Contents

Shoko's mission to our mental trauma project in Cambodia

Evelyn and Lorraine's mission to the Lao Women's Union Project

Presentation Skills Training Workshop

Training in Gender Awareness and Gender Analysis

Nadine sets up an HIV/AIDS network on the Internet

International Women's Day Celebrations, Bangkok

• Publications
• Office Management
• Technical support to UNDP on the advancement of women
• Forthcoming Brown Bag Lunchtime Discussion Group
• Recent visitors

Shoko's mission to our mental trauma project in Cambodia

On 20th January, Shoko made her first official UNIFEM mission to Cambodia. Her purpose was to monitor progress on CMB/96/WO1 Mental Trauma Counselling in Cambodia and discuss a proposed follow-up project. CMB/96/WO1 is supported by UNIFEM Japan.

In the process, she also did a crash course in Buddhist philosophy with, among others, Hema Gunatilike. Many of you will remember Hema from her days in UNIFEM New York or from her work as the UNIFEM Gender Expert on the UNIFEM project CMB/93/WO3 Gender Perspective in Cambodia's Resettlement and Re-Integration. Although now working with a GTZ Project to develop Buddhist learning in Cambodia, Hema has continued to provide very active and practical support to UNIFEM activities there.

In addition to learning from Hema, Shoko's "Buddhistness" was also challenged by the head monk of the temple with which the current UNIFEM Project is associated. She learned the five precepts of Buddhism from him, promised to follow them and has come back a more committed Buddhist. Thus, the mission has contributed to an aspect of human resources development in UNIFEM Bangkok!

The Project that Shoko went to monitor provides mental trauma counselling to women suffering from the psychological scars of the civil war and the "killing fields". As a result of the widespread killing of men, 57 per cent of the adult population is female and an estimated 20 per cent of households are headed by women. The loss of husbands, children and other close relatives has left women with little support, materially or psychologically. Many have unexpectedly found that the survival of their families now solely depends on them. Their traumatic experiences during the war, such as witnessing the torture and killing of family members, have left them unable to cope with the growing demands of a developing society. Organizations trying to involve women in social reconstruction find their inability to cope with mental stress and trauma a serious development obstacle. Despite the grave need in the country for mental health care, Cambodia has neither the human nor financial resources to provide appropriate facilities or treatment. NGOs, temples and other community groups have had to step in to meet the need, often with inadequate resources and skills.

The UNIFEM Project is training ten monks and nuns to use a combination of Buddhist meditation and modern psychological methods to counsel women with psycho-social problems. The training is conducted in a Buddhist temple in the north-west of Cambodia, near Battambang. The head monk of this temple has established a reputation for helping many with mental problems and counselling them through Buddhist teaching and philosophy. Through the project, trainees with some experience in this work (some as former patients) have deepened their understanding of the application of Buddhist techniques to counselling from the head monk. The application of traditional Buddhist techniques has been found very effective in gaining the confidence and cooperation of even severely traumatized patients.

The trainees have also strengthened their understanding of the basic psychology of trauma and developed skills in simple modern psychological techniques through training by a US-based Khmer psychologist. Experience has show that these techniques can be utilized most effectively in the later stages of treatment. The project activities will be completed at the end of March. A training manual and video documenting the activities of the project will also be produced.

Currently, counselling is limited to the compounds of this one temple. UNIFEM and the NGO implementing the Project would like to see these counselling methods replicated in other areas of the country. However, community outreach activities is a sensitive issue for many monks and nuns, who believe that it is against the Buddha's teaching for them to become too involved with secular society. They view the Wat as a place of refuge, to which people may come in order to reduce their suffering. They do not see that it is their responsibility to go out into the community to help people.

However, according to the head monk, Buddha's true teaching is otherwise. In one sermon, he told his disciples to go forth in all directions to spread his word. There is nothing in these teachings that forbids monks and nuns from working in the community. Fortunately, there are monks and nuns who share the head monk's interpretation of the Buddha's teaching and who are willing to go out to work in communities to relieve suffering.

UNIFEM is now planning to work with one of these groups, the Association for Nuns and Laywomen of Cambodia, to replicate the training methods used in CMB/96/WO1 in the context of community outreach activities to conduct trauma counselling for women in needy communities.

