BY CAMILLE SACHS
Camille Sachs is a first year IDEV student at SAIS Europe and an editor of SAIS Perspectives.
SAIS Perspectives sat down with Kawinzi Muiu, the Director of Gender at the World Food Programme, for a conversation about her work, the ways in which gender impacts food security, and how COVID-19 is impacting the work of the WFP.
Perspectives: What is the role of the gender office at the World Food Programme?
Kawinzi Muiu (KM): The gender office itself is responsible for providing technical assistance and guidance as well as for piloting gender initiatives for the better integration of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in WFP’s work and activities. We ensure that gender is incorporated not only for projects, but also across areas like finance, human resources, procurement, logistics, administration, and security. We provide both WFP staff and our partners with tools and knowledge around gender equality. We also have a gender toolkit, which is available to partners. So, at the high level, that is what we are doing.
Perspectives: What are the main duties you handle in your role as the Director of Gender at the World Food Programme?
KM: I am involved with speaking to donors about gender issues, presenting to the Executive Board, and talking with our partners – a mix of NGOs and UN organizations. I am also involved in reviewing documents. If a country office produces a project document, I have to look at it before it goes to the board to ensure it includes all gender elements. A main part of my job is ensuring that the documents, plans, strategies, and policies are not gender blind.
Perspectives: The 2015 WFP Gender Policy is in the last year of implementation. How do you feel WFP has done in achieving the main goals and targets of the policy? What do you think the largest successes have been?
KM: We just completed an evaluation of the policy and the key takeaway was that, overall, the policy elevated the issue of integration of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE) in WFP’s work. Although the policy was from 2015, it was very relevant to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)-Agenda 2030. It was effective in driving WFP to really implement gender mainstreaming and in highlighting the importance of GEWE in reaching Zero Hunger and contributing to all the other SDGs.
For me, the biggest success of the policy was ensuring that country offices/divisions would not bring their Country Strategic Plans, Policies and Strategies to the board without integration of GEWE. The level of integration of GEWE in Country Strategic Plans is measured by the Gender-Age Marker rating, a measure of gender and age integration.
Could we have done more? Of course. We can always do more. Now we have ten years to reach 2030, so we are going to give the policy more gas to see how we can continue and improve our progress.
Perspectives: Looking forward, what were some of the areas in which you felt the policy most struggled to reach objectives?
KM: This is not necessarily a policy flaw, but in some of the countries where we work, there is not enough data disaggregated by sex and age, which is very important in determining who needs what kind of food assistance. Also, a lot of countries struggle with resources – staff resources, human resources, and financial resources – making it difficult to sufficiently integrate GEWE. And we also have emergency situations, where there are security issues requiring rapid and complex responses.
Perspectives: The policy emphasizes the importance of integrating Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment into all of WFP’s work and activities to ensure that the different food security and nutrition needs of women, men, girls, and boys are met. How have you addressed the stereotype that gender equality is for women?
KM: Where we have found success is where we address the entire family when we want to implement programs for women’s empowerment or targeted income generating activities. In those cases where we start with resistance, we have found that as women begin generating income and the whole family benefits, then the husbands come around. They come to see the benefits for their family from women participating in income generating activities—a win-win situation.
Working with partners, we also try to raise awareness at the community level, where men and women can have a dialogue about how they want to move forward with work and management of community assets. For example, we have partnerships with IFAD, FAO, and UN Women, where we all bring different elements to joint projects on women’s empowerment: IFAD helps with financing expertise, FAO brings agricultural technical assistance, WFP provides experience with cash-based transfers, and UN Women has knowledge on implementing gender equality.
A key is trying to bring in women, but without making it appear like men are going to lose. We have a group of WFP men, called Men Standing for Gender Equality, who go to communities and talk about the importance of gender equality. This helps expand male involvement with gender programming and highlights why it is so important to bring men into the conversation.
Perspectives: Shifting focus, climate change is a huge factor in reaching Zero Hunger. How does the work of WFP, particularly around gender, help to mitigate some of the impacts of the climate crisis for the most vulnerable populations?
KM: WFP has a climate change policy. My office worked with them to ensure that gender was included throughout the policy. We must remember that there are a lot of gender-specific challenges raised by climate change. For one, we find more women die when there is a natural disaster. Women are often at home looking after children in poor housing, which puts them at greater risk.
As you mentioned, at the highest-level WFP seeks Zero Hunger. It is so clear that there is no way that we will reach this goal if we are not paying attention to climate change. We work at multiple levels to help address climate change. We work with governments on climate change mitigation, especially in agriculture. When you look at agriculture itself, you see that a lot of the production is by women. At the individual level, WFP provides women with agricultural tools, technology, and financing.
We have a program called Food for Assets. In some countries, the initiative focuses on areas where land has become barren as a result of climate change. In these places we give food or cash-transfers to women, while they help generate community assets such as water resources, improving roads or schools, helping with land rehabilitation, or working on reforestation projects. The key is ensuring when women are involved with these activities that we do a gender analysis and make sure we are not burdening them, as they are also the primary caretakers.
We also provide climate insurance. More than 50% of policy owners are women. We work with the government and with climate forecasting and mapping to see who is most vulnerable. And generally, if we look at the most vulnerable, the center would be women and girls.
At the high level, because of the way it affects food security and nutrition, we really need to stop avoiding the conversation about climate change. We need to come up with good policies and strategies to mitigate the impact of climate change so that we can have food security. It’s a really, really big deal!
Perspectives: Relating to COVID-19, how has the pandemic changed your approach to your work? What are some of the new challenges you face?
KM: Right now, even without talking about WFP, you see that there has been an increase in gender-based violence, with tensions rising because of lockdowns. We have issued guidelines to our country offices letting them know how important it is that they include gender in their analyses of the pandemic. Even though women are not dying at the same rates as men, it is still women who have a disadvantage in financial means, education, and social mobility. It is important that we pay even more attention to gender analysis now to ensure they don’t fall farther.
For our programming, WFP will continue to offer food assistance during the pandemic. Since we are already present in more than eighty countries around the world, we are able to work with governments to continue offering food and nutrition programs. We will still focus on food security and nutrition, but we face new challenges with rising needs and closed borders.
In order to support the global emergency response to COVID-19, WFP has appealed for funding of US$350 million. We are anticipating the virus in the countries where we work and are aiming to raise the resources before the virus becomes highly prevalent in these countries. This way governments will be prepared. Globally, it is a challenging time for all of us and although our donors are also dealing with the pandemic domestically, they are very supportive and rising to the challenge. I am sure that everyone realizes that we are in this together and will have to tackle this globally. In this case, I can say we are joined at the hip globally…
Perspectives: What would you say is the most rewarding part of your work?
KM: For me, the most rewarding part of work is actually seeing change come to people’s lives. For example, we introduced the practice of buying women’s crops—the subsistence crops. We will provide agricultural inputs and women produce their crop and we will buy it from them. We will put income in someone’s pocket. With the income, they are able to send their kids to school, have good health, and eat well. This is what excites me—that we can really change people’s lives!
Perspectives: What are some tips you would give to students interested in working in gender equality?
KM: I would recommend looking at gender equality and key global trends: For example, combine gender equality with climate or environment. I would also recommend they look at legal, political, financial, and economic systems to see how these things influence gender equality. It is quite an interesting area, and I would like to see the expansion of a gendered perspective to all subjects.
As narrated to Camille Sachs, Editor, SAIS Perspectives.
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PHOTO CREDIT: Free use image from Canva Pro.