<title>Towards a strategy for the full participation of women in all phases of the united nations global strategy for shelter to the year 2000</title>
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) Nairobi, 1990
<section>Foreword</section>
This document reports on the process initiated by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) to promote the role of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. The main objective of the Global Strategy is to facilitate the provision of shelter for all by the year 2000. "Shelter for all" means affordable shelter for all groups in all types of settlements, meeting basic requirements of tenurial security, structural stability and infrastructural support, with convenient access to employment and community services and facilities.
Although each country will have to adopt its own timetable, the general framework for the GSS is as follows:
1989-1991 - Establishment of national policies and strategies, and design of new institutional arrangements;
1992-1994 - Introduction of new institutional arrangements, and strengthening of existing national programmes;
Enabling policies, whereby the full potential and resources of all governmental and non-governmental actors in the field of human settlements are utilized, must be at the heart of national and international efforts. The public sector, rather than attempt to shoulder the entire burden of shelter production and distribution, should concentrate on those needs, e.g., infrastructure provision, which people are usually not able to meet themselves, while encouraging and facilitating the shelter-production efforts of other participants, including the formal and informal private sector, small entrepreneurs, civic and community groups, voluntary organizations and private individuals. Women, as income-earners, home-makers and heads of households, have a crucial role, as contributors to the solution of human settlements problems, which should be fully recognized and reflected in equal participation of women in the elaboration of housing policies, programmes and projects.
This report is presented in three parts. The Introduction outlines the general process followed by UNCHS (Habitat) to define and create awareness of women's shelter issues. Part One presents highlights of findings and required actions identified during 1988-1989 at five regional seminars organized by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and funded by the Governments of the Netherlands and Norway. Part Two presents the strategy or plan of action which was developed and recommended by the Interregional Seminar to Promote the Full Paticipation of Women in all Phases of the Global Strategy For shelter to the year 2000, held at Nairobi, from 4 to 8 December 1989.
Dr. Arcot Ramachandran
Under-Secretary-General
Executive Director
<section>Introduction</section>
<section>A. Women and shelter</section>
Although there have been three United Nations International Development Decades, the role of women in the process of development did not capture the attention of international planners until 1975, when the General Assembly of the United Nations declared 1976 to 1985 to be the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace. It was not until the end of the Decade, however, that shelter issues of concern to women began to appear on the United Nations agenda.
Shelter issues were brought to the attention of women's movements and of Member States of the United Nations in 1985, when the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development, Peace adopted the Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women. These called on governments to:
"integrate women in the formulation of policies, programmes and projects for the provision of basic shelter and infrastructure. To this end, the enrolement of women in architectural, engineering, and related fields should be encouraged, and qualified women graduates in these fields should be assigned to professional, policy-making and decision-making positions. The shelter and infrastructural needs of women should be assessed and specifically incorporated in housing, community development, and slum and squarer projects.
"Women and women's groups should be participants in and equal beneficiaries of housing and infrastructure construction projects. They should be consulted in the choice of design and technology of construction and should be involved in the management and maintenance of the facilities. To this end, women should be provided with construction, maintenance, and management skills and should be included in related training and educational programmes.",
<section>B. The Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000</section>
The main objective of the Global Strategy is to facilitate adequate shelter for all by the Year 2000. "Shelter for all" means affordable shelter for all groups in all types of settlements, meeting basic requirements of tenurial security, structural stability, and infrastructure support, with convenient access to employment and community services and facilities.
Two important principles sustain the Strategy. The first is that governments must adopt an "enabling" approach - facilitating the activities of all the present and potential participants in the shelter production and improvement process. The second principle is that, while the main focus of the Strategy is on low-income population groups, it is not limited to any one group but, rather, is based on a comprehensive view of all demand actors.
The operational focus of the Global Strategy is on national strategies to be developed by all governments. International support is recognized as crucial for the success of the Global Strategy and must be directed towards enhancing national capabilities to formulate and implement national action components. The Global Strategy is a commitment by the world community and a mandate for the entire United Nations system.
The answer to the question of encouraging the participation of women in the Global Strategy is to be found in the very processes of social and economic development sweeping the countries of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and Oceania. These processes have changed the roles and responsibilities of women. Women, as income-earners, homemakers, and heads of household, and women's organizations fulfil a crucial role as contributors to the solution of human settlements problems. This has to be fully recognized and reflected in the equal participation of women in the elaboration of housing policies, programmes and projects, and more specifically in the formulation and implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter.
<section>C. UNCHS (Habitat) activities related to women</section>
Since the World Conference, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), which has always placed housing policies and programmes in the context of national development plans, has been actively engaged in the promotion of women both as beneficiaries and as agents of change in the area of human settlements. One of the Centre's first follow-up activities after the World Conference was an international seminar on women and shelter, organized jointly by the Centre for Social
Development and Humanitarian Affairs/Division for the Advancement of Women and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). That Seminar, held in December 1985 in Vienna, brought together representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations for women from many countries of the world.
The purpose of the Seminar was to familiarize women's organizations with key issues of settlements management. It was felt that, through familiarization with mainstream development issues, women's organizations could formulate proposals related to them for inclusion in national agenda for action. At the end of the Seminar, the participants had an increased appreciation of the broad scope of settlements but they felt that, in order to achieve the greatest impact, it was not enough for women's organizations alone to be made aware of the issues; policy-makers in the settlements sector also had to be familiar with women's perspectives on housing and residential environments. It was stressed that only through joint collaborative efforts could realistic and practical national plans of action evolve.
The Commission on Human Settlements, at its ninth session in May 1986, recommended that:
"regional or subregional seminars be organized ... in order to exchange experiences on pilot projects and to define and evaluate the role of women and the organizations that represent them..."
As a result, work intensified to promote the role of women in the management of settlements. In addition to the resources of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), funding required for regional seminars was received from the Governments of Netherlands and of Norway during and shortly after the tenth (Commemorative) session of the Commission which took place in April 1987.
The following regional and subregional seminars were organized by the Centre and the respective host countries in 1988 and 1989:
(a) Asia and the Pacific: 24-29 February 1988 in Indonesia;
(b) French-speaking African countries: 28 March to 1 April 1988 in Tunisia;
(c) Caribbean countries: 6 to 10 June 1988 in Saint Vincent and Grenadines;
(d) English-speaking African countries: 31 October to 4 November 1988 in Zambia;
(e) Latin American countries: 27 to 31 March 1989 in Argentina.
The participants, who were drawn from governmental and non-governmental organizations as well as from donor agencies, were all involved in human settlements activities, particularly those concerning women.
The objectives of the seminars were:
2/ See Adjustment with a Human Face (New York, United Nations Children's Fund).
(a) To provide policy and procedural guidance to high-level policy-makers, in such ministries as housing, public works and industry, on the incorporation of women's concerns in their programmes;
(b) To provide technical information to representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations on means of ensuring the effective participation of women in human settlements development and management, with particular emphasis on community participation;
(c) To facilitate the identification of special problems concerning the participation of women in settlements development and management;
(d) To enhance communication and co-operation between institutions dealing with issues concerning women and those dealing with mainstream sectoral development Issues;
(e) To create a readiness in institutions to support policies, programmes and projects to mobilize the participation of women in the development and upgrading of settlements;
(f) To discuss the effectiveness of different communication and information technologies in promoting gender-awareness in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects;
(g) To develop national advocacy strategies for the continuous promotion of the involvement of women in the development and management of settlements.
The following key issues were deliberated upon at each regional seminar:
(a) The role of women in the formulation and implementation of housing policies;
(b) Women and land;
(c) The participation of women in housing finance;
(d) The participation of women in the construction sector;
(e) The participation of women in shelter projects;
(f) Women, water, and sanitation;
(g) Community participation as a means of enhancing the role of women in the development and management of settlements;
(h) Communications and information as instruments to enhance the participation of women in the development and management of settlements.
Highlights of the findings and recommendations of the seminars are presented in Part One of this paper.
The Interregional Seminar to Promote the Full Participation of Women in all phases of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 was convened to give further impetus to the process begun by the earlier series of seminars. The participants (governmental and non-governmental), observers, resource personnel and donors were drawn from each of the five earlier seminars. The Seminar built on regional experiences to develop a plan of action for the continuation of the process which the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) had initiated. Part Two of this document provides an overview of the Seminar.
The process initiated by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) is directed towards the achievement of the following long-term development objectives:
(a) Involving women at all levels of the planning and implementation of human settlements policies and programmes;
(b) Improving the residential/work environment of women, especially urban and rural low-income women, their families and communities.
The strategy developed during the Seminar was formulated in the total United Nations context. In his introductory remarks at the regional meeting in Indonesia, the Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) had pointed out that the declaration of 1976-1985 as the United Nations Decade for Women had been a result of the recognition that the scales of world equality had been out of balance. Not only had women experienced negative effects of the shift from traditional to "modernized" societies through the development process, they had been, by and large, excluded from the development planning process itself.
During the Decade, efforts had been introduced to improve the status of women, and, despite difficulties confronted by all countries, those efforts had resulted in substantial achievements, although they had been unevenly distributed between developing and industrialized countries and among sectors of the economy. Noteworthy among the achievements had been the increase in visibility of women's issues throughout the world; the growth of worldwide women's networks; the expansion of research, writing, and scholarship on the status of women and world development; progress in legislation; the rapid expansion of the female labour force; the narrowing of educational gaps between men and women at the lowest levels of the education system; and a general acknowledgement of the need to include women in development policies and programmes not only for reasons of social equity, but in order to realize overall national development objectives.
The Fourth United Nations International Development Decade is about to be launched after a decade that has witnessed difficult and painful adjustments to the global economic crisis. As many studies have shown, the debt crisis has affected women and their dependent children especially. The prospects for the 1990s, according to international analyses, indicate that the trends of the 1 980s are likely to continue, given current policies. Macroeconomic trends, particularly the continuing world economic crisis, have negatively affected the shelter conditions of women. Fewer employment and income-generation opportunities have resulted in more homeless women: reduced social expenditures on child care and education have pushed women into marginal, temporary and low-paid jobs. in addition, continuing social prejudices against women keep their needs secondary to those of men, and the process of including women in decision-making is agonizingly slow. The increased fragmentation of the
family, because of migration, divorce, separation etc., has resulted in a greater number of households being headed by women, but the specific shelter needs of such households have been largely unrecognized.
For the majority of women in developing countries, the challenge is still one of survival and the satisfaction of the basic needs of their families. They still have to struggle for a bare minimum income, for food, for shelter and for employment. They still have to acquire literacy, an acceptable level of education and training, and health standards which will allow them to work productively and to enjoy the fruits of their work. However, there are signs that women and shelter issues have found a permanent place on the United Nations agenda if not in the reality of daily life. The first such sign is the process initiated by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) to ensure the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000.
Human settlements are where organized human activity takes place. They function as a system at the global, regional, sub-regional, national and sub-national levels down to the lowest unit of human habitation. Human settlements are not simply housing or the physical structure of a city, town or village but an integrated system of all human activities residence, work, education, health, culture, leisure - as well as the physical structures that support them.
Human settlements form an important component of a country's fixed capital assets. Public investment in human settlements development - unlike investment in so-called "productive" sectors which, more often than not, suffer rapid obsolescence - are rarely wasted. Investment in human settlements invariably contributes to improvement of a society's ability to respond to basic development needs, such as shelter, education, health, mobility, and (generally) productive output, as well as to conservation of the natural environment.
It might be said, therefore, that while the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) has a special interest in the provision of shelter (decent and affordable housing) for all, this is placed within a broad concept of human settlements which links the issue, as it should be, with almost every aspect of economic and social development. The strategy developed during the Seminar for the full participation of women, therefore, was squarely in this broad context - viewing women, the family and shelter as parts of integrated community development and the community in toto as a contributor to national development plans and the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000.
It is becoming apparent that national development targets can only be achieved if women are approached as the main agents of change. The total sum of their available knowledge and talent is indispensable to progress and the development of humanity. Therefore, in the interest of national development as a whole, the contributions of women to development, which have remained unacknowledged for so long, must be seen by national planners as a valuable resource to supplement and balance those of the long-dominant male.
As development planners and activists look to the participation of local communities in the development process, they are finding that it is the women in communities who are the main providers of food, water and energy for their families, who build houses and who care for children and the sick. In addition to child-bearing and child-caring, women are often engaged in small-scale businesses in the informal sector. Reaching women at the community level is reaching the prime "agents for change": when only men are targeted for action and provided with resources, women, families and communities do not automatically benefit.
Human settlements activity requires a specific focus on women, because, in the majority of countries the shelter needs of women are still subsumed under those of the family, even though there is ample evidence that the specific needs of women and the contributions they can make are distinct from those of men. If it is accepted that human settlements are more than physical structures accommodating people i.e., that they are "places to live and produce in, and a space within which the socialization process and social interaction occur, safeguarding the social fabric and social values of all its dwelles", as they were described by the Minister of Women's Affairs of Indonesia, H.E. Mrs. A. Sulaskin Murpratomo, at the seminar in Indonesia, it is essential to the social fabric of a country that the concerns and needs of women be taken into account in all policies, plans, programmes and projects related to human settlements. Women are, after all, the primary users and providers of
the infrastructural facilities in a settlement, i.e., water supply and sanitary and health services, carrying out income-generating as well as household and child-caring tasks in extremely difficult conditions within the home and, also, contributing to the informal construction of shelter in poor rural and urban areas.
The earlier series of seminars had addressed the concerns and needs of women in general, but the focus of the meetings and the priority of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) were given to urban and rural poor and low-income women. Further delineations will no doubt result from future national and sub- national studies, as the process of involving women in the Global Strategy for Shelter progresses. For example, during the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, two meetings on women and shelter (planned in consultation with the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)), identified additional categories of low-income women. A seminar held in Harare, from 30 November to 5 December 1987, delineated the categories: urban poor women, women on peasant farms, and women on plantations and other worksites. The United States National Congress of Neighbourhood Women Conference on "Housing Options for Women", held at Camden, New Jersey, in
October 1987, focused on another growing category: the increasing number of homeless women in industrialized urban centres.
<section>Part one: Overview of regional seminars</section>
This Part of the report draws upon the work of the five seminars in the earlier series organized by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and on selected papers on the subject: women and shelter. It highlights only the main findings of the seminars; detailed regional and country reports are in the Centre's archives for further reference. These highlights were also included in a background paper that provided a framework for the Interregional Seminar to Promote the Full Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. They are discussed below under housing policy, land, finance and construction, as they relate to women, and community participation and communications and information as means of enhancing the involvement of women in the development and management of settlements.
Women are central to the activities performed for the daily subsistence of families and communities, yet are unrecognized and, hence, are marginal in the sweep of development planning and programmes. However, it has to be emphasized that each community and country should be analyzed in the context of its own history and culture, in order to design appropriate responses to women's issues in human settlements. Thus, when this overview states that women, generally, are experiencing certain problems, it should be kept in mind that there are many distinctions not developed within the scope of this document. These differences need to be studied before making specific plans for action at national and community levels.
<section>A. Women and housing</section>
1. Findings policy
In the formulation of shelter-development policies, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) has identified two aspects of women's participation.