Evelyn and Lorraine's mission to the Lao Women's Union Project

On 28th January, Lorraine and Evelyn, accompanied by Geoff, flew to Vientiane for a strategic planning workshop of LAO/93/WO2 Strengthening the Lao Women's Union conducted by the International Management and Planning Consultant, Annie Kennedy. Annie's consultancy was funded by UNDP Laos and the extension of LAO/93/WO2 is funded by UNIFEM Australia Inc., the Australian national committee. Lorraine and Evelyn attended the workshop held on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and also visited UNDP, other UN agencies working with the Lao Women's Union (LWU), UNFPA and UNICEF, and Care International Laos.

The workshop was attended by senior staff of the Women's Union, as well as a senior official from the Planning Commission. The objective was to ensure that key issues of the Beijing Platform for Action, Lao National Plan for Women presented by the LWU at Beijing and the National Five-Year Development Plan were adequately addressed in the draft Strategic Plan of the LWU. A number of content areas in the draft were identified as requiring more work, including the Protection of Women and Children and Women in Decision-making and Leadership. A small working team of LWU staff was established to work with Annie over the following two weeks to incorporate the input of the workshop into the Plan. They will then be responsible for presenting the draft to key Government departments and agencies and the provincial level of the LWU itself for review, and for incorporating resulting inputs into the final Plan. The working team has been joined by another senior planner from the Planning Commission and by the Director of the Statistics Office serving as National Planning Consultants.

Geoff made a short video of some of the workshop activities and a few words from Lorraine, Annie and the Vice-President of the LWU, Mme Khemphet Polsena. He will edit the video to about 5 minutes for UNIFEM Australia, who are funding the extension of the Project. We hope that they may be able to use it during the UNIFEM breakfasts programme on International Women's Day.

Evelyn returned to Bangkok on the Friday. Lorraine stayed until the following Tuesday in order to complete meetings with other agencies and to work with Barbara Franklin, the International Training Consultant for VIE/93/WO3 Fish Processing in Haiphong (Vietnam), who recently moved from Hanoi to Vientiane. Barbara and Lorraine discussed the Trainers Guide that Barbara is producing based on her work for UNIFEM in the Haiphong Project.

Presentation Skills Training Workshop

On 6th, 7th and 13th February, UNIFEM Bangkok and UNDP held a workshop to provide staff with training on Presentation Skills and the use of the computer to prepare overhead transparencies and other materials. The course was conducted by Geoff Corner in three half-day sessions, with the RPA assisting in the second part of the first session. The first session covered Planning a Presentation (Geoff) and Presentation Skills (Lorraine). The second, conducted by Geoff in the ESCAP computer laboratory, provided hands-on tuition in the use of Microsoft Powerpoint to produce transparencies, an outline, handouts and presenter's notes. During the third, participants gave a 3-5 minute trial presentation which Geoff recorded on video and then played back. This allowed the presenters to put their learning into practice and learn further from seeing the audience's view of their performances.

Evelyn's trial presentation dealt with parenthood, Shoko introduced her Master's degree field work with NGOs in India and Nadine described the situation of HIV positive infants in Bangkok. Ratchada, a colleague from UNDP Registry, described the situation of foreign investment in Thailand. The audience, comprising UNDP and UNFPA-Country Support Team staff, gave all an enthusiastic round of applause. All felt that they had learned a lot from the course and the experience. UNIFEM Bangkok is now looking to launch our newly trained staff in the public arena.

Geoff also tried to interest the RPA in developing a continuous slide show for display via computer for the International Women's Day exhibition. His effort was in vain - Lorraine confesses to being a technological troglodyte when allowed. In desperation, he disappeared to his upstairs office (courtesy of UNDP, which is very spouse-friendly) for a day and reappeared with a pilot show on UNIFEM projects that he had developed himself using materials from our library. Shamed, the RPA had to admit that it was both impressive and feasible. Inspired, we not only edited and helped Geoff to extend his show to cover some other projects but had the text translated into Thai in order to run the show in both Thai and English.

Training in Gender Awareness and Gender Analysis

Recently the RPA has been busy conducting gender training with various groups. On 27th January, she provided an introduction to gender analysis to the afternoon session of a training course "Design and Management of Community-based Family Planning, Health and Development Programmes" being conducted by the Population and Development Association (PDA) of Thailand. Participants were drawn from several countries in the region, including Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. As the course was fully funded by a donor, PDA made a donation to UNIFEM of Baht 3,000 in recognition of the RPA's input.

