to the nation’s economic and social development. 82. Donors concluded that the adoption of poverty reduction as the overarching goal should spur ADB to mainstream gender issues more vigorously in all its operations. With two thirds of the Region’s poor being women, Donors felt that any poverty reduction strategy in the Region will necessitate approaches that involve both policy changes and investments to correct gender disparities across all sectors. Donors concluded that achieving meaningful poverty reduction in the Region will require substantial improvements in the economic, political, social, and legal status of women. With this in mind, Donors recommended that increased investments providing poor women with access to education, health, income, and employment opportunities form the basis of ADB interventions to address poverty reduction. The Donors stressed that all poverty assessments conducted by ADB must include gender-disaggregated data and qualitative assessments of the nature of women’s poverty. Donors also emphasized the need to include representatives of women’s organizations in the high-level poverty forums. 83. Donors endorsed ADB’s GAD policy that adopts mainstreaming as a key strategy for addressing gender equity and recognized recent efforts, especially the recruitment of additional GAD staff to help implement the policy. However, Donors felt that much more needs to be done to intensify this effort and to translate policy intentions into a program reflected in ADB’s lending operations. Donors observed recent progress in mainstreaming gender into ADB operations, especially in economic and sector work, such as the preparation of country briefing papers on women and gender strategies incorporated into COSs. But Donors felt the upstream work is yet to be systematically reflected downstream in the CAPs. Thus, the Donors are awaiting ADB’s gender action plan which is currently being prepared. They requested that the GAD action plan be provided to the Board of Directors in 2000 and that it contains clear, monitorable goals and targets to be achieved over a three-year period. Donors agreed that to mainstream GAD in ADB’s lending operations, more effort needs to be placed on GAD policy dialogue with ADF borrowing members. 84. Donors endorsed ADB’s three new GAD initiatives: (i) establishment of the external forum on GAD which will facilitate regular dialogue between ADB and representatives of civil society on implementation of the GAD policy; and (ii) the Regional TA on GAD initiatives which will provide small grants to DMC governments and women’s NGOs for innovative GAD projects that could be replicated and enlarged; and (iii) Swedish financed initiative on ADB staff training in gender mainstreaming and poverty reduction. Donors were encouraged that the administrative arrangements for establishing the external forum on gender have been completed and that the first meeting of the forum would take place in the third quarter of 2000. To ensure effective dialogue, Donors recommended that Management and senior staff also meet with the gender forum members. 85. The Donors also noted that under a regional TA financed by the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), GAD national consultants have been placed in six resident missions to help integrate GAD considerations into projects and strengthen the GAD capacity of executing agencies. They endorsed the regional TA’s emphasis on close monitoring of GAD concerns in project implementation and the carrying out of midcourse corrections. 86. ADB’s efforts to collaborate with regional organizations, donors, and NGOs on regional GAD activities, such as the meetings on progress since the Beijing Platform for Action, were commended by the Donors. Donors recommended that further collaborative work and cofinanced regional GAD initiatives be undertaken with regional organizations, other donors and NGOs. Finally, Donors expressed a keen interest in OEO’s forthcoming review of GAD in ADB’s lending program.
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