The first is the direct participation of women themselves in the formulation of the policies; the second is the inclusion of considerations specific to women in the formulation of policy. Both are essential but, with few exceptions, both were found to be poorly developed in all regions.
One reason for the low levels of participation by women is the assumption/hat women are only potential recipients of the benefits generated in the human settlements sector, not contributors. This implies a purely welfare-oriented focus on women, even in those national economies that can afford welfare programmes. Another consideration is that shelter is often viewed merely as a physical structure accommodating a group of people - the family. The provision of shelter to the family is, thus, misinterpreted as being the same as the satisfaction of the shelter needs of women.
Changing social conditions, which tend to disrupt the traditional patterns of family and kinship, are increasing the number of households headed by women in low-income urban settlements. Rural-to-urban migration is also increasing the number of woman headed rural households which must survive precariously on remittances from family members in urban areas, supplemented by income derived from subsistence-level agricultural production and/or paid agricultural work. The double burden of managing the household and generating income places women at a disadvantage in dealing with the complications of obtaining shelter through conventional housing programmes.
The gender-specific discrimination to which women heads-of-household are subjected costs society a great deal without benefiting any specific segment. Households headed by women are often excluded from programmes and projects simply because existing laws or statutes recognize only males as heads-of-household. In other cases, eligibility criteria for housing applications require a partner. Public announcements, application procedures, down-payment requirements and repayment procedures all discriminate against women - especially against women heads-of-household.
A particularly intractable difficulty identified at the seminars was the rapid rise in the number of people in need of housing at a time of a severe limitation on overall governmental resources, a situation exacerbated by adjustment policies being followed in many countries. It was pointed out that, in Latin America, economic stagnation and absolute poverty are spreading into the mushrooming spontaneous settlements (slums, shanty towns, ranchos and favelas) that girdle the urban centres of the region, casting doubt on the conventional belief that urban development and economic growth are positively linked. Rural poverty is being exported to the city, especially in the absence of positive urban-development programmes to raise the economic and social status of the poor, particularly women. This situation increases the need for national priorities and policies that will guide human settlements growth equitably.
The seminars addressed the question of why governments should single out women, in the face of the vast number of men and children who are also not benefiting from current housing programmes. The following points were made in this connection:
(a) Within the target universe of the disadvantaged population of a country (in many cases, as high as 80 per cent), the needs of the great majority of women are poorly addressed, even when policies generally correspond to the needs of the poor as a whole;
(b) Many women who are members of "conventional" households are at a disadvantage, because shelter programmes on the whole are not benefiting the poor, and, as a result, women suffer disproportionately;
(c) Women who are not members of "conventional" households are at a disadvantage, because programmes actively discriminate in favour of "conventional" households;
The removal of the first type of disadvantage was considered to be relatively easy, because it does not necessarily result in a confrontation over the allocation of limited financial resources. Nevertheless, it does create a confrontation over attitudes and power - essential elements for lasting change - which it might be very difficult to avoid.
The consensus also recognized that shelter policies are a compromise between conflicting aspirations of different groups in a settlement and their respective stakes in the decision-making process. There appear to be two prevailing ways of viewing and treating urban growth. One approach views the city purely in terms of its market value and land purely as a commodity, the price of which must be maximized in order to sustain municipal finances through property taxes. This approach dismisses the urban poor, their informal economy and their residences as low-value occupiers of urban space. The second approach looks at the city in terms of its use-value as a place in which to live and produce, and tries to safeguard the traditional social fabric and the residential and economic activities of the informal sector. This people-oriented approach, however, is steadily losing ground to conventional economic analysis.
Planning instruments, such as building codes, redevelopment schemes, zoning ordinances and land-use regulations, tend to further the objectives of large-scale influential businesses rather than those of poor and disadvantaged households. Mixed-use restrictions (which contribute to the destruction of traditional crafts and small-scale workshops to the advantage of corporate manufacturers), banning of street vendors (who are often perceived as a threat to organized trade) and the introduction of various licensing and regulatory devices (which favour formal over informal businesses) all claim priority in urban space for the corporate economy. It is obvious that the losers from such trends are the informal sector and people who obtain their work and their housing from it, particularly women.
The demand for urban space created by market forces, narrowly defined, has an important impact on the traditional residential-cum-working neighbourhoods inhabited by the poor. It particularly affects women who earn a large portion of their income in the informal sector as well as in home-based crafts and manufacturing activities. Removed from their traditional locations, their employment opportunities disrupted and their transport costs increased, the urban poor in developing countries are often impoverished by the very policies which were ostensibly intended to benefit them.
The seminars acknowledged that progress has been made in all regions towards the achievement of equality for men and women in access to housing, land and credit, but reiterated that women are under-represented at decision-making levels and, therefore, make but a minimal contribution to the formulation of housing policies. In Latin America, the Costa Rican Government was cited as an exception, because its official programme gives priority to the housing problem and expresses the need for changing the role of women in society through improved conditions for the participation of women in the production process, as well as in social, political, and cultural life.
During the seminar for French-speaking countries in Africa it was reported that in Tunisia women have had the benefit of advanced legislation since independence. Wives are not under the guardianship of their husbands with regard to the management of their possessions, the acquisition of land or access to credit. Participants at the seminar stressed the need for ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted by the United Nations in 1979, and for a popularization of women's legal rights - both of which require above all, a change of attitudes. A Moroccan woman stated that, in her country, laws currently in force were in women's favour and are not discriminatory, but that there was a difference between what the law said and the way things were actually done. Men were not ready to accept women in business, management or labour. Women's organizations still had a lot to do to sensitize women to the need to join together to
assert their rights and their opinions. She cited a positive example which was beginning to bear fruit in Morocco - that of co-operatives. Women were creating women's co-operatives which gave their members negotiating power with financial institutions and local-government authorities. A woman from Niger also posed the problem this way: "Theoretically women are wanted; their place is reserved and recognized. But because of their inferior level of education they cannot participate." This clearly underscores the inter-relatedness of all facets of development and the need to analyze and act on women and shelter issues within the scope of broad development policies and programmes.
It was also noted that, in recent years, efforts have been made by some governments in Asia and the Pacific to repeal laws and regulations which discriminate against women and to encourage the participation of women in the political process. Nonetheless, progress is slow, and obstacles persist.
In all regions, it was stressed that shortfalls in the formulation of human settlements policies and the gap between legal rights and enforcement had the greatest effect on the poorest urban social classes. In this situation men as well as women are excluded from participatory processes. In the rural setting, too, there are distinct land and settlement configurations according to local customs and systems that must be factored into human settlements policies. Without exception, each region stressed the adverse impact of policies on women in all rural and urban economic and social categories.
2. Action needed to tee taken
All the seminars confirmed the universally accepted dictum for bringing about policy change in favour of low-income women, their families and communities - there must be a political will to do so. In order to strengthen political will in this direction, they suggested the following:
(a) Help to establish housing and human settlements as a fundamental right, rather than a market decision;
(b) Develop plans at the national and local level to communicate this concept to policymakers and to inform women, their families and communities of their rights and responsibilities as citizens - through public education;
(c) Campaign for the allotment of funds for research that can be applied to improve data on women and their shelter needs;
(d) Formulate appropriate policy recommendations on such issues as space distribution and design, access to basic public services and amenities, labour-saving technologies, construction-skill development, transport needs, employment options and the special needs of women heads-of-households;
(e) Analyse current policies and legislation in relation to the needs of low-income women, their families and communities in terms of sustainable human settlements, and determine changes that are needed;
(f) Work with women's bureaux to encourage other governmental agencies particularly planning ministries and legislative bodies -to disaggregate data by gender (and, where possible, by class and ethnicity, as well) and to apply gender analysis to all sectors at all levels of development planning and programming;
(g) Elicit the support of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) - for both men and women - to create an impact on national housing policy formulation, implementation and monitoring, in order to ensure inclusion of women's concerns in the process;
(h) Create regional, national and local committees, with equal participation of knowledgeable men and women from government, NGOs and CBOs, to plan, implement and evaluate the Global Strategy for Shelter.
<section>B. Women and land</section>
1. Findings
Each of the earlier seminars identified the access of women to land as a critical link that receives almost no attention in the human settlements chain. Monopolization of urban land by commercial interests, escalations in land prices and reluctance of governments to address land issues are obstacles to the acquisition and retention of land by the rural and urban poor in general. Poor women meet many added obstacles, such as low incomes, limited or no access to credit, and cultural biases reflected in restrictive policies on women's ownership of property.
The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) has observed that neither agricultural programmes with a land-reform component nor urban sites-and-services projects have addressed the issue of the right of women to own land. The rights of women, in general, and of women heads-of-households or of wives in polygamous marriages, in particular, have been neglected. With land providing one of the few recognized forms of collateral, the access of women to shelter and to investment finance in other sectors is constrained.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which came into effect in 1981, deals with the property rights of women in three separate articles:
(a) With reference to rural women (article 14), the Convention calls for equal treatment in land and agrarian reform, as well as in land-resettlement schemes;
(b) With reference to the status of women before the law, article 15 calls for equal rights for women to conclude contracts and to administer property;
(c) With reference to marriage and family relations, article 16 calls for the same rights for both spouses in respect of the ownership, acquisition, management, administration, enjoyment and disposal of property.
Although the Convention does not make a general call for all categories of women rural or urban, daughter, wife or mother -to have equal access to all forms of property, nevertheless, even those property rights agreed upon within the framework of the Convention are not recognized in a large number of countries which have signed and ratified the Convention.
The problem of the access of women to urban land presents additional complications, requiring understanding of the processes of urban land development and allocation. Access to legitimate and secure shelter in the vicinity of income-earning opportunities, with an acceptable level of essential services such as roads, water supply and drainage, remains an impossible dream for millions in developing countries. Governmental strategies to increase the supply of land to the poor through public-sector interventions, such as squatter-settlement upgrading and sites- and-services schemes, have been insufficient to meet the need, and increasing numbers of low-income people are finding accommodation through informal channels. Non-commercial arrangements include unauthorized invasions of public or private land, encroachments on marginal lands or occupation of abandoned proper ties: unfortunately, the general tendency is for informal arrangements to be increasingly commercialized. Very
often, residents are subjected to harassment and exploitation and are, therefore, reluctant to invest their savings. Commercial arrangements include the illegal sale of public land, substandard land subdivision, land rental and land fragmentation. Such arrangements normally require a down-payment to the landholder and recurrent charges for services.
Public-sector intervention usually leaves out the lowest strata among low-income groups, since ability to repay is an eligibility criterion for public-sector schemes. These arrangements have a particularly adverse affect on women, because applying this criterion means that households headed by women are seldom deemed eligible for plots in sites-and-services schemes (although actual repayment performance has not been shown to be related with certainty to apparent repayment ability). In the private sector, poverty, lack of information and social pressures place women in a particularly disadvantaged position with respect to both commercial and non-commercial land arrangements. The decreased availability of vacant land open to squatter invasion or encroachment, strict enforcement of legal measures by the authorities, the decreased supply of cheap rental accommodation in inner-city slums and rises in the number of evictions are factors that have changed the nature of the
prevailing informal processes of land acquisition - again with particularly negative effects on women.
The participants in the earlier seminars stressed that much needs to be done by governments to increase the availability of land for shelter through legal and administrative means, so that the poor, the majority of whom are women, may gain access to land and shelter. Access to land for all has to be a component of human settlements development strategies, paying special attention to the needs and contributions of women and other marginalized groups in shelter and infrastructural development.
In Malaysia, the Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) allocated land based on a nuclear-family concept, the head of household was expected to be male, and the role of a woman was to assist in development. On the death of her husband, a woman could not claim title to the land; instead, the land was passed to the eldest son. If he was below the legal age, the widow might only hold the title deed until the son attained the age at which he could claim title.
In Papua New Guinea, land was described as falling into two categories - customary and alienated, i.e., where Western forms of land tenure obtain. Customary land is said to account for approximately 97 per cent of the land area and is viewed as being much more than a commodity. It plays a complex role in the economic, social, and cultural life of the people. Ownership rests with clans and tribal groups, and title is based on historic occupation. However, little or no attention is given to women's specific needs or concerns with respect to land and housing policies. The decision-making process is, by tradition, a male responsibility, and women have little or no control over land distribution, use, or demarcation.
In India, land is a very scarce resource, with 70 to 80 per cent of it owned by 20 to 30 per cent of the population. Land-reform legislation was enacted for redistribution of land, by placing a ceiling on holdings and providing for the takeover of "surplus lands" to be redistributed to the landless.
However, implementation of the land-reform law is not considered a success. Urban ceilings on land holdings have been a distinct failure. In any event, it was pointed out that if the law were to be successfully implemented, beneficiaries would be relatively few (less than 1 million) compared with the many millions in need. Guidelines with respect to land rights for women have been issued by the Government, instructing that whenever surplus lands or other governmental lands, house sites etc. are distributed, the title is to be held jointly by husband and wife. The rights of women heads-of-household are not mentioned. In the parts of India where a matriarchal system prevails, however, the access of women to land is reported to be good.
The Women's Charter of Singapore, passed in 1961, stipulated that married women had the possibility and capacity to acquire, hold and dispose of property in their own names. Creditors of the husband could have no claim against property given by the husband to the wife. Once again, there was no mention of the rights of unmarried women or women heads-of-household in the Charter.
The participants in the seminars in Africa said that, in general, Africa has two systems of land tenure existing side-by-side. On the one hand, under the inheritance and customary systems dominant in rural areas, where the chief of a tribe is solely responsible for land allocation to different members of the community, women are not permitted to own land or participate in decision-making about land use and shelter policies, although they can have access to land through their fathers, husbands, brothers or sons. On the other hand, there is the legal land- tenure system, introduced by colonial administrations, where land ownership changes according to an individual's capacity to pay; land is seen as a commodity which can be bought and sold. Land ownership has affected the production of housing for all income groups, in particular for low-income people. Land ownership also has implications for the extraction and production of building materials. Under the legal land system,
anyone can own land, regardless of sex; however, as women are the poorest of the poor, access to land is, for them, an impossible dream. Evidence shows that, in most African countries, customary land tenure is quickly being transformed into legal land tenure, where titles of ownership are guaranteed by governmental legislation. Modern systems discriminate against women more than traditional, even patrilinear, when women had right of use (as men did). Now "ownership" is vested in men only, even in previously matrilinear areas.
The Population Division of the United Nations Secretariat has determined that the urban population of many large sub-Saharan cities - Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, Nouakchott, Lusaka, Lagos, and Kinshasa among them - grew more than sevenfold between 1950 and 1980. The demand for land for commercial and office purposes and to build houses for profit is on the increase. This commercial pressure on urban land has given rise to land speculation. In recent decades, the urban poor, needing shelter close to their workplace and unable to participate in the land market, occupied vacant land on the outskirts of cities and made their own shelter arrangements. There is evidence that the amount of such vacant land for these informal arrangements is decreasing. Poor urban women in these areas, who cannot afford to buy food and would like to have a garden and livestock to feed their families, are often prevented by law from carrying on such activities in urban areas. There is a need for
allotments in and around urban areas to allow low-income people, particularly women, to grow subsistence foods.
Governmental interventions in land issues to favour the poor were considered to be negligible, generally confining their role to planning controls and zoning. Even in recognized squatter settlements, governments have been reluctant to grant occupancy titles to residents. This is particularly stressful for women who need to own land for security purposes, e.g., old age and credit-worthiness.