On 11th and 17th February, Lorraine conducted a two-day training course for 22 staff at C4 and C5 levels from the Office of the National Commission for Women's Affairs (NCWA) for Thailand. The first day involved training in gender awareness, while the second provided an introduction to gender analysis. As many of the participants were not fluent in English, Maytinee Bhongsvej of the Mekong River Commission acted as co-trainer in Thai. Lorraine and Maytinee conducted an integrated joint training, with two overhead projectors and flipcharts providing transparencies and notes in both languages. The training was participatory, giving participants opportunities to learn from their own experience and knowledge through group exercises and case studies. The gender analysis was based on an adaptation of an approach developed by Dr Jeanne Illo of the Philippines. In addition to a case study of a hypothetical project covering all of the relevant issues, Lorraine illustrated an extension of the method to analysis of macro-level policy. She showed how the principles of the analysis that had been used to identify gender issues in a project could also be used to analyze the gender issues involved in the liberalization of trade policy.

The staff from NCWA enjoyed the participatory approach and apparently found the course useful. NCWA has now asked Lorraine and Maytinee to conduct another course in March for their C6 and C7 staff.

Nadine sets up an HIV/AIDS network on the Internet

To mark International Women's Day 1997, Nadine has set up a new e-mail network focused on gender and HIV/AIDS. Its aim is to facilitate linkages and information sharing between people living with HIV/AIDS groups, women's organizations and other organizations working in the area of gender and HIV/AIDS. The network is supported by UNIFEM and UNAIDS. Information about the network is also available on the UNIFEM Home Page on the WWWeb.

In addition to promoting on-going dialogue and discussions, the facility will store papers, newspaper clippings, policy statements and other documents on an electronic archive available to all subscribers via e-mail.

To subscribe just send an e-mail message to:

gender-aids@lists.inet.co.th

Send your name, E-mail address, organization title and a quick note about why you want to be part of this network.

International Women's Day Celebrations, Bangkok

On Sunday 2nd March, the Gender and Development Research Institute (GDRI) also organized a 10 km Mini-marathon and a 5 km Walkathon to mark International Women's Day. The UN contingent in the Walkathon was small but prominent: Vishwa Khanna, Operations Manager and DRR of UNDP, was the first to complete the Walkathon course. He took only 31 minutes, beating even the winner of the Min-marathon to the Finish Line. Close behind him were Penparn's son and daughter, Goong and Som, who recorded the official second and third places in the Walkathon. Lorraine and Penparn, together with several colleagues from UNDP, UNIDO and the WID unit of ESCAP also completed the course.

UNIFEM, through its chairing of the Gender, Women and Development Working Group (GWAD), has been active in working with the NGOs of Thailand to celebrate International Women's Day. Evelyn and a small but very active Taskforce from UNIDO and the WID unit of ESCAP organized a UN-NGO exhibition of activities for the advancement of women in the United Nations Convention Centre (UNCC) on 3rd and 4th March. The National Council of Women of Thailand (NCWT), the NGO-UN Focal Point for the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, organized the NGO input to the exhibition. On the same days, the UNCC was also the venue for two days of discussions and an award ceremony recognizing the work of outstanding Thai women organized by GDRI.

The celebrations on the first day were opened by the Prime Minister, General Chawalit Yongchaiyut and attended by more than 500 women, most of whom came from NGOs and communities in the provinces rather than Bangkok. General Chawalit ignored his prepared speech and gave an impassioned address of 45 minutes on a topic that is obviously dear to his heart. Later, the Outstanding Women Awards were presented by the Minister for Industry. In the afternoon, the Outstanding Women were presented to the gathering by two well-known Thai TV presenters.

The second day began with welcome addresses from Thanpuying Sumalee Chatikavanij, Thanpuying Kanok Samsen Vil, Ms Arunee Srito of the National Council of Industrial Workers and the UNIFEM RPA. These were followed by a keynote address by the Chairperson of the Constitution Drafting Assembly Mr Uthai Pimchaichon, which set the tone for the remainder of the programme: discussions on "What Do Women Want from the New Constitution?" and "What Could the New Constitution Offer to Women?".

On 7th March, UNIFEM also attended the official celebrations organized by NCWA at Government House. The official opening, again by the Prime Minister, was followed by a presentation ceremony for outstanding women and outstanding persons in the field of women's development and a seminar on "Women and Political Reform".

Publications

The first print run of Lorraine's monograph Women, Men and Economics: The Gender-Differentiated Impact of Macroeconomics with Special Reference to Asia-Pacific has been distributed and we are now ordering a second printing. Melanie Beresford's study Impact of Macroeconomic Reform on Women in Vietnam is due to go to the printer and Kathy Tannous' study The Impact of Economic Reform on Lao Women is being edited ready for publication.

