GENDER AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN COOPERATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

Gender is not a specific topic among other cooperation themes, but it must be transversal to all of them. This is the correct theoretical approach, but in the real situation, in rural areas especially, gender projects are still confused with women projects and nowadays in the rural cooperation projects we witness a lot of women oriented activities, which share little with gender. It seems to be brought back to the seventies WID ages and the consequence is the feeble sustainability of these projects during the time, especially when they come to an end. The problem is more manifest whereas these projects should implicate men and women in rural villages, often recluses and with poor communication lines and means.

The proposal of this panel was to explore this situation through the analysis of different contributions coming from ONGs, universities, local municipalities, research centres.

The presented papers showed the well known critical points that limit women’s participation to improve concrete gender actions in the field, from lack of policies to land grabbing, from weak mainstreaming to unreliable gender data to highlight the real context where improve projects actions, from the gap between research studies and the daily life of rural people (especially women) to poor assets management and resources control. Last, but not less important, the multiple factors of discrimination (clan, religious, social) at the base of internal conflicts and wars, which mainly strike women.