In Zimbabwe, the Legal Age of Majority Act of 1982 secured for women the right to own land and property, but, in practice, women who wish to buy land have to have the husband as a referee, to secure the transaction. Women who live in rural or mining areas are at a particular disadvantage.
Land ownership is in the hands of large farm and mine employers (mines and farms occupy 40 per cent of the land and account for over 15 per cent of the population). Farmers and mine employers are responsible for providing housing and services for their employees, but occupancy rights for women only possible through husbands who are employees. Should the husband cease to be an employee, become ill or die, the woman loses her right of occupancy.
In the United Republic of Tanzania, under modern law, every one over 18 years of age can acquire land. However, in practice, women are still restricted in land ownership because of complicated procedures, inheritance customs and the bureaucracy. In the Ujamaa village system, ownership of land is vested in the heads of households who, by governmental criteria, are men. Upon the husband's death or separation, a woman cannot claim a legal right to property which is in the husband's name.
In Zambia, women did not have customary rights to own land or buildings, but this has changed with legislation, since independence. Married women, however, must have their husbands consent to any transactions.
Current legislation in Swaziland was reported to forbid women's possessing land or property or engaging in contractual agreements. The position of women is aggravated by the existence of polygamy. Yet, the low position of women seems to contradict the realities of Swazi society. Historically, the country has a large number of women heads-of-household, as a result of male migration to South Africa (approximately 25,000 a year) and to urban areas. Women have been responsible for producing and maintaining their own shelter, but they have no access to land or property.
In Egypt, women have the right to own land and property, if they can afford it. A woman automatically shares half the husband's property on marriage.
The Caribbean seminar highlighted the Sou Sou land concept - the makings of a gender-aware policy on human settlements in Trinidad and Tobago. This concept allows for the development of an explicitly gender-aware approach to human settlements, so that the specific needs and aspirations of women for land and shelter can be understood and addressed. The Sou Sou land concept is a departure from the highly centralized, State-funded and bureaucratized system of settlement planning. It offers an opportunity for opening up dialogue on the variability of the social and economic situation of women who seek land and shelter as a fundamental human right. The non-zoning approach to land use and the organization of shelter, with respect to the provision and use of space, implicitly recognizes the triple role of women, in the home, at work and in the community particularly in the informal sector of the economy. All three can be brought together under one roof, so to speak, thereby
alleviating hardship for those women who must, of necessity, reconcile their triple involvements related to production, reproduction, and the management of both the domestic household and community action groups.
The Sou Sou land approach does not appear to assume that the household of the beneficiary needs to be male-headed. Financial viability is definitely not tied to the usual demand that there must be a strong collateral base linked to criteria, such as set income levels, proof of employment stability, and a credit record. While putting the burden of responsibility for financing settlement on the beneficiaries, this approach sustains the idea of State support by categorizing beneficiaries (e.g., squatters and non-squaflers), by initiating the collection of "hands," or partial payments, from would-be beneficiaries and by making provision for a Government-arranged savings plan to be used for land purchase.
A gender-aware settlement policy requires sensitivity and responsiveness to the social and functional literacy levels of the large number of working women who need shelter. The communication network to make this happen must be "user-friendly." For example, in Trinidad and Tobago, community meetings are conducted to alert the citizenry to the need to participate in the determination and resolution of settlement problems.
Such meetings, which are held regularly in community centres or other suitable areas in the town or village, allow for face-to-face contact and understanding between settlement administrators and the people. Through such networking, the sensitivity of these "grassroots" planners, many of whom have subsequently assumed public office in Trinidad and Tobago, can be easily attuned to the gender-aware dimension of development planning for settlements.. The incumbent Minister of Settlements, for example, is a former Sou Sou land administrator, involved from the inception of the project. Her commitment to the institutionalization of the Sou Sou land concept, as an integral part of multisectoral State planning is highly regarded. So too, is her dedication to the task of uplifting the status of women in society. This augurs well for the movement to develop a distinctly gender-aware policy on shelter needs.
Looking at the land issue from the perspective of development and the environment, the recent environmental report, Our Common Future, points out that, in many countries where land is very unequally distributed, land reform is a basic require meet. Without it, institutional and policy changes, meant to protect the resource base, can actually promote inequalities by shutting the poor off from resources and by favouring those with large farms, who are best able to obtain the limited credit and services available. By leaving hundreds of millions without options, such changes can have the opposite of their intended effect, ensuring the continued violation of ecological imperatives.
2. Action needed to be taken
The primary focus of the recommendations from all the seminars, concerning women and land ownership, centred on legal aspects. There was a consensus that gender-awareness needed to be institutionalized in the formulation and execution of public policy. For that reason, they called for efforts to develop strategies for sensitizing policy-makers, technocrats, administrators, NGOs and other agencies to:
(a) Take account of the capability and needs of women in human settlements development and land tenure rights;
(b) Act on the principles stated in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, by establishing and implementing an equal-opportunity policy on land, by removing all customary and legal constraints which prevent access by women (including women heads-of-household) to land, by enforcing positive discrimination in favour of women, by setting up a publicity campaign aimed at informing women of their rights and, above all, by using planning power to make land available to the poorest group of the population;
(c) Ensure that planning standards and zoning regulations take into account the need for spatial arrangements allowing women to function as producers, reproducers and community members.
It was agreed that governments should use regulatory powers to intervene in the urban land market in order to release land for low-income housing which would otherwise remain vacant or be designated for other uses. Governments should also consider including land-sharing the partitioning of a plot of land owned by one set of people and occupied by another - as a housing service. Such a mechanism has been applied successfully in Bangkok. Rural homesteads for women heads of families and single women could take the form of condominiums. Finally, governmental and non-governmental agencies should activate "grassroots" efforts such as the Sou Sou land strategy described above.
<section>C. Women and construction</section>
1. Findings
In all regions, a large portion of the contribution of the labour of women to the construction sector is channelled through the family or the community and concentrated in the informal sector, particularly in rural and poor urban areas. Much of that labour is, therefore, unrecognized and unremunerated. In addition, the labour contributed by women is considered not to involve skills worthy of upgrading for improved human settlements development.
There is a great deal of cultural variation in the involvement of women in shelter and infrastructural development. Where cultural constraints control the social activities of women outside the home, their work contribution is often confined to the improvement of the family shelter unit. Where cultural norms do not prohibit the participation of women in "outside" activities, their contribution provides an important element in shelter and infrastructural development.
The participation of women in the formal construction sector is amazingly low - more so in developing than in industrialized countries. Reliance on high technology and imported materials in urban formal construction seems to have pushed women out of a sector in which they have traditionally played an active role. While women have achieved some penetration into the professional ranks of the sector, i.e., as engineers and architects, women constitute a minority among all ranks and levels of employment in the formal sector. Indeed, the female participation ratio in construction is far below the average for all industries.
According to International Labour Office statistics, female participation in construction in 1984 ranged between 0.18 and 18.84 per cent and averaged less than 5 per cent for countries for which data were available. The ratio tends to be highest in industrialized countries, because of the high ratio of clerical and related workers included in the count. In developing countries, however, women tend to be hired as production workers. Again, regional variations are significant. The participation of women in construction is particularly low in African countries, whereas, in several Asian countries, such as the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, the female ratio is relatively high.
Lack of training is one of the most limiting constraints to the participation of women in construction. Proper training of women could mobilize unemployed or underemployed labour, promote a balanced distribution of jobs in the construction industry, and help women to acquire shelter through self-help construction. However, existing conventional training institutions do not have the capacity to train the required numbers of skilled and professional workers, and their training programmes are not comprehensive enough for the range of activities in the construction industry.
It was pointed out that training should not become an end in itself. The link between training and employment has to be made clear. Training, without job placement, credit, or technical assistance for resulting small businesses, is ineffective.
A training programme for Caribbean women in non-traditional skills was launched to provide an orientation for women in plumbing, refrigeration and electrical installation, that would allow them to assess whether they would wish to pursue long-term training in those areas. Eighteen young women between the ages of 18 and 25 participated - fourteen from Grenada and four from from Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. After the assessment, a special two-year accelerated programme was planned for the Grenada participants, most of whom did not have the initial academic qualifications to enter the regular programme at the Grenada Technical and Vocational Institute (GTVI). They did, however, have the potential to complete the entire technical training, and graduates will receive the normal GTVI diploma. Programmes for women in non-traditional fields are being started in other Caribbean countries and are benefiting from direct contact with the Grenada programme. In Dominica,
participants are being helped to undertake apprenticeship programmes that will qualify them to enter the technical college, if they wish.
An alternative to the technical colleges is exemplified by the Jamaican experience. The Women's Construction Collective initiated a programme for women, consisting of three months' basic training in carpentry and masonry. The women go directly on to work sites as paid apprentices and, as their skills develop, work their way up to fully-paid workers. At the beginning of the programme, 10 women were trained - with commitments from contractors to place them on-site on a trial "job audition" basis. Every woman who had auditioned had been hired, and the group then expanded (with national and international support) to 34 women from different communities. At the end of the course, more than 90 per cent of the women trained had been placed in employment that used their skills in plumbing, masonry, carpentry, electrical-installation, painting, and steelwork.
Little by little, examples of women's construction training programmes are beginning to appear in all regions. As in Jamaica, training can lead to jobs and an income, and the construction industry acquires skilled labourers. In addition, employers are reporting the positive influence of women on building sites. In Jamaica, in addition to productivity increases, violence and pilfering decreased. It should be noted, however, that, it women are to be accepted in the use of these new skills, it is necessary to take measures to change the negative attitude of building-site supervisors.
Another important facet of the construction sector is the choice and use of building materials. The critical role of the informal sector, which accommodates a large proportion of women's work, and the importance of promoting small-scale indigenous building-materials production are largely unrecognized. As a result, the effective participation of women in the shelter sector, as beneficiaries and contributors, is hindered. The importance of the informal sector in the construction of shelter is clear. In many urban areas of developing countries, up to 70 per cent of the population lives in buildings constructed by the informal sector, and rural housing is almost exclusively built by self-help and/or through the informal sector, which also produces a large proportion of the building materials used by the poor.
The choice of building materials is important for women, both as potential employees of the construction sector and as users of shelter and infrastructure. The use of imported building materials, produced with capital-intensive high technology, not only reduces employment in the national construction industry, but also diverts limited resources from employment-generating activities to other sectors. Traditionally, building materials have been readily available to both rural and urban people, because they have been obtained from the local surroundings. They took many forms - earth in the form of bricks, mud or adobe, fired by heat, sun-dried or solidified by stabilizing agents (lime, dung, ash, shell etc.); wood as timber - poles, beams, shingles, rods and branches; vegetable products, such as bamboo, reeds, palm leaves and grasses; skins and cloths; and stones, sands, gravel, lime, gypsum and cementitious mortars. New industrial products have recently taken over the market,
supported by rules and regulations, standards and codes, and financing and credit facilities. Some of the new materials have become accessible for popular consumption - concrete wall blocks, flooring slabs and roof panels; asbestos-cement and steel sheets for roofing; steel rods and window frames; plywood panelling. Yet, these materials do not necessarily provide durable or comfortable shelter, are often more expensive than traditional materials and can have serious negative effects on health.
The majority of developing countries have followed a policy of import substitution, establishing local industries which produce materials identical to those previously imported, e.g., machinery and equipment. What is needed, instead, participants pointed out, is the adaptation of indigenous low-cost building materials that require minimal amounts of capital and foreign exchange and make use of locally available raw materials and skills in small-scale operations. The financial benefits of such a policy could be great. Construction prices could be lowered to a range affordable by low-income populations with the use of such inexpensive local materials; since, with proper design and treatment, they can last a long time. This would create significant savings in building and maintenance costs as well. Such a strategy would especially benefit women.
For women, the choice of appropriate building materials is very closely linked to their specific roles and associated needs as entrepreneurs, construction labourers, traders, or users of shelter and infrastructure. In construction work, small, light components could easily be handled by women who, with training, could play an important role in the installation of electrical, plumbing and sanitary systems and in the installation and maintenance of ceramic tiles and sanitary ware. As consumers of building materials, women have very specific needs. In Queretaro, Mexico, for instance, 27 per cent of families live in houses which are mixtures of brick and board, with earth floors. Women had been demanding floor materials which were easy to clean and maintain. The informal sector could easily produce soil-cement or lime-pozzolana blocks and clay tiles to meet such needs.
There is an enormous range of small-scale production units in developing countries, producing a variety of building materials. In the Philippines, for instance, cottage industries produce bamboo, bricks and roofing materials on a substantial scale. In Indonesia, small-scale building-materials industries in both rural and urban areas (mostly unorganized, labour-intensive cottage industries run in traditional ways) produce clay bricks, tiles, cement products, lime, bamboo, timber elements, stone, gravel, sand and pozzolana-lime blocks. In Sri Lanka, small-scale and traditional production units produce bricks, country tiles, sand, and lime, supplying more than 35 per cent, by value, of the total building materials used in the country. In China, 80 per cent of the building materials, including bricks, tiles, fly ash, sand and stone, and 64 per cent of the cement is produced on a small scale by building brigades and communal enterprises.
In all these small-scale production units, women and, even, children play an important role in the production line, and there is scope for women to have an entrepreneurial role as well. Production in small units, located close to markets, creates local employment and lowers transport costs. It is not necessary to acquire large amounts of land through the formal market for installations. Finance, too, can often be informally acquired. Training of labour is done on the job through apprenticeship, with women and youths doing their share. Locally made machinery and tools are used, and, when foreign machines are brought in, innovative solutions are found to cope with any lack of spare pads.
While the question of infrastructure in connection with construction projects was not a specific topic of the regional seminars, it was woven throughout the discussions. in all countries in all regions, it was stressed that women tend to suffer most from inadequate water and sanitation services. An enormous amount of a woman's energy is spent in procuring water from distant places. Where water supplies are contaminated, as is often the case, women have the task of nursing the sick or seeking health care to combat waterborne diseases. Inadequate sanitation services also contribute to the high incidence of disease in slums and squatter settlements and in rural areas. In all instances, children are an especially high-risk group.
Because of their traditional roles, women are the key target group for all water and sanitation projects in both rural and urban areas. Yet, in planning and development for shelter projects, authorities and, in households headed by men, husbands often prevent women from participating in various aspects of housing projects and infrastructural services. To look at housing construction without infrastructural supports bodes ill for the quality of life of a community. Women know this only too well. They are primary users who take care of their families' needs and promote behavioural change. It makes good sense that they should be involved from the planning stage onward.
2. Action needed to be taken
Researchers, women's organizations and NGOs should collaborate in a plan of action concerning women and shelter construction, including: campaigns for changes in social attitudes and public policy; development of technical courses in building for women; promotion of self-help, low-income housing schemes that include infrastructural support; and recognition of the need for full participation of women.