Office Management

At the beginning of the New Year, the RPA made a New Year's Resolution that we would have regular staff meetings in 1997. So far, we have managed to hold one each Wednesday afternoon except for the week of the Laos/Cambodian missions when Pen and Nadine were the only staff in the office. We are learning to keep them short, the last finishing within the hour.

With a total of five staff, the meetings are a useful and relatively painless way of sharing information. The Meetings always begin with a round-table report from each staff member on what they have been doing during the preceding week, as well as progress on issues discussed at the previous meeting. This has the useful effect of providing each of us with an automatic deadline each week.

Our computers, with one exception, have now been upgraded to Pentiums and we are contemplating conversion of the network to Windows95 with our Computer Consultant Walter. A CD-ROM to be connected to Nadine's machine will improve our desktop publishing capacity and, being portable, also give Walter a more efficient way of installing new software. Lorraine's new Toshiba multi-media portable arrived but then had to be replaced by Toshiba due to a technical fault. She will be running Windows95 and Corel WordPerfect Suite7 and learning to use the strange pointing device that has replaced the "rodent" (i.e. mouse) on the latest portables.

We are gradually building up a library of gender-sensitive and UNIFEM-oriented clipart, thanks to our access to the UNDP scanner and Geoff 's patience in making the scans. We now have a range of UNIFEM Logos - the dove alone, the dove with olive branch, the dove and olive branch with UNIFEM text at the top, and the full UNIFEM logo with complete UNIFEM title beneath - as clipart. We have also scanned a selection of images from the UNIFEM publication Woman: The Password is Action, International Women's Tribune Centre, New York: 1988. [These were made by Lorraine's son Michael during an earlier stay in Bangkok.] If you would like a copy, drop us a line.

Technical support to UNDP on the advancement of women

UNDP Bangkok has recently been considering how best to address the concerns raised by the Administrator in Direct Line 11 (DL11). The RPA was asked to lead a discussion of UNDP staff on how UNDP should go about incorporating a stronger commitment to the advancement of women in their programmes. The group included the Resident Representative (RR) Mr Michael Heyn and the Deputy Resident Representative (DRR) Mr Natsuki Hiratsuka. The DRR has just been designated by the RR as the official Gender Focal Point in UNDP Bangkok, reflecting the strong commitment to the advancement of women in the Bangkok office.

DL11 specifically instructs UNDP to improve its performance in integrating the advancement of women into programmes and projects by identifying at least 20 per cent of resources in the Country Programme as targeted toward this objective. While strongly supporting the intent of the DL, the RPA expressed some reservations about the emphasis on INPUTS alone. She noted that, in general, the advancement of women does not require specific women-focused resources. Rather, it requires that the resources already committed to mainstream activities be delivered equally to women as well as men. Thus, it may be difficult to clearly identify 20 per cent of inputs for the advancement of women. However, it IS essential that inputs such as consultants, trainers and other "people" resources be specifically identified in terms of the proportion of women and men and their gender awareness, regardless of their sex.

Lorraine expressed concern that the emphasis on inputs might encourage a return to separate WID projects, which may tend to marginalize efforts for the advancement of women. Projects can be completely devoted to women and still not enhance the status of women relative to men, which is the principal requirement for women's advancement. Thus, while WID projects are valid and useful for certain specific objectives, the main thrust of programming should be mainstreaming. Where, special WID projects are developed in order to meet the requirements of DL11, special care should be taken to ensure that they are related to and integrated into the Country Programme as a whole.

The RPA suggested that it is also important to identify UNDP's commitment to advancement of women in terms of OUTPUTS. She emphasised that UNDP should start identifying all groups of "people", "human resources" etc. as women and men separately. It is essential that output groups such as trainees be identified as women or men. However, in countries where the main counterpart agencies are highly dominated by men, it may not be realistic to set a 20 per cent target for women in training or other activities. For example, if only 5 per cent of government planners are women, it is pointless to set a target of 20 per cent for women in training for planners.

