United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s announcement on 14 September of the appointment of Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, as the Under Secretary-General for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) is a political watershed that comes at a critical juncture in the life of the United Nations (UN).
Bachelet will be heading a fully fledged agency with a budget of $220 million, with an operational capacity to build partnerships with governments and communities that may knock the UN family into shape and renew the business of gender mainstreaming, which seems to be suffering from fatigue and lethargy of considerable proportions.
Over the last four years, proponents have advocated for UN Women to have policy-setting responsibilities on substantive issues of gender equality and women’s rights, with the authority to ensure accountability on gender mainstreaming in the UN system and a field presence to conduct and shape UN operational activities at the country level.
Seen as a progressive move to honour a pledge made last September to create a better-funded UN agency for women, this institutional coup may be one of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s few legacies to an organisation that is at a crossroads. Indeed, viewed as a technical coup, this bold political statement, which affirms the will of member states to support the system-wide coherence of all UN entities mandated to work towards gender equality, could be a saving grace that the international organisation needs.
Fundamentally, the announcement signifies a bold step in bringing in star power when many sceptics question the creation of another agency within the UN, whose record of performance and delivery has been less than satisfactory. For many, the question remains as to why a women’s agency would function at a higher level than the four existing gender entities, which have proved dysfunctional, to say the least.
Four years ago, the idea of bringing together four underfunded entities with limited stature and mandate, coupled with unbridled competition and poor programming, would only have created a stalemate. This is notwithstanding the difficulties faced by international public administration bodies like the UN in policy implementation, which is characterised by the ‘complexity of joint action’. Bachelet, from her experience as president of Chile from 2006 to 2010, knows only too well that while it may be relatively easy to manage the bureaucratic machinery, the multiplicity of actors and the resulting multiplicity of perspectives make the implementation of policies a difficult and often daunting affair.
While the last two decades held great promise in making development, human rights and security ‘mainstreams’ work for women, this strategy was characterised by staggering failures as well. Simply put, an acknowledgement that things were not working was a hard but necessary first step. While strategic partnerships have been made between women’s movements and policy reformers, who have now placed equity and women’s human rights at the centre of global debates, such initiatives were simply not enough.
In spite of advances in the normative frameworks for gender equality and women’s human rights such as legal frameworks, constitutional guarantees for gender equality policies in many countries, as well as within the UN system, women still suffer much higher illiteracy rates, are burdened by poverty, face abuse in their homes and the workplace, and face sexual enslavement and rape as a weapon of war.
One would question if things will be any different with the new entity. At least symbolically, the future of gender mainstreaming looks brighter, but many institutional challenges remain. In 2008, the secretary-general reported that ‘gaps remain[ed] between policy and practice’ across the UN, including ‘weak monitoring, reporting and evaluation processes, ‘underdeveloped accountability mechanisms’ and ‘inadequate financial resources’.1 With such a catalogue of inadequacies, even a mediocre performance requires supernatural efforts.
Bachelet may well have to deal with institutional paralysis and resistance - a lethal combination that derails transformational feminist concepts once they enter the policy arena, and will have to counter the depoliticising effects of institutionalisation. She must also be aware that the formation of the new entity has not led to any investigation of the gendered nature of the UN itself, which may well curtail any progress towards making gender mainstreaming work.
As the new entity is being developed, she should be mindful of the urgency to address unfinished gender business, and also of the expectations of the millions of women across the world. Bachelet’s skills will be put to the test as she rallies member states to strengthen their efforts and financial commitments to achieve the equality of women and men.
Coupled with emboldened leadership, there should also be a sense of irreversibility. There is no turning back. Bachelet’s leadership should gain significant buy-in from sceptics and this could have a snowball effect on the institutional activity of continental and regional organisations.
Closer to home, as the African Union (AU) launches the African Women’s Decade in Nairobi on 15 October and in light of the slow progress in implementation and the structural and attitudinal changes still needed to make women’s rights a reality, radical and difficult choices have to be made. While the AU has committed itself to the principle of gender equality, and has created the Women, Gender and Development Directorate in the Office of the Chairperson to facilitate gender mainstreaming within the Commission and the AU as a whole, a tangible change to the status of the majority of African women is yet to appear.
The realisation of women’s rights on the African continent is likely to gain momentum if more female heads of state and government are appointed to support UN Women at the continental level, or Africa will risk falling out of step with global advances, with negative repercussions for its women. It is the task of such partnerships to harmonise women’s movements globally, in the hope of mitigating the negative effects of the marginalisation and exclusion of women.
Bachelet’s extraordinary past successes represent a target that African women should strive to achieve, by advancing to the highest political offices on the continent, first as heads of state and government, and then as head of the AU Commission. As African women descend on Nairobi for the launch of the African Women’s Decade, they should go beyond rhetoric and normative conversations and take active steps to change the political landscape of the continent by achieving the appointment of twenty female African presidents by 2020.
The launch of the African Women’s Decade should provide a starting point from which further supportive innovations could be launched. Recognition of institutional entities as tools of progressive change can be a powerful rallying tool for global and local women’s movements, which should act to pressure the UN and AU systems to influence their policies and hold their organs to account.
In 2006, Steven Lewis, at the time UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa, said that ‘women’s agency can be built on the foundation constructed over the years by the kaleidoscope of women’s groups that have operated outside the United Nations, partly because there’s been so little to affiliate with on the inside … gender equality is not achieved in hesitant, tentative, disingenuous increments. It is achieved by bold reform of the architecture of the United Nations.’ The African women meeting in Nairobi should take this opportunity and demand business unusual. Without bolder and radical innovation and institutional coups, the gains recorded so far will be in jeopardy.
- UN Secretary-General, Mainstreaming a Gender Perspective into All Policies and Programmes of the United Nations System: Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc E/2008/53, 7 May 2008.