Programmes should focus on women's interest in entering non-traditional fields and should initiate training programmes, keeping in mind lessons learned from others' experience. The following points are from the Caribbean experience in this area:
(a) Assess the market - the need or local demand for certain skills and potential job opportunities;
(b) Allow adequate time for pre-planning and preparation - clarify objectives and assess available human and material resources;
(c) Ensure thorough screening of participants, taking into account their level of education and seriousness of purpose, in particular paying attention to upgrading female trainees' competence in mathematics and basic science skills, so that they are not at a comparative disadvantage in relation to their male counterparts;
(d) Begin with an orientation programme for potential trainees to help them understand what will be expected of them during the training programme - this will also provide important guidelines for the training programmes;
(e) Sensitize tutors to the situation/needs and learning styles of women trainees, as well as the inter-relatedness of the various skills being taught;
(f) In addition to basic theory, include appropriate tools for "hands-on" experience, as well as a personal development component to foster self-confidence and group cohesion and to cope with attitudes that trainees are likely to face in society;
(g) Pay particular attention to the needs of trainees who have children, so that their participation is not constrained by their domestic responsibilities;
(h) Ensure that the programme design includes exposure to role models of local trades-women, as well as audio-visual presentations by women working in different fields in the region;
(i) Contact governmental and private agencies to get their commitment for apprenticeship and job opportunities for trainees;
(j) Document the training experience, particularly the factors that promote or inhibit women's participation, and disseminate to authorities and other groups interested in promoting such programmes.
Governments should take measures to incorporate women in general adult education programmes - specific classes for women's groups in locations accessible to them, with childcare facilities as needed, would be appropriate. NGOs and community groups should pressure authorities to look at the needs of poor women, promote co-operatives or building groups based on existing communities, and promote building materials, products and industries based on local natural resources.
<section>D. Women and housing finance</section>
1. Findings
The world survey on the role of women in development, prepared by the United Nations for the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development, Peace, suggested that the stabilization policies employed by many developing countries, in an attempt to cope with the world economic crisis, had affected women, particularly poor women, more negatively than they had men. While recent trends in the financing, insurance, real estate, and business service sectors had been found favourable to the employment of women, the occupational status of women in that sector had not improved significantly. Women tended to be clustered at the bottom of the ladder; their visible under-representation at the policy-making and decision-making levels contributed to the lack of consideration for women's concerns in the formulation of both macro policies and institutional rules and procedures.
The economic and financial policies, the priorities of financial institutions and the rules and procedures commonly employed for loans, mortgages and other forms of credit in both the formal and informal sectors have put women at a significant disadvantage in acquiring credit for housing, as well as for other types of investment in the housing sector. The constraints on women in obtaining housing finance are societal and operational, having to do with social prejudices and institutional practices. On the one hand, there is no social and economic recognition of the contribution made by women to the household; on the other, the income women earn outside the home, in the formal and informal labour markets, is viewed as "secondary", because it is disproportionately generated at the bottom of job hierarchies under unstable and temporary circumstances. Even when women are the sole or main supporters of their families, societal norms in general - and laws, regulations and
institutional practices in particular - discriminate against them.
Loans taken to finance dwelling units are large, entailing long-term (10-25 years) repayment, require legal-tenure documentation and cover only a percentage (usually 60-80 percent) of the price. Conventional lending institutions need to safeguard their capital, and applicants, thus, have to provide proof of an adequate and dependable (usually interpreted as formal employ meet) income as well as of ownership of the property. Applicants also have to provide a down-payment of 25-40 per cent of the cost of the dwelling unit. However, experience shows that many low-income applicants, especially women, have difficulty raising even 10 per cent.
The problems of down-payment requirements and savings are closely related. A woman's lack of formal savings precludes her from access to loans for house-building. Results of an International Centre for Research on Women survey of women heads-of- household who had applied for housing in the Solanda project at Quito, Ecuador, for example, showed that only 15 per cent of the women surveyed who were eligible in terms of income had sufficient savings to make a down-payment on a minimum-cost housing unit. Seventy per cent had savings that were not even half the minimum down-payment; and, even where the value of liquid assets, assuming stringent divestiture, had been calculated and added to savings, only 46 per cent of them could raise the minimal down-payment required. Unfortunately, reduced down-payment requirements would not necessarily improve the access of women to housing projects, because of the trade-off between low down-payments and high monthly payments.
Even where women do have savings, they might not be able to afford both the down-payment for the scheme and the costs of housing their families during the construction period. In sites-and-services schemes, people have to continue renting while they construct a habitable unit on the plot. That means having to find money not only for rent and materials but also for transport between the two sites.
Other factors are no less important in hindering the access of women to finance. For instance, women might be discouraged from obtaining an application form because of the payment required - money which they prefer to use to purchase staple food rather than to gamble on a "housing lottery"; or they might lack information on the availability of loan opportunities. Then again, women might simply lack the time or child-care support facilities to allow them to travel to commercial institutions, often inconveniently located vis-à-vis poor communities.
Participants of all regions noted that women have not been recognized as a special group of housing beneficiaries or contributors. Their view was that the removal of conventional barriers to women's participation in socio-economic life and the encouragement of women to assume new responsibilities in the development effort in general are an important prelude to their full participation in all aspects of human settlements development. Accessibility to housing finance is a critical factor at both levels of involvement.
In Peru, the National Housing Programme proposes to establish the Housing Mortgage Bank which is seen as a significant step towards the financing of public lending institutions with the proviso that low-income groups be accorded priority.
The Government of Saint Christopher and Nevis encourages private-sector housing development to provide housing for low-income and middle-income earners. In implementing its housing policy, the Government will give due consideration to social infrastructure, recreational facilities and community development programmes. In its Low-income Housing Programme of 1987, 56 per cent of the houses went to women. In order to provide financial assistance to house-owners, the Government did not ask for a down-payment. The applicant paid $EC100 as one year's insurance and paid the cost of one month's rent. Today, the same system is followed. A building-and-repair loan programme was also put in place, so that sugar workers and employees of the Central Housing and Planning Authority could borrow up to $EC10,000 for house repairs or purchases. From 1983 to 1987, 28 loans were granted, 50 per cent of them going to women.
Participants from Uganda reported that their Government had not taken action on counteracting the effects of inflation and its effects on prices of building materials. There have been some instances, in squatter-settlement upgrading schemes, where women have borrowed money for house construction but, because of increases in the cost of building materials, have been unable to complete the work.
To overcome a similar problem in the United Republic of Tanzania, loans are provided systematically according to the different stages of house construction. The lenders check each stage of construction before issuing the next instalment. This system also allows for changes in interest rates.
In Zambia, the Government provides loans at low interest rates for house construction and the provision of infrastructure, after every effort is made to mobilize individual and community financial resources and labour.
In Egypt, the Government subsidizes special banks which facilitate loans to low-income households at low interest rates. It was reported that, although this system is appropriate for supporting low-income households, it is often misused by clients who apply for a loan to build a second house with the intention of renting it. The Government has now introduced stringent criteria, and only first-time owners can apply for a low-interest loan.
In the Dandora sites-and-services project in Kenya, women were given financial support towards the cost of building materials, but, as the project developed, new contingency costs arose for which women were not prepared. The inclusion of a sewerage system increased the total cost of the units, and there was an increase in the price of building materials; but the women were unable to obtain extra loans from banks, because they did not fulfil credit requirements. Some women managed to raise the extra money from relatives and informal moneylenders to finish their units: others, particularly women heads-of-household, were unable to continue with construction. Partial subletting of rooms was allowed to provide women with extra income for loan repayment. Again, women heads-of-household were unable to take advantage of this measure, because their units had not been completed.
In Sri Lanka, women, through their own efforts, had formed co-operative societies. They placed their savings in rural banks managed by women, and, when interest had accrued, small loans were made to members at a 6-per cent interest rate. That facility was especially useful to women in the low-income bracket, who might also be heads-of -household.
The representative of the Philippines reported promising institutional reforms in that country. Lending policy had been altered to include private developers and a strong emphasis on low-income housing. The social housing package for low-income families provided funds for five to seven households which were then regarded as a mortgage unit. The self-employed in the informal sector were being recognized, and a mechanism for validating the informal income of low-income households had been introduced.
That development should be particularly beneficial to women engaged in cottage industries. Another noteworthy development has been the promotion of livelihood projects at the community level. They were aimed at providing opportunities for women, who worked at essentially domestic chores and child-rearing, to engage in income-generating activities in their homes. That gave them an income which could be used for shelter and other human settlements improvements, while still allowing them to watch over the children. In general, housing finance in the Philippines was viewed as an integral component of the housing process. That meant that all financing packages were considered in connection with all other resources - land, building materials and labour.
In Indonesia, some efforts were afoot to increase the access of women to finance. The formal banking systems had instituted small credit programmes aimed especially at grassroots people without collateral: women had equal access to such loans. However, women had not taken full advantage, owing to low confidence and limited knowledge about the necessary procedures. A programme had been established to provide information and skills to women entrepreneurs, to enable them to understand and use the available facilities offering credit. Plans were also being made for an information and consultation centre on financial matters for women.
In India, housing is not regarded as an industry and, therefore, is not considered productive. Financial institutions give housing low priority, and about 70 per cent of the finance for housing comes from private sources. In high-income brackets, it comes mainly from such things as the sale of jewelry and other household assets. In rural areas capital is saved gradually in the form of building materials, and construction becomes a long, incremental process for low-income groups. Women suffer from restrictive credit facilities for housing. Because of their low incomes and the informal nature of their work, they fail to gain access to finance from banks and other formal institutions. It has been estimated that less than 1 per cent of the total loans made by banks went to women. The Government of India, therefore, decided to establish a National Housing Bank, so that women would have access to credit. Voluntary agencies have played an important role in implementing housing
programmes. The India National Council of Women, for instance, established a programme for grassroots women to become familiar with finance procedures. One organization, SPARC, works with the pavement dwellers of Bombay to improve their condition through education, advocacy and access to credit.
2. Action needed to be taken
NGOs, CBOs and other relevant voluntary groups should advocate measures for the adaptation of terms and conditions of loans to meet the problems of affordability, creditworthiness, down-payment, and repayment by low-income women. Governmental and non-governmental groups should institute income-generating projects for women prior to the start of shelter projects, perhaps in the production of construction materials, and allow reduced initial payments that might gradually be raised as incomes increase. A revolving loan fund and a negative-amortization option might also be introduced.
Groups could be made responsible for repayment of loans (as a substitute for employment and income as collateral for low-income women), or the possibility of loan-insurance systems and guarantee funds set up by government could be pursued. Some programmes might even accept vendor operating licenses and the house itself as collateral.
Urban community groups could be encouraged to pool their savings to start their own credit systems - in much the same way as building societies when they were first begun. NGOs could be encouraged to disseminate the experience of successful women's credit systems (e.g., Grameen Bank in Bangladesh; Working Women's Forum, Madras, India; and Women's World Banking). This could encourage finance institutions to accept informal types of collateral, such as trusts or local leaders' guarantees. NGOs can also document self-employed women's repayment-performance records in the various regions and develop methods of assessing informal-sector activities and income and their impact on the lives of women and their families.
<section>E. Community participation and communications and the implementation of programmes on women and human settlements</section>
1. Community Participation
The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) defines community participation as the voluntary involvement of people in making and implementing all decisions directly affecting their lives as well as the activities undertaken by low-income households, with or without outside assistance, to improve their living conditions. By this definition, community participation has always existed in the form of mutual aid in rural societies and was not invented by development agencies. However, with the rapid pace of urbanization in most countries, community participation has been given more attention and taken on new meanings and dimensions. It is sometimes viewed from outside the community as merely an "instrument" for causing change to happen, particularly in low-income settlements. This view has the limitation of organizing outside interventions by "mobilizing" the poor for achieving externally- conceived plans and programmes, rather than providing support for the
empowerment of men and women themselves to determine the type, degree and direction of change they need and want - which is a basic tenet of democracy.
While some governments are still reluctant to encourage the latter type of community participation, an increasing number of governments, as well as national and international agencies, have become aware of the importance of full community participation in housing schemes. The disappointing experiences with conventional human settlements programmes in developing countries have helped to convince some governments that it is beyond their financial and administrative capacities to plan for and provide shelter and basic physical and social services for the expanding numbers of poor rural and urban households.
Instead, governments are recognizing the necessity of fostering and complementing the efforts and investments that poor families themselves are making to meet their basic needs. They are seeing that community participation not only can improve the chances of project success but is a human right - an end in itself. People have the right and responsibility to participate in the planning, implementation and management of projects which affect their lives. Community participation in human settlements development can also stimulate people to seek participation in other spheres of life.
In an attempt to identify basic models for the application of community participation, the participants in the earlier series of seminars identified the following:
(a) The first model (usually found in situations where governmental policies explicitly encouraged independent community action) placed final planning and decision-making at the settlements level and assigned agency and technical personnel to advisory and regulatory roles.
(b) The second model saw the main planning initiatives in the hands of agencies, with community involvement limited to mere consultation on the plans. The pragmatic principle underlying that model was that, if the community agreed to the plans, it would not obstruct implementation and might prove co-operative in undertaking some role in the implementation and subsequent maintenance of development works.
(c) The third model, which was still the most prevalent, was the "sweat-equity" approach. This confines community participation to individual or group contributions of labour to the construction of houses, the installation of infrastructure or the carrying out of some services, such as garbage collection or drain-cleaning.
Participants identified several constraints that have been encountered when introducing community participation in human settlements programmes, including difficulties in altering established administrative procedures. National housing authorities and local governments did not enter into serious dialogue with communities but, instead, restricted community participation to the mobilizing of controlled self-help in housing construction and of labour contributions to infrastructure projects. Too often, government officials, whether professionals at the national planning level or technicians at the local project level, have been unwilling to change their established perspectives and procedures, to allow sharing of information and decision-making. As a result, the projects they initiate might be designed and implemented without any real consideration of the particular community's human and financial capacities.
Other dimensions of the attitudinal resistance of bureaucrats to community-participation approaches resulted from their genuine concern to maintain standards and procedures, as well as from a conservative mentality and a desire for predictable results within a preconceived time-span. Some of these attitudes can be changed over time, particularly if efforts are made to modify institutional links and internal reorganization and agencies (and recruitment of appropriately skilled personnel) is undertaken. Some of the obstacles to realizing the full potential of community participation derive from the fact that it is very new to agencies and to national administrative systems as a management strategy. It cannot be reduced to a tightly scheduled set of fixed procedures that can be replicated in every community. On the contrary, although the concept is transferable, its practical applications vary in accordance with the people, history, and conditions of each community.
The poor, particularly women, find the greatest difficulty in being informed about, participating in and benefiting from intended community-based projects. When families are struggling to survive and putting in long hours at low-income employment, they usually have little time or energy to attend project meetings and participate in various required activities at specified hours. The limited physical capacity to participate is often compounded socially and psychologically by vexed neighbourhood relationships, by distrust and fear of officials accumulated from early negative encounters and by despair of any change going in their favour. In many cases people, who have experienced severe physical deprivation and have been downtrodden for too long react negatively to pressures to participate, and the whole process might only serve to deepen their isolation.
There are many other context-specific factors which hinder the participation of a community as a whole, including heterogeneity along economic, racial, ethnic, religious or political lines (and, as stressed earlier, there is also the culturally- biased gender factor). Often, the social and economic vulnerability of the poorest families forces them to seek the patronage or protection of others more affluent and better connected than they. Such patrons can deliver certain services and have contacts with prominent people and governmental officials which might prove of some benefit to their client families. The important point is that, whether they are genuine patrons or exploitative impostors, they have a vested interest in reinforcing attitudes of dependence among the people. Such attitudes and the social patterns crystallized by them are often difficult to change.