In such cases, she argued that it is more important to explicitly identify the PROCESSES that will be used to address the advancement of women by changing the underlying situation, usually over an extended period. The resources required for these should be identified as part of the agency's commitment to the advancement of women. In order to address these underlying gender imbalances, she suggested that advocacy to increase the commitment of Government and others to the advancement of women should be a major and explicit strategy in all UNDP activities. Resources should be provided for such advocacy activities, in the form of consultancies for skilled and carefully chosen gender advocates (including men) and time (and associated expenses, such as travel) for UNDP and project staff. In addition, activities such as study tours and training to increase gender awareness and gender sensitivity and gender analysis training courses are also important processes to be considered.

Forthcoming Brown Bag Lunchtime Discussion Group

Thanks to Geoff Corner, we have a copy of a short video shown on Australian Television entitled "Who's Counting? Women's Contribution to the National Economy", based on Marilyn Waring's book Counting for Nothing. We will be screening the video at the first of a GWAD Brown Bag Series from 12:00 - 13:00 on 13th March in the UNDP Conference Room. This will be followed by brief presentations by Lorraine Corner, relating her monograph Women, Men and Economics: The Gender-Differentiated Impact of Macroeconomics to the issues covered in the video, and Khalid Siddiqui Statistics Division ESCAP on "Women's Contributions to the National Accounts: Present Practice".

Recent visitors

Perhaps because of our strategic location in the UN Building, we seem to receive a steady stream of interesting visitors. Among them were:

Mr Jayanta Chowdhury, International Officer, ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) to discuss matters of mutual interest. Nadine provide him with information on gender issues in HIV/AIDS, a topic that ECPAT had not previously considered.

Linda Miranda, Executive Director, Centre for Asia-Pacific Women in Politics CAPWIP (and my predecessor!) to discuss the forthcoming global Women in Politics Congress in New Delhi tentatively set for February 1998.

Namtip Aksornkool, Senior Specialist, ED/BAS/LIT UNESCO Paris. Namtip visited us while on leave and has provided us with some very useful contacts with Thai community level trainers. We also discovered a mutual interest in our projects in China and are exploring possible collaboration.

Mme Khemphet Pholsena, Vice President, Lao Women's Union. Happily, she was attending an ESCAP meeting just before Lorraine and Evelyn's mission to Laos and thus was able to assist in some complex negotiations with the project over the timing of the consultant's visit.

Dr Lelananda de Silva, Consultant preparing the ECOSOC report to the Secretary General on inter-country programmes, specifically coordination, the work of the regional commissions and national ownership. Lorraine described the experience of UNIFEM in inter-country programmes through RAS/93/WO5 Monitoring the Impact of New Technologies on Women's Work, RAS/93/WO6 Improving Statistics on Gender Issues (which was implemented through the regional commission) and the 1996 Women and Trade and Women Homeworkers regional meetings.

Dr Kanikar Sookasame, Director, Research Center and Professor Suchart Prasith-Rathsint, Vice-President for Academic Affairs, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) to discuss possible collaboration on gender issues in governance, particularly in Southern Thailand

Dr John Ang, Consultant with HelpAge Singapore to discuss community work with the aged in Cambodia, where desperately poor women form a particularly large part of the target group.

Kathleen Tiffay, Regional Programme Manager, Asia of HelpAge International Chiang Mai to follow up on the same subject.

Sheila O'paraocha, a Zambian veterinary scientist now a Gender and Development graduate student with the GenDev programme at the Asian Institute of Technology. Sheila initially came to use our library but later we were able to assist her to contact groups in Laos to arrange placement for her field work.

Lucy Lazo, Consultant, ILO to discuss proposals for women homeworkers in Indonesia and the region and a project on trafficking in women between Nepal and India. (We gave her Chandni's contact numbers for this.)

Mr Kim Kwang Il, Programme Officer, UNDP Pyongyang who met Shoko during Lorraine's absence to discuss the UNIFEM Project DRK/92/WO1.

San San Myint, Programme Officer, UNDP Myanmar, to discuss with Lorraine and Nadine UNIFEM support on gender and the advancement of women in Myanmar. As a result of this visit, plans are under way for Lorraine to conduct gender awareness and gender analysis training in Myanmar, probably in April.

Professor Nisa Xuto, to discuss gender issues in economics, particularly macroeconomic policy from the perspective of a non-economist. She went away with a copy of Lorraine's monograph Women, Men and Economics.

Bernadette Cheesemen, Australian Volunteer Abroad, who has been working in Thailand for two years with refugee NGOs.

Dr Nyunt Nyunt Win, formerly of INSTRAW and a UN-TCDC statistics expert in the Marshall Islands. Dr Nyunt is returning to Myanmar while seeking other posts in the region.

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