Participants pointed out that, where autonomous community organization was perceived by a government to constitute a threat to national stability, the degree of participation was usually very low. Established top-down patterns of decision-making were confined to activities of priority to government. Whatever has been achieved in social and physical terms through such participation could not be expected to be sustained, maintained or developed.
Even where governments were sincerely disposed towards fostering grass-roots participation in determining the directions of human settlements development, historical and contextual factors often constrained the capacity and willingness of communities to participate. High expectations about what newly established governments could deliver to their citizens sometimes resulted in communities being unwilling to participate in activities such as mutual-aid construction of settlements infrastructure, which they perceived to be the responsibility of their government. Frequent political changes damaged the potential for community participation, because programmes of a participatory nature did not have enough time to nurture the commitment and participation of hesitant staff and sceptical communities before they were scrapped and replaced by other programme approaches.
In most developing countries, the very centralized administrative systems that have been developed are not well-suited to the task of developing partnerships with communities at the local levels. Generally, local municipal authorities are not staffed with technicians who have been trained in participatory skills or who have been accorded the necessary discretionary or decision-m -king powers to enable them to engage communities in effective participation.
It has also been observed that frequently the status accorded to community development departments and to community-development workers has been relatively low: that usually became a serious obstacle to the department's attracting able personnel to carry out crucial functions. All too often, community development work was seen as an optional activity rather than as the key to success of a project, and budget allocations reflected that attitude.
In the previous sections, where women and policy, land, construction and finance were discussed, many of the recommendations that were made have direct implications for community participation. Rural and urban communities are where poor and low-income women are already carrying out their daily subsistence tasks, including house-building. This is not always counted as community participation but it is indeed contributing to the welfare of the family and the community.
A quantum leap in strategic planning is required to provide women with options and channels to resources for the integral and sustainable development of human settlements at the community level. This will require a demonstration on the part of governments of a strong political will, supported by a sound systematic plan for sensitizing officials and technicians and for implementing national "enabling" strategies that bring together the governmental, for-profit and voluntary sectors in new partnerships- with the full participation of women in the creation of housing, essential water and sanitation services, transport and employment Opportunities. NGOs can help "ready" communities to participate in these partnerships, by encouraging the start-up of CBOs. CBOs have begun to spring up all around the world, and a large percentage of them are women's organizations. The seminars identified many groups, too numerous to include in this document, whose experiences in organizing,
motivating, and training community women and men in the participation process (i.e., planning, training, implementation and assessment) can be helpful to others. The participatory approach may be considered by many officials to be slow, but it stands the best chance of producing sustainable results in the long run.
2. Communications
While the fundamental causes of underdevelopment are essentially structural, it is increasingly recognized that deficiencies in information and communication processes are among the causes of policy, programme and project ineffectiveness and failure. Each of the seminars devoted time to the discussion of information and communication as an essential policy instrument in support of human settlements development. The impediments to and essential elements of communication methods were given detailed attention that is beyond the scope of this document to present. Each seminar discussed the steps that might be taken to develop a communication strategy for the implementation of specific national policies, programmes and projects.
It was pointed out, time and again, that women have been excluded from the information chain and that, because information is power, it is critical that links be established for their inclusion. If low-income communities, especially the women, do not have knowledge of the plans, programmes, and resources available to improve their communities and are not aware of their actual and potential roles, as well as of the constraints to participation in human settlements programmes, they are unlikely to exercise their rights and responsibilities in this area. If decision-makers and the general public are not provided with information and knowledge about the current contributions of women to human settlements, as well as the obstacles that must be removed in order for them to participate fully as contributors and beneficiaries, they are unlikely to respond appropriately to the needs, rights and responsibilities of women and their communities. Therefore in addition to the need for
information, knowledge or data on human settlements, there is a need for communication - or means of transferring or relating this information to others. This calls for a range of social exchanges, i.e., transmitters and receivers on the personal and institutional levels.
At a recent Seminar on Women and Media in Asia, the status of women in the communications media, the skill-development needs of women in different communications media and the portrayal of women by communications media were examined. The Seminar noted that issues tended to relate to educated and urban women, with very little attention given to rural women who constitute the majority in Asian countries. The Seminar also identified the need for training in order for women to increase their participation in communications professions and related activities.
The content of what is communicated should also be given high priority. Women's organizations, particularly community- based organizations, have an important role to play in collecting data on the views of women on housing and infrastructure and making them known to the relevant authorities and the local communications media. This cannot be overstressed as the voices of women have for too long gone unheard on matters that directly affect them and their families. It is a known fact that many women and villages have been targets of research the results of which have not been shared with the women themselves or with decision-making authorities.
Participatory or action-oriented research is an approach that is being employed frequently. It involves women in a partnership with professionals (often students from local universities) in the collection of data on the community and analysis of the data from a woman's perspective. This not only provides baseline data for project design but is a tool for educating women and other community members on the history and current situation of their community. The information and analyses can also be communicated to authorities as a basis for advocating the type and direction of human settlements interventions needed and desired.
As communication implies dialogue, methods must be devised - with the collaboration of governmental and non-governmental agencies - to communicate policies, programmes and the availability of resources to women and their communities. Seminar participants cautioned that modern media, such as print and radio, often did not reach low-income women who have no time to listen to radio announcements, do not have radios or are illiterate. They found interpersonal communication to be an effective means not only of disseminating information but of effecting behavioural change. Demonstrations, verbal presentations, and displays had also been used to good effect.
<section>F. Conclusion</section>
It was apparent, from the discussions in all the seminars, that there was a universal concern about the lack of awareness of and attention to the question of women and human settlements. Participants underscored the urgency of working to place this question high on the agenda of national and international governmental agencies, as well as on the agendas of women's organizations. Another area of concern, highlighted across all regions, was the global trend of random urban growth that was having devastating effects on the urban poor everywhere, i.e., slum living conditions that were not only physically intolerable and psychologically impoverishing to the entire family but also particularly debilitating to the energy and status of women. The position of women heads-of-household and single women was another area of concern that regional participants insisted should be given special study and action, along with study of the informal sector and the importance it has in the lives
of low-income urban/rural women and the general economy.
There was a heightened sensitivity to the need for women to find ways of working together with men at all levels and of establishing partnerships between poor-community women and professional women from other economic levels. In this regard, it is recognized that NGOs played an important role in joining their knowledge and skills to the knowledge and skills of low-income women and in helping to organize community-based women's organizations, skill-training programmes, advocacy for policy change, infrastructure and services, and participatory human settlements development. NGOs generally were flexible and adaptable, and could open up cost-effective ways for governments to invest in local communities.
Another concern of the seminars was the lack of accurate data on the contributions and needs of women. That constituted an obstacle to women's, particularly poor women's, ever achieving the full benefit of development. Participants called upon national and international agencies to develop systematic disaggregated data-collection methods and gender-sensitive analyses for all facets of human settlements plans and programmes. Some initiatives were under way and should be encouraged to develop indicators for measuring the impact on women and their families of action taken in the human settlements areas covered during the seminars, e.g., policy, land, construction, finance, community participation and communication.
<section>Part two: overview of the interregional seminar to promote the full participation of women in all phases of the global strategy for shelter to the year 2000</section>
Introduction
In his opening address to participants at the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in All Phases of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, Dr. Arcot Ramachandran, the Executive Director of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) said;
Of one conclusion has emerged from the regional seminars, it is the recognition that without the mobilization and participation of women - and the removal of obstacles to their full participation - the goal of the Global Strategy of providing adequate shelter for all cannot and will not be met."
The establishment of this basic premise by the Executive Director at the outset of the Seminar helped to allay some concerns of the participants that their work toward the design of a strategy might marginalize women from the mainstream implementation of the Global Strategy. Recommendations made by women about women too often have that kind of result. Because the Global Strategy has already been designed and is on its way to being elaborated and implemented by national governments, it is imperative that the strategy for the full participation of women also be elaborated immediately and be given priority in the formulation of national strategies for shelter.
Another basic premise of the Seminar was that the goal of improving shelter conditions for all must give priority to the poor and that, as the Executive Director said:
"in the world of the urban and rural poor, it is the women who are more often than not the poorest of the poor, and this is why one can speak with some justification of the 'feminization' of poverty in the third world, a condition that is most shockingly visible in the slums and squatter settlements which are such a prominent feature of the urban landscape in the developing countries."
This premise, the Seminar participants emphasized, makes it essential that formulation of the strategy for women's full participation be made not only at the global and national levels but at the community level as well, i.e., community strategies for shelter.
<section>A. Objectives of the Seminar</section>
The Seminar, which was held at the headquarters of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) at Nairobi from 4 to 8 December 1989, was clearly a participatory event. Women (governmental and non-governmental) who had attended the five earlier seminars, observers, resource personnel and donor representatives (many of whom also had attended the earlier seminars) all participated in the discussions, and the active exchanges in the working groups laid the groundwork for eventual agreement on a strategy.
The Seminar's objectives were:
(a) To exchange information among regions on the experience each had had since the earlier seminars;
(b) To develop a strategy for improving current practices and involving women in the implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000;
(c) To recommend the types of technical and financial resources needed by governmental and non-governmental agencies in the implementation of the strategy developed during the Seminar.
<section>B. Update on regional activities</section>
Following a brief review of the findings of the earlier seminars, as highlighted in Part One of this document, participants made informal presentations on some of the actions that had been taken under the auspices of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). Because there had not been time nor had provision been made for a systematic assessment in each country represented at the earlier seminars, the reports were more indicative than definitive. Nevertheless, they illustrated the types of actions taken in many of the countries.
The participant from Zambia said that while no concessions were given to women, they were not discriminated against, either. After the earlier meeting held in her country, however, special attention was given to the issues of housing design and finance, and a new policy was being framed for implementation from 1990 onward.
There was also some evidence that efforts were being made to treat women as a non-homogeneous group. The problems and needs of single women, women heads of-household, and women in other situations, for example, were being considered for discrete treatment.
In Uganda, a Ministry of Women's Affairs, set up in 1988 under the President's Office, was conducting activities related to women and human settlements. Two projects had been launched to enable women to obtain loans without collateral.
Kenyan participants cited progress through the Ministry of Co-operative Development, which had broadened the possibilities for poor women to acquire land. A national housing policy has been drafted, and a Commission on Urbanization was recently established. The Land-Use Commission provided land along the coast to landless people, and slum improvement programmes were increasing. The need for revision of inheritance laws, that deprived a woman of access to her husband's property if she had only daughters, was also noted. It was also pointed out that town planning regulations should be modified to take into consideration the need for land for food production, even in urban areas.
Twenty-eight African governments and institutions have established and were co-operating through the Company for Habitat and Housing in Africa (Shelter-Afrique) to help the poorest of the poor in Africa. Governments, by and large, seemed to have realized that the need for housing of the poor was a challenge which had to be faced.
The emphasis was on establishing income-generating activities and improving the housing and sanitary conditions of the poor.
Indicative of the signs of advances being made in Asia were three developments inIndia since 1988:
(a) The National Commission on Urbanization had been created to address the issue of land titles, which had become more acute in the urban context than in rural areas;
(b) A National Housing Policy had been designed to cover the issues of access to land, housing finance, and the needs of the landless;
(c) Indira Awas Ujna, a rural project, has initiated construction of houses in the joint names of husband and wife.
There had also been some success stories in slum-improvement projects, and the Government has decided to set up a national housing bank and has asked other banks to support housing as well.
Among significant developments in Pakistan were the creation of a People's Works Programme and the emergence of trends towards decentralization of authority to local governments. A five-point programme had been established, to include the regularization of slums and the creation and the development of small plots of land in urban and rural areas. The policies and programmes are directed to helping the poor in general but, it was pointed out, no special attention had been given to the specific needs of women.
Some participants from the Latin American and Caribbean region reported having organized working seminars for town council officials and for professionals within ministries concerned with human settlements issues. However, because the economic and social situation in that region had become worse since the regional meeting at Buenos Aires in March 1989, the daily lives of poor women were becoming increasingly more difficult as a result of less employment, less investment, public and private, in housing, and deterioration in such public services as transport, health, water supply and education. Development of human settlements, therefore, had not received a high priority. Further, the number of women heads-of-household is increasing at a phenomenal rate as a result of war, natural disasters and the normal deterioration of the economic and social situation, while the gap of female unemployment was continuously widening compared with that for males.
The Sou Sou land concept, that had been discussed during the Caribbean seminar, focused on providing an opportunity for dialogue on the social and economic situation of women who sought land and shelter as a human right. Based on that concept and practice, the National Housing Authority of Trinidad and Tobago had defined its strategic goals as bringing affordable shelter solutions to low-income groups in society, particularly female heads-of-household who headed 30-40 per cent of all households, and fostering and encouraging self-help and self-reliance in the provision of shelter and community facilities and the creation of sustainable human settlements.
Participants underscored the need to reconcile the triple roles of women (production, reproduction and the managing of both the domestic household and community action groups) in shelter planning, to take into account the need for spatial arrangements allowing women to function adequately in those three areas. Research in Jamaica had found that, although 75 per cent of women who headed households were renters, housing policy did not address renters. Escalating speculation in urban land had eliminated "yards" and had commercialized open spaces. The aftermath of Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 had increased the housing crisis, particularly because relief had not reached renters.
Members of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) Women and Shelter Group spoke of the Plan of Action on Women and Shelter launched by HIC in April 1988. The Plan of Action was a response to the Regional Seminar on Women and Shelter held at Harare in 1987 in connection with International Year of Shelter for the Homeless (see annex 1). It called for the setting-up of a global network on women and shelter. This is currently based at the Mazingira Institute, Nairobi, and operates as an outreach system, collecting and disseminating information from and to NGOs and CBOs in the different regions, through focal points. The HIC Women and Shelter Group acts as a policy group which will be constituted by the network of NGOs and CBOs, as it grows, and should represent poor women in rural and urban settlements. The first issue of the HIC Women and Shelter Network Newsletter has been produced in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. It contains news from slums and other low-income
settlements in several regions.
The participants' statements indicated the following overall trends:
(a) There had been a gradual change in attitudes about the need to focus on women and human settlements;
(b) Policy-makers were beginning to view women as a force to be reckoned with, and women themselves were seeing the need to make their initiatives more visible;
(c) There had been an increase in popular and women's organizations and in international networking;
(d) The ease with which women worked in groups was a sign of hope as a "lead-in" to community level action.
At the same time, several participants pointed out that housing did not always appear on women's lists of priorities. Priority was given to the need for food, water, sanitation, education, health, income-earning and transport, thus underscoring the wisdom of an integral approach to sustainable development of human settlements and addressing housing needs in that context.
Participants continually returned to the premise that, they stressed, must be repeated over and over again, even at the risk of annoying those in authority, namely, that global, national and community strategies for shelter must give priority to the poor and, especially, the poorest of the poor who are women. As the global economic crisis widened the gap between the rich and the poor, it was all too easy to lapse into general rhetoric or into plans and programmes for the development of human settlements without a focus on the poorest populations who constituted the majority in most developing countries. The dramatic structural changes required for bridging that gap would necessarily affect those at highest economic levels. (At a discussion meeting after a site visit, participants added that equally dramatic structural changes were needed in community structures as well, i.e., poverty alleviation and strategies that simply managed poverty were not good enough.)
C. The United Nations Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000
The participants had before them General Assembly resolution 43/181, adopted on 23 December 1988, as a point of reference for the development of their strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000.
The General Assembly had, among other things:
(a) Adopted the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000;
(b) Decided that the main objective of the Strategy was to facilitate adequate shelter for all by the year 2000, that the principal focus should therefore be on improving the situation of the disadvantaged and the poor, and that the following fundamental objectives and principles should form the basis of the Strategy:
(i) Enabling policies, whereby the full potential and resources of all governmental and non-governmental actors in the field of human settlements are utilized, must be at the heart of national and international efforts;
(ii) Women, as income-earners, home-makers and heads of households, and women's organizations fulfil a crucial role as contributors to the solution of human settlements problems which should be fully recognized and reflected in equal participation of women in the elaboration of housing policies, programmes and projects, and the specific interests and capabilities of women should be adequately represented in human settlements policy formulation and at all levels of government mechanisms for the implementation of housing policies, programmes, and projects;
(iii) Shelter and development are mutually supportive and interdependent, and policies must be developed in full recognition of the important links between shelter and economic development;
(iv) The concept of sustainable development implies that shelter provision and urban development must be reconcilable with sustainable management of the environment.
(c) Designated the Commission on Human Settlements as the United Nations intergovernmental body responsible for co-ordinating, evaluating, and monitoring the Strategy, and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) as the secretariat for the Strategy and the lead agency for co-ordinating and monitoring the relevant programmes and activities of other United Nations organizations and agencies concerned.
The general framework for the Global Strategy for Shelter was set up in the following plan of action:
1989-1991:Establishment of national policies and strategies. Design of new institutional arrangements.
1992-1994:Introduction of new institutional arrangement and strengthening of existing national programmes.
1995-2000:Full-scale operation of national programmes. Progressive strengthening of institutions for activities beyond 2000.
The plan of action fixes the responsibilities of the various actors: the Member States of the United Nations, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Human Settlements, the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), United Nations agencies and organizations, multilateral and bilateral agencies and non-governmental organizations.
It will be progressively updated and refined by the Commission on Human Settlements during its biennial sessions throughout the period up to the year 2000. A timetable, covering the period 1989-1991, is currently under implementation.
D. A strategy for the full participation of women in all phases of the Global
The intention of involving women as contributors to and beneficiaries of the Global Strategy for Shelter is eminently clear from the General Assembly resolution. The Interregional Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 was organized by the United Nations Centre for Human Strategy for Shelter Settlements (Habitat) to develop a strategy that would help transform that intention into a practical reality that could be acted upon.
The strategy (plan of action) outlined below evolved from the discussions and workshops which centred their attention on regional findings and methods for eliminating obstacles to the participation of women in human settlements activities.
Participants addressed two basic questions:
(a) What is a gender-sensitive, enabling shelter strategy?
(b) What is a gender-sensitive human settlement?
In answer to the first question, the following links were emphasized between the enabling and the gender-sensitive shelter strategies:
Enabling (removing obstacles)
Gender-sensitive
Using public-sector resources to facilitate and encourage action taken by other sectors: private (formal and informal) and the community
Using public-sector resources to facilitate and encourage gender-specific action taken by other sectors (promoting women and women-in-development issues)
Stimulating the use of untapped capacities and resources in all sectors
Stimulating the use of untapped capacities of women (especially low-income women as individuals producers, home- makers and professionals); and effectively utilizing resources, including the managing and organizing skills of NGOs, CBOs and women's organizations
Defining the complementary roles of the private and public sectors in the most efficient
Recognizing and encouraging the role of women in the private and public sectors and defining way possible the complementary roles of those sectors by promoting full participation by women's governmental and non-govern mental organizations
Concentrating direct public- sector involvement on tasks not covered by other sectors
Concentrating direct public- sector involvement on tasks specifically relating to women and not covered by other sectors; also directing public- sector support to the poor, taking into account that the majority of the poor are women
In answer to the second question, participants spoke in terms of the need for a "vision" (a term not uncommon to women and communities) of a gender-sensitive human settlement in order to work towards it. In familiar planning terms, there was a need to have a concept of what were the basic elements of a human settlement that took women, as well as men and children, into consideration.
First and foremost, the approach is integral and participatory. From the beginning, the planning includes women as well as men (particularly the poor of all ethnic groups). It responds to women's perspectives (as well as men's) on the use and function of private and communal living and working space. It ensures the co-ordination of the services of agencies that take into account practical family needs for water, sanitation, waste-recycling, health, child-care and education. There is no gender division of labour, and the burden of domestic chores is lessened. Of particular relevance to housing, institutional forms of discrimination are eliminated by creating equal rights to land ownership and access to credit. There are opportunities for employment and/or income-generating enterprises for both men and women, with access to transport and markets. CBOs involving women are included in local-government planning and the implementation of programmes favourable to the sustainable
development of the environment.
From discussions in working groups on community participation, training, communication and the roles of government, private and community sectors, several points arose that indicated the direction participants thought the strategy for women should take:
(a) As part of the Global Strategy for Shelter, it should focus on poor women and not try to cover all levels.
(b) Within the Global Strategy for Shelter it is analogous to the "life blood" (as distinct from a limb) of the human system. There was no way to integrate the strategy for women in the Global Strategy; it is a vital part of it which had to become visible.
(c) Its emphasis on progressively improving the conditions of women should ensure that the relations between male and female members of households and societies be structured in such a way that the advancements made by one generation of women were not lost to the next - and that new relationships were embodied in law.
(d) It implied a "paradigm shift" - from focusing on central government to decentralizing planning and implementation to local-government and community levels. It should stress that NGOs should function as a bridge between the official male-dominated policy-making mechanism, with its interdisciplinary and technical language, and the practicality of local communities; that bridging should result in the emergence of a "shared language".
(e) It required a new system of training and communication within the human settlements and shelter sectors which provided for "bottom-up" activities. It recognized that women are, in great numbers, excluded from the existing formal education system while they were very much involved in non-formal learning-by-doing processes which should be developed and facilitated. Training as a learning and capacity-building process was currently being carried out for women by NGOs and CBOs and should be put on the agenda of governments and receive adequate support by international agencies. The new strategy called for a system of communication which was dependent not upon documents and papers only but also upon the deliberate creation of attractive information means, such as video and radio programmes, conducive to open exchange. Negotiating and leadership capacities were skills that women should acquire through specific training programmes.
(f) It should support the process of rethinking and reshaping the operational objectives and mechanisms and/or institutions of housing and human settlements, in order to be ready to function when governments wanted to "enable" NGOs and CBOs. Success ful approaches needed to be documented, and their results disseminated for wide use.
(g) It should recognize and value the contributions of NGOs and CBOs, both of which should increase their network activities - horizontally and vertically, in furthering the goals of the strategy. Enlisting the co-operation of NGOs and CBOs should be accompanied, when possible, by financial assistance, by, for example, making contracts related to human settlements activities open to bids from NGOs and CBOs.
(h) It should recognize that NGOs and CBOs had a vital role to play in closing the gap between government and the grass-roots, by being informed about governmental policies and programmers and by disseminating that knowledge for use by grassroots organizations. Conversely, they could make their knowledge about the conditions, needs and desires of grass-roots communities known to government and to society as a whole through the mass communication media. Institutional arrangements had to be worked out for NGOs to obtain local and national representation, participation in decision-making processes and financial resources in recognition of the intermediary role they were fulfilling.
(i) It should support the development of partnerships within the family and the community, and (in the context of the Global Strategy for Shelter) among the public, private and community sectors. It should look for further elaboration, in the Global Strategy for Shelter, of the role of the private sector, on which topic the participants in the Seminar limited their discussions to the need for employment and assistance in the starting up of informal small businesses. Further elaboration was also needed on ways of ensuring equality in the development of those partnerships.
(j) It should be set in the context of integral sustainable development of human settlements, as envisioned above. To that end, the strategy for women saw it as vital that there should be a further elaboration, in the Global Strategy for Shelter, of the infrastructural components needed in human settlements development, e.g., water, sanitation, roads and transport;
(k) It implied a heavy reliance on the ability of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) to "enable" governments to make the strategy effective. One of the principal instruments would be the establishment of a focal point on women that would be provided with credentials and resources commensurate with the scope of the task assigned to it by the Commission on Human Settlements.
<section>E. Plan of action</section>
The Seminar participants developed a plan of action patterned after the Global Strategy for Shelter Plan of Action. The actions that need to be taken are identified specifically under:
A. Member States;
B. The General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Human Settlements and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat);
C. United Nations agencies and organizations, multilateral and bilateral agencies and non-governmental organizations; and
D. Local governments and community-based organizations, an addition to the list of actors in the Global Strategy Plan of Action which the seminar participants saw as a necessary and logical progression from the insistence that particular attention be given to poor women at the local-government and community level.
The plan of action is set out in annex 1. The material in bold type is taken verbatim from the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000: Plan of Action 1989-1991.
These items are included to indicate how the Women's Plan of Action meshes with the Global Strategy for Shelter.
<section>F. Monitoring and evaluation</section>
The Global Strategy for Shelter has been characterized as a framework for a continuous process towards the goal of facilitating adequate shelter for all by the year 2000. The strategy for women developed at the Seminar could also be described as an evolving framework for the process, to include the full participation of women, especially poor women, in the Global Strategy. As with the Global Strategy, the strategy for women would need to be monitored and evaluated continuously and modified accordingly.
To ensure that each national strategy and programme on human settlements, assisted by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and other agencies, included a woman's perspective in its formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, the participants asked that the most critical and practical indicators concerning women and human settlements be developed in consultation and partnership with the Commission on the Status of Women, the United Nations Children's Fund, the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) and international women's organizations in consultative status with the Economic and Social Council, and be tested as soon as possible.
With regard to evaluation, participants proposed that:
(a) The Guidelines Manual of the United Nations Development Programme for technical cooperation project preparation be reviewed from the perspective of gender, making use of the findings of the earlier series of seminars and the strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter;
(b) Technical co-operation projects and programmes incorporate indicators with gender differentiation (providing guidelines on, for example, disagregation by gender and income level among others) making use of the base-line data and impact-assessment system of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, the monitoring and evaluation recommendations and other studies related to human settlements development with a women's perspective.
<section>G. Conclusion</section>
In its resolution 9/9 of 16 May 1986 the Commission on Human Settlements recommended that:
"... regional or subregional seminars be organized, within the framework of the preparations for the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless, in order to exchange experiences on pilot projects and to define and evaluate the role of women and the organizations that represent them, in the conception, financing and execution of such projects, such seminars to be funded from specific resources made available by Governments and organizations in a position to do so;" and in its resolution 10/17 of 16 April 1987 it urged:
"... continuation of regional seminars initiated during the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless in order to exchange experiences on projects and to define and evaluate the role of women and the organizations that represent them, in the conception, financing and execution of such projects."
This report has presented the findings of those seminars end outlined actions needed to be taken concerning women and human settlements issues, i.e., policy, land, construction and housing finance. It has also presented the outcome of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 which launched a strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000. The participants in the Seminar expressed the hope that the report would be used to inform the Commission on Human Settlements of the Seminar's views on the essential contribution of women and of organizations for women to the development and management of human settlements.
The hope that the strategy for women would be taken as seriously as the drafters took the development of it stimulated the further hope that significant progress towards achieving the objectives of involving women at all levels of planning and implementation of human settlements policies and programmes, and of improving the residential/work environment of women, especially urban and rural poor women, their families and communities, would be seen by the year 2000.
<section>Annex I: Suggested revision of the plan of action of the global strategy for shelter to the year 2000</section>
<section>A. Member states</section>
Review progress In implementing a national shelter strategy (NSS) and adjust action programmes in light of experience.
Ensure that NSS is considered as an integral part of national economic-development strategies by:
· Designating a person to co-ordinate the strategy for women in the key economic ministry;
· Setting up a database system to support monitoring of NSS, with data collected as a normal procedure by gender, particularly those on households.
Take immediate action to improve living conditions of women in low-income settlements; projects for upgrading which include the participation of women should be given priority.
Strengthen the involvement of all participants in the shelter- delivery process.
Strengthen legal and institutional frameworks.
Expand the provision of training and information.
Develop an integrated approach to gender-awareness in NSS by:
· Forming or using existing interministerial committees (e.g., a national human settlements commission);
· Including women's representatives in the national machinery to formulate policy and establishing training programmes for those women;
· Ensuring that neighbourhood and women's groups are represented in local and national government;
· Developing ongoing communications between community based organizations (CBOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and ministerial levels;
· Linking integrated sectoral committees with integrated ministerial committees;
· Conducting workshops on gender-awareness for public employees, both male and female.
Legislate to eliminate obstacles to women's equal access to housing, land, infrastructure, training, building materials and finance, with particular attention to the following points:
· Land titles should be granted on a family basis;
· Laws of inheritance and tenure rights should be non- discriminatory;
· Women need to be informed of their rights, and their rights should be facilitated.
Ensure that initiatives developed at the community level can be responded to at governmental level, by:
· Mobilizing and distributing financial resources;
· Ensuring financial support of NGOs that can provide the technical assistance needed for community groups to prepare proposals;
· Ensuring that the improvement of living conditions meets the basic needs of those concerned;
· Providing financial assistance, e.g., investments, grants and credit, needed by women to begin income-generating activities.
Continue holding national workshops and support sub-regional seminars.
Develop and integrated approach among government, the private sector and the community sector, and, especially, form or use joint co-ordination committees to ensure representation of women's agencies at all levels, e.g., women's bureaux, professional and business women's NGOs and CBOs.
Ensure that workshops and seminars are held on women and shelter themes, to deal with:
· Communication/information/education needed for women;
· Training in participation, leadership, leadership skills, facilitation, concensus-building, caucusing, political organization and negotiation.
Prepare monographs and case studies on selected aspects of NSS Create mechanisms for receiving proposals relevant to women's involvement in NSS;
Develop videos to inform government officials of the needs of women;
Prepare inserts in leading newspapers to highlight gender-sensitive shelter strategy;
Remove obstacles to land delivery, infrastructure installation, building-materials output and construction productivity;
Integrate approaches to planning settlements, through joint participation by agencies responsible for housing, services, health and transport and by women of the community;
Make planning standards and design of technology gender-sensitive, through:
· Legislation;
· Training of planners and executives;
· Consciousness-raising;
· Policy reformulation.
Relate water supply, sanitation, waste disposal and environmental management to gender-sensitive shelter strategies;
Emphasize training for the participation of women in all aspects of the construction sector, including planning and management.
Prepare a national report for submission to the Commission on Human Settlements at its thirteenth session and for worldwide dissemination.
Ensure that recommendations of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 are taken into consideration in national reports.
Observe World HABITAT Day (WHD) by highlighting the achievements to date and plans for the future.
· Special attention should be given to the achievements of women within the chosen theme for WHD.
<section>B. United Nations General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Settlements and United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)</section>
Continue to provide Member States with substantive support for the formulation and Implementation of shelter strategies and assistance In obtaining technical assistance Ensure that gender issues are incorporated in an integrated manner across all sections of the Strategy from the very beginning, by:
· Appointing a woman to the staff of the United Nations Centre for Human
Human Settlements (Habitat) to facilitate implementation of the strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter;
· Relating human settlements issues to other sectors of the economy and aspects of social life;
· Establishing a link between the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the Habitat International Coalition Women and Shelter Group for outreach on human settlements issues at the national, sub-regional, regional and inter-regional levels;
· Involving other networks in these issues (e.g., Women and Law, Women and Environment;
· Consulting with the Commission on the Status of Women, the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women and international NGOs.
Plan an institutional framework to carry out the strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter, and establish a mechanism for maintaining dialogue between authorities and women's organizations in regard to:
· Policy formulation;
· Implementation;
· Monitoring;
Improve gender-sensitivity within all sections of the secretariat of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the Commission itself through:
· Training programmes in all divisions;
· Placement of women at decision-making levels;
· Presentation of the strategy for the full participation of women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to United Nations Development Programme Resident Representatives and to other United Nations agencies;
· Giving of high priority in technical co-operation projects to the role of women and their participation in the conception, execution and maintenance of human settlements.
Continue to prepare and disseminate information on the Global Strategy for Shelter.
Increase public awareness dot the concern of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) with women and shelter issues, by:
· Initiating mass media campaigns focusing on women and shelter within the Global Strategy for Shelter;
· Featuring "women and shelter" in Habitat News.
Set up a database system to support monitoring of the Global Strategy for Shelter and ensure that data collected are disaggregated and analysed by gender for:
· Policy formulation;
· Implementation;
· Monitoring;
(breakdown of data by age and gender should be established as a normal procedure. It is particularly important to have data on households as beneficiaries/participants of programmes including women-headed households).
The Economic and Social Council will receive a progress report on the Global Strategy for Shelter.
Carry out a follow-up evaluation on how recommendations have been carried out.
Prepare a monitoring report on national action on the Global Strategy for Shelter for submission to the Commission on Human Settlements at its thirteenth session.
Ensure that the recommendations of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 are taken into consideration.
The Commission on Human Settlements at its thirteenth session will:
(a) Review the monitoring report on implementation of the Global Strategy for Shelter;
(b) Review and recommend targets and timetables for the second phase of the Global Strategy for Shelter.
Place the final report of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 on the agenda of the Commission on Human Settlements at its thirteenth session.
The Economic and Social Council will receive a progress report on:
(a) Targets and timetables for the second phase of GSS;
(b) The 1992-1993 work programme of UNCHS (Habitat).
Ensure that the women's strategy on shelter is taken into consideration in progress report.
The General Assembly will receive a progress report on the Global Strategy for Shelter.
Ensure that women's strategies on shelter are taken into consideration.
<section>C. United Nations agencies and organizations multilateral and bilateral agencies, and non-governmental</section>
Circulate a summary of the report of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 to agencies.
United Nations agencies and organizations, multilateral and bilateral agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Regional commissions will review their activities in:
(a) Exchange of information on GSS;
(b) Policy research on GSS issues;
(c) Data collection for GSS.
Incorporate the women's strategy in the review of activities of the regional commissions and other organizations and agencies with reference to:
· Exchange of information on the Global Strategy for Shelter;
· Policy research on Strategy issues;
· Disaggregated data collection by gender;
Donor agencies should re-evaluate their assistance policies and channel more of their funding assistance to projects which directly benefit women in the human settlements sector;
Equal status should be given to NGOs and CBOs at international seminars;
Regional United Nations offices and other international organizations should make use of the Habitat International Coalition Women and Shelter Network's focal points as sources of information, so that the voice of poor women can be strong and also channelled to policymakers;
Projects should be identified that can become demonstration projects;
Emergency support should be given to poor, peasants and urban dwellers, of whom women are the poorest, and to those suffering from threats of eviction or dislocation due to natural disaster, drought, war or other disturbances;
Women's organizations should be brought together with policy- makers to discuss women's strategy issues in international fore;
Gender-sensitivity should be improved within the donor community, by:
· Demonstrating gender-based effects of specific loan conditionalities;
· Analysing connections between poverty, environment and women's subsistence roles;
The use of land by women for subsistence purposes (food, fuel), which is not planned for in land-use policies or economics, should be recognized and incorporated in the planning process.
Other United Nations organizations and agencies will prepare annual plane for Global Strategy for Shelter activities
Ensure that the recommendations of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 are taken into consideration.
Multilateral and bilateral agencies and NGOs will be invited to submit annual plans for Global Strategy for Shelter activities.
Ensure that the recommendations of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 are taken into account;
Submit status reports to the Commission on Human Settlements at its thirteenth session.
All agencies and organizations will be invited to participate In WHD celebrations to mark the end of the first phase of GSS to distribute Information material focused on this theme.
<section>D. Local governments and community-based organizations</section>
Circulate a summary of the report of the Seminar to Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 to CBOs;
Local governments should become involved in NSS both in planning and implementation. Local governments should then channel information from and into the community to local decision-makers and poor women through:
· Local meetings;
· Traditional fairs;
· Local social gatherings;
· Posters;
· Radio announcements;
Strengthen the capacity and voice of activists within government and NGOs by:
· Allocating financial resources for training programmes for interface personnel in NGOs and government agencies;
· Ensuring the participation of these interface personnel on inter- ministerial and inter-sectoral committees;
· Supporting direct donor contributions to NGOs and CBOs active in women's shelter strategies;
· Including the representation of women's organizations in decision-making positions in bodies responsible for shelter programmes;
· Developing vertical communication channels using existing women's organizations as facilitators at all levels;
· Forming an umbrella organization for lobbying, networking and outreaching CBOs, and ensuring that there is local representation on its board;
Publicize work implemented at the community level by:
· Inviting decision-makers to specific functions so that they can see at first-hand what is happening and be informed of needs "on the spot";
Neighbourhood women's groups should:
· Identify their needs and priorities;
· Establish their autonomy;
· Develop an informal grassroots network;
Training seminars for local groups should provide:
· Information sessions;
· Assertiveness training;
· Videos on women's needs and women's issues;
At the local level, there is need to:
· Review and, if necessary, change zoning regulations to enable women to work for remuneration at home;
· Use extension workers for outreach systems. (It is important to have independent extension workers employed by local NGOs, in addition to local government employees.)
Women should be encouraged to become both small-scale and large-scale entrepreneurs through:
· Practical training apprenticeships for unskilled women;
· Skill-training programmes;
· Credit facilitation;
· Consciousness-raising.
<section>Annex II: International year of shelter for the homeless regional seminar on women and shelter 30 November to 5 December 1987 Harare</section>
This Seminar, supported by the Government of Sweden and planned in consultation with the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), was organized by the Governments of Zimbabwe and of Sweden and the Mazingira Institute, a Kenyan-based non-governmental organization (NGO) which is the home of Settlements Information Network Africa (SINA). The Seminar was the culmination of a year-long participatory process. Fourteen countries and two liberation movements were represented. Papers were presented by women in the settlements field, from central and local governments and from NGOs.
An overview based on the papers and other documents served as the agenda for an action plan for women in three types of shelter situation - the urban poor, peasant women, and women living on plantations and other worksites. The 70 participants produced detailed action plans and a common statement, the Harare Statement on Women and Shelter:
"The key role which women play in human settlements must be more fully recognized... It is up to us as women to organize and take action... Women's poverty and excessive burdens of unpaid work, including provision of basic services, limit their opportunities for action. These conditions are exacerbated by drought, war, famine and environmental degradation... As women become aware and informed of their situation... they can conscientize their children... This is the main step in a more generalized strategy of improving women's access to land, shelter, credit, training, better health and services, education and representation in decision-making bodies".
There has been no formal follow-up, but informal networks of women who met at the Seminar and at the later seminar organized by the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) in Zambia, have been involved in some joint projects, including proposals by African NGOs for support to grass-roots women's groups from Swedish NGOs. More focus on women's issues in the SINA programme on promotion of housing and construction co-operatives in the region has also resulted. Perhaps most directly, the Habitat International Coalition Women and Shelter Network, formed as a global follow-up to the meeting, addresses itself to the strategic need for more information from and to the grass-roots level through NGOs. It is hoped to hold more women and shelter meetings in the region between CBOs and NGOs.
<section>Annex III: Statement by HIC women and shelter group adopted by the interregional seminar</section>
Habitat International Coalition (HIC) speaks on behalf of shelter NGOs in their dealings with international organizations, including the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat). It is a regionally representative coalition which acts in defence of the rights of the homeless, the poor and the inadequately housed, promoting the right of everyone to a secure place to live in dignity, in developing and developed countries.
The HIC Women and Shelter Group is a sub-committee of HIC, which assists HIC to represent women's shelter concerns, capacities and contributions. It has three representatives on the Board of HIC. It is responsible for the growth and support of the HIC Women and Shelter Network, which operates as an outreach system collecting information from and disseminating it to NGOs and CBOs in the different regions through focal points.
The Women and Shelter Group proposes to act as a hard-core group which understands the seriousness of the shelter situation of poor women world-wide. It is a policy group which will be constituted by the network of NGOs and CBOs, in HIC, and must represent the poor women in rural and urban settlements. These are the ones to whom the regional members of the Group must listen (they speak only the local language) to ensure that their message gets through.
It is intended that the HIC Women and Shelter Network should act as a clearing house, giving local women and shelter groups moral support, accurate information about the local power structure, and accurate representation to others. The Network newsletter will contain news from local slums and other low-income settlements in each region.
The HIC Women and Shelter Group makes the following proposals which have implications for the United Nations Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000:
(a) There should be an institutional linkage between the headquarters of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and the HIC Women and Shelter Group on women and shelter issues;
(b) Regional United Nations offices and offices of other international organizations should utilize the HIC Women and Shelter Network focal points as a source of information so that the voice of poor women can be loud and strong and channelled to policy-makers;
(c) Emergency support is needed for the poor of whom women are the poorest, among the peasants, urban dwellers end those living on plantations, who are suffering from threats of eviction, dislocation due to natural disasters, drought, war or other disturbances;
(d) The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) should have a woman in the unit monitoring implementation of the Global Strategy, to ensure incorporation of women's issues;
(e) The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) should have a women officer dealing with women and shelter issues.
<section>Annex I V: Lists of participants</section>
A. Regional Seminar on Women in Human Settlements Development and Management Bali, Indonesia, 25-29 February 1988
Australia
Mr. Eric Olbrei Second Secretary Embassy of Australia Bangladesh Ms. Maryum Katun Deputy Director Social Services Directorate Ms. Nazma Majid Programme Officer Women's Affairs Directorate Brunei Darussalam Ms. Dayang Hajjah Senior Housing Development Officer Sarinah Hj. Umar Housing Development Department Ms. Dayang Rohana Senior Housing Development Officer Hj. Ering Housing Development Department India Ms. Sarla Gopalan Joint Secretary Ministry of Rural Development Ms. Nirmala Buch Development Commissioner Madhya Pradesh Indonesia Ms. A.S. Luhulima Assistant to the State Minister for the Role of Women for the Development of Socio-cultural Environment Mr. Sunarjono Danudjo Director General of Human Settlements Department of Public Works Mr. Lego Nirwono Assistant to the Minister for Housing Mr. Soearli Salam Deputy Assistant to the State Minister for Housing
Mr. Samedi Sumintaredja Assistant to the State Minister for the Role of Women for the Welfare of the Family
Mr. Djuwanda Djoekaridi Director for Housing Department of Public Works Mr. Izhar Ibrahim Director of International Organizations Department of Foreign Affairs Mr. Sugeng Soemarto Head of Planning and Legislation Bureau Directorate-general for Village Development Department of Home Affairs Mr. Suyanto Director for Youth Services Programmes Directorate-general of Social Weifare Department of Social Affairs Ms. Sutamtinah Marsaman Head of Sub-directorate for Social Services Directorate-general of Social Welfare Department of Social Affairs Mr. Wahyu Widodo Director for Health Environment of Human Settlements Department of Health Mr. Soedjino Special Staff of the Hardjosutowo Minister of Transmigration Ms. Riga Adiwoso Deputy Assistant to Suprapto State Minister for Population and Environment Mr. Hassan Poerbo National Research Council Ms. O.K. Panjaitan Council member of Real Estate Indonesia (REI) Ms. K. Sumhadi Wariadinata Women's Congress (KOWANI) Ms. C. H. Wardoyo Member
of KOWANI Ms. Titie Said Head of Public Relations Family Welfare Movement (PKK) Ms. Wahyudi Third Chairperson PKK Ms. Cyinthia Sonnevile REI
Ms. Sujatni Yayasan Srikandi Dr. Yulia Sumirat Slamet Environmental Technique Division, ITB Ms. Sukanti Suryochondro University of Indonesia Jordan Mr. Shafiq Zawaideh Minister for Housing and Public Works Ms. Hind Nasir Mr. Bassan Attari Deputy Director General Housing Bank Malaysia Ms. Siti Balkish Bte Principal Assistant Director Sharif Agriculture Section Economic Planning Unit Prime Minister's Department Mr. Ooi Eng Chor Principal Assistant Secretary Planning and Development Division Ministry of Housing Mr. Abdul Latif Omar Under-Secretary Planning Development Division Ministry of Housing Nepal Ms. Prathiba Rana Chairperson Women's Social Co-ordination Committee Ms. Roma Kunwar Geographer Housing, Building and Physical Planning Department The Netherlands Mr. H. Van Eyk Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment Directorate General of Housing International Relation Division Ms. Nel Van Essen Women's Advisory Committee Ms. Lily Hutjes Women's Advisory
Committee
Pakistan Mr. Shamsul Haq Joint Secretary Environment and Urban Affairs Division Mrs. Akhtar Riazudin Secretary Women's Division Papua Hew Gulaaa Ms. Molly Willie Project Officer Women's Services Division Department of Home Affairs Ms. Bungtabu Brown President National Council for Women Philippines Ms. Sonia Galvez Department Manager Corporate Planning Office National Housing Authority Ms. Yolanda Velez Manager Corporate Planning Department National Home Mortgage Finance Corporation Ms. Marilu Alferez Director General Central Planning and Administration Offices Housing and Landuse Regulatory Board Ms Marcela Sales Department Manager Financial Management Department National Housing Authority Ms. Alma R. Recio Assistant Manager Research and Development Housing and Urban Development Council Singapore Ms. Yang Ai Fong Senior Principal Architect Housing and Development Board Ms. Beo Yut Mei Singapore Council of Social Services Sri Lanka Mr. Neville Piyadi-Gamma Additional
Secretary Ministry of Women's Affairs and Teaching Hospitals
Ms. L. D. Dissanayake Manageress Victoria Project Mahaweli Development Authority Additional Government Agent
Thailand
Ms. Ruanko Kuyyakonond Chairperson National Branch Council of Women of Thailand
Ms. Rataya Chantian Deputy Governor National Housing Authority
Mr. Narong Nitayaporn Director Social Project Division National Economic and Social Development Board
Mr. Yuwat Vuthimedhi Deputy Director General of Community Development Ministry of the Interior
Mr. Sunthand Sochevita Director Environmental Policy and Planning Division National Environment Board
United Nations Development Programme
Mr. Magdi Resident Representative United Nations Development Programme Jakarta
Ms. Wiwiek Sudjono
Ms. Amelia Yani
International Labour Organisation
Ms. Els Klinkert International Labour Organisation Jakarta
Ms. Djoa Sioe Lam
World Health Organization
Mr. Pancaroglu Representative World Health Organization Jakarta
B. Seminaire international sur la participation des femmes a la gestion et au développement des étaiblissements humains Tunis, Tunisie 28 mars-1 avril 1988
Benin
Mme. Karimou Rafiatou Chef adjoins du DAS/CC
Burkina Faso
Mme. Marie Suzanne Somda Assistante sociale Directrice provinciale de l'action sociale du Kadiogo
Mme. Lydia Ouedraogo Géographe Direction de l'urbanisme
Cameroon
Mme. Youana Chargee d'etudes Ministere de la condition feminine
Cote d'Ivoire
Mme. Adjoua Therese Koffi Ingénieur des techniques des travaux publics Chargee de Mission Ministère de la construction et de l'urbanisme
Mme. Rachel Gogoua So us-direct rice Chargée des operations urbaines Ministère de la promotion de la femme
Gabon
M. Georges Ollomo-Mezui Directeur general adjoins de l'urbanisme et des aménagements fonciers
Mme. Laurence Paulette Nzang Directeur général adjoins du crédit foncier
Guinea
Mme. Mariama Deo Balde Secretaire generale des affaires administratives Prefecture Conakry 11 (Association des femmes de Guinee pour la recherche et le developpement)
Mall
M. Bakary Keita Chef du personnel Ministere des transports et des travaux publics
Mme. Kadiatou Camara Beye Tresoriere generale du bureau executif national Union rationale des femmes du Mali
Morocco
Mme. Fatima-Zohra Souleimani Chef de division Ministere de l'equipement, de la formation professionnelle et de la formation des cadres
Mme. Amina Touhami-Chahdi Administrateur sociologue urbaniste Chargee de projets de developpement urbain Ministere de ['habitat
Halima Nazih Fonctionnaire Chargee d'etudes au cabinet du Ministere de l'interieur et de ['information
Niger
Mlle. Rayanatou Loutou Architecte Chargee de Projets Ministere des travaux publics et de ['habitat
Mme. Bibata Diallo Directrice condition feminine Ministere de la sante publique
Senegal
Mr. Seydou Sy Sall Coordonnateur Bureau d'assistance aux collectivites pour ['habitat social Ministere de l'urbanisme et de l'habitat (DCH/BAHSO)
Mme. Khadidiatou Wiang Mboup Conseiller en ressources humaines Ministere du development social
Tunisia
Mme. Samira Bel Haj Architecte principale Sous directeur a la Direction de l'amenagement urbain Commissariat general au developpement Regional et a l'amenagement du territoire
Mme. Alia Mimita Ben Hamoud Sous-Directeur a l'agence regionale de la planification et de l'amenagement du territoire Commissariat general du developpement regional et a l'amenagement du territoire
Mr. Ridha Chaabane Charge des affaires exterieures Commissariat general au developpement regional et a l'amenagement du territoire
Mr. Sahnoun Directeur general Ministere de ltequipement et de ['habitat Mme. Raoudha Soughir Architecte principal Sousdirection de la recherche Ministere de l'equipement et de Habitat Mr. AWelmoula Architecte principal Direction de la rehabilitation et de la renovation urbaine Ministere de l'equipement et de ['habitat Mr. Lotfi Bel Haj Architecte de direction Expert des Nations Unies (Kulenven) Societe nationals immobiliere de Tunisie Mme. Thouraya Hachicha Conseiller des services publics Chargee des etudes Direction generals Caisse rationale d'epargne logement Mme. Naziha Mazhoud Presidente Commission de sante et affaires sociales Union rationale pour les femmes tunisiennes Presidente du Conseil Municipal de Megrine Mme. Hassiba Chedli Technicienne superieure a la sante publique Tresoriere Union rationale pour les femmes tunisiennes
C. Regional Seminar on Women in Human Settlements Development and Management Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 6 to 10 June 19~
Barbados
Ms. Margaret M.R.B. Talma Senior Housing Planner Ministry of Housing and Lands Belies Ms. Marilyn Panton Director Department of Women's Affairs Guyana Ms. Merna A.P. Pitt Self-Help and Community Administrator Ministry of Housing Jamaica Ms. Perl Barret Inspector Indigent Housing Unit Ministry of Social Security and Consumer Affairs Ms. Cherrie Lee Director Community Services Division
Ministry of Construction
Ms. Maureen Aligrove Project Officer Shelter Sector Programme Urban Development Corporation Ms. Dauna R.M. Joseph Deputy LabourCommissioner Salnt Chrlstopher and Nevis
Ms. Beatrice L.M. Lam
Ms. Idetha E.R. Richards Acting Secretary Central Housing and Planning Authority Saint Lucla
Ms. Iona F. Erlinger-Ford Marisule Ms. Bernadette P. Springer Women's Affairs Officer Government Buildings
Salnt Vlacent and the Grenadines
Ms. Jeanie McDonald Co-ordinator Women's Affairs Desk Ministry of Women's Affairs
Ms. Jennifer Glasgow-Brown Assistant Secretary of Planning CPD
Ms. Lafleur John Assistant Secretary Ministry of Housing Ms. Muriel Byam President National Council of Women
Mr. Wendol E. King Industrial Officer Development Corporation Trinidad and Tobago
Ms. Joycelin T.S. Harewood Private Development Co-ordinator National Housing Authority Ms. G.A.P. Williams Lecturer Department of Management Studies University of West Indies
United Nations Development Fund for Women Ms. Margaret Gill United States Agency for International Development Ms. Maureen Webber
D. Regional Seminar on Women in Human Settlements Development and Management Lusaka, Zambia 31 October4 November 1988
Egypt
Ms. M.S. Madkour Chairman Women's Status Committee Regional Federation for Cairo Associations Lesotho Ms. T.M. MatIatsa Manager Community Development Section Ministry of Interior Ms. L.M. Maema Planning Officer Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs Malawi Ms. L. P. Kholoma Community Development Officer Ministry of Community Services Ms. D. 1. Njewa Administrative Officer Rural Housing Project Department of Housing Nigeria Ms. C.F.A. Sibeudu Chief Planning Officer Federal Ministry of Works and Housing Swaziland Ms. B.J. Dlamini Project Manager Women in Development Ms. 1. Katamzi Senior Planning Officer Department of Economic Planning Uganda Ms. J. Kagumya Senior Assistant Secretary Ministry of Industry and Technology Ms. S. Ibanda Senior Housing Finance Officer Ministry of Housing and urban Development
Ms. Stella K. Magoye
J.P.M. Parry and Associates Ltd.
Ms. H. Mugerwa Senior Economist Ministry of Planning and Economic Development United Bepubilc of Tanzanla Honourable T. Siwale, MP Tanzania Home Economics Association Ms. S. Kyessi Senior Assistant Town Planner Ministry of Lands, Natural Resources and Tourism Ms. M.M. Mgaza Community Development Officer Ministry of Community Development, Culture, Youth and Sports Ms. Mayawalla Planning Officer Ministry of Planning, Economic Affairs and Finance Zambia Ms. Dorothy C. Muntemba Co-ordinator Women's Programmes National Commission for Development Planning Ms. J. Mapoma Chairman Village Industry Service Ms. Chinonge Regional and Town Planner Ministry of Decentralization Ms. Mercy Siame Representative Member Zambia Association for Research and Development Ms. A. Kabwe Chairman Zambian Home Economics Association Executive Secretary Zambian Red Cross Association Mr. J. Kaona Director of Projects and Architect National Housing Authority Ms. 1. Muuka Chief Housing Officer Lusaka Urban
District Council Ms. Susan M. Siyuyi Economist National Commission for Development Ms. J.B.C. Muchelemba Under-Secretary Human Resources Planning Department
National Commission for Development Zimbabwe Ms. O.S. Chlyanja Senior Administrative Officer Ministry of Public Construction and National Housing Ms. R.M.M. Faranisi Assistant Secretary Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Ms. N. Kheswa Administrative Officer Ministry of Community Co-operative Development and Women's Affairs Observers The Netherlands Ms. Gertje Second Von Banchet Co-ordinatorof Emancipation Affairs Ministry of Housing Physical Planning and Environment Ms. Nel Van Essen-Mook Vice-President Women's Advisory Committee Ms. Lilly Hutges Women's Advisory Committee Norway Ms. Birgitta Soccorsi NORAD Mission Lusaka Habitat Internatlonal Coalltlon Ms. Diana Lee-Smith Habitat International Coalition Nairobi Intematlonal Federatlon of Univeralty Women Ms. Anje Wiersinga International Federation of University Women Geneva Switzerland
E. Seminario Regional sobre la Mujer en el Desarrollo y Gestion de los Asentamientos Humanos Buenos Aires, Argentina 27 a 31 de marzo de 1989
Argentina Sra. M. Baranovsky Sub-Secretaria de la Mujer Direccion Nacional de Promocion y Participacion Sra. H. F. Delgado de Gonjalez Intendente Municipal de San Pedro Provincia de Jujuy Sra. Garay de Fernandez Gladys Instituto de Vivienda de Corrientes San Juan 460 Corrientes
Sra. A Viviani Comision Municipal de la Vivienda Carlos Pellegrini 271 Piso 7 Buenos Aires Bolivla Zoila Acebey C de Blanco Comite Boliviano de Bienestar Social Enriqueta Alzerreca de Prada Paredes Guadalupe Beroni Lopez Ministerio de Asuntos Urbanos Brazil Sra. H. Pereira de Melo Hermes de Araup Universidade Federal Fluminense Chile M. C. Aracena I. Gloria Cruz Dominguez Taller Notre Ana Maria Padilla Ricke Colombh M. Dalmazzo Peillard Marie Dominique de Suremain Costa Rlca Vilma Guzman Gutierrez Apartado 10.227- 1.00 San Jose Ecuador Rafael Garcia Silva Arenas y Manuel Larrea Quito Paraguay Astrid Gustafson Fundacidn Paraguaya de Cooperacion y Desarrollo Presidente Franco 846 Silvia Elena Arias de Martinez V. Iturbe 175 1er. piso Teresita Stefanich Presidente Franco 846 Lina Amparo Yegros Pena de Velazquez 9na.1260 ent. Hidalgo y Morelo Uruguay Nelida Genisans Jose B. Lamas 2709
Ana Maria Ruggia Br. Artigas 1267 Silvia Tron Andes 1433 United thtatbos Deve/opment Programme Ignacio Perez Salgado ResWente Representante PNUD Esmeralda 130 Piso 13 1035 Buenos Aires Eduardo Nino Moreno Representante Residente Adjunto PNUD Esmeralda 130 Piso 13 1035 Buenos Aires Eva Rodriguez Tlusti Official De Proyectos del PNUD Esmeralda 130 Piso 13 1035 Buenos Aires - Argentina Amanda Palermo Asistente de Informacion del PNUD Esmeralda 130 Piso 13 1035 Buenos Aires - Argentina World Health Organization Miguel Diaz Barriga University of New Orleans Fritz Wagner School of Urban and Regional Studies University of New Orleans t~tahitat Internattonal Coalitton Sra. M.S. Huaman de Joseph HIC America Latina
F. InterregionalSeminarto Promote the Participation of Women in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 Nairobi, Kenya 4 to 8 December 1989
Ms. Gertje Second Von Banchet Ministry of Housing, Physical Planning and Environment Directorate-General of Housing International Relatbn Division The Netherlands Ms. Franc,oise Belmont Programme Officer Program me Co-ordinatbn Un it United Nations Environment Programme Ms. Outi Berghall Ministry of Environment UNCHS (Habitat) Programme Finland Ms. Nirmala Buch Development Commissioner Bhopal
Madhya Pradesh India Misrak Elias Regional Office United Nations Children's Fund Nairobi Ms. Catalina Hinchey Trujillo Director Fedevivienda Bogota Colombia Ms. Josefina Hauman HIC Women and Shelter Representative in Latin America Lima Peru Mr. James Hokans Ford Foundation Nairobi Kenya Ms. Lilly Hutjes Women Advisory Committee The Netherlands Ms. Margaret Jobita Executive Director Housing and Social Services City Commission Nairobi Ms. Rosemary Jomo Women's Programme Officer Environment Liaison Centre International Nairobi Kenya Ms. Rebecca Katumba IPS/IFS Nairobi Kenya
Ms Ayse Kudat World Bank Washington, D.C.
Ms. Diana Lee-Smith Mazingira Institute Nairobi Kenya Ms. Anne Lubasi Consultant, Sustainable Agriculture Environment Liaison Centre International Nairobi Kenya Ms. Susan Macharia Planning Committee Member International GROOTS Nakuru
Kenya Ms. Stella K. Magaye Nairobi Kenya Ms. Erica Mann Executive Vice-Chairman Council for Human Ecology Nairobi Kenya Ms. Ruth Mcleod Homeless Internatbnal Coventry United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Ms. Ingrid Munro Shelter Afrique Nairobi Kenya Ms. Dorothy C. Muntemba Co-ordinator Women's Programmes National Commission for Development Planning Lusaka Zambia Ms. R. Mutunga Shelter Afrique Nairobi Kenya Mr. Per Nygaard Ministry of Local Government and Labour Oslo Norway Ms. Florence T. Ochieng Kenya Mission to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) Nairobi Kenya Ms. Rita Pasqualini Direzione Generali per la Cooperazione al lo Svil uppo Unita Tecnica Central Ministerio Affari Esteri Rome Italy Ms. Sadiqa Salahuddin Chief Instructor NIPA Gulsham-E-lqbal Karachi Pakistan
Mme. Fatma Zohra Souleiman Chef Division de la formation Ministere des travaux publics Rabat Morocco
Mr. Howard Sumka Deputy Director Regional Housing and Urban Development Office United States Agency for International Development Nairobi Kenya Ms. Irene Vance Chief Technical Advisor United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) c/o PNUD La Paz Bolivia Ms. Elisabet Viklund Ministry of Housing and Physical Planning Stockholm Sweden Ms. N. Wairimu Shelter Afrique Nairobi Kenya Ms. Grace Wanyonyi Assistant Director Human Settlements Ministry of Lands and Housing Nairobi Kenya Ms. Anje Wiersinga International Federatbn of University Women The Netherlands/Switzerland Ms Gwendoline Williams Lecturer Department of Management Studies University of West Indies Trinidad and Tobago
<section>Annex V: References</section>
Joint United Nations Information Committee/NGO Programme on Women, Women and Shelter, Kit No. 4 (1988). English, French and Spanish versions.
United Nations, Official Records of the Forty-third Session of the General Assembly Supplement No. 8 (A143/8), The Addendum, Report of the Commission on Human Settlements on the work of its eleventh session; Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 1990.
United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), Building- related Income Generation for Women - Lessons from Experience (Nairobi, 1990) (HS/197/9OE).
Case Study of Women Block Makers in Kenya (Nairobi, 1988) (HS/08/86-20E).
La Mujer y los Asentamientos Humanos en America Latina. Bibliografia anotada (Nairobi, 1989).
La Particiapción de la Mujer en la Gestión y el Desarrollo de los Asentamientos Humanos Manual de formación (Nairobi, 1989) (HS/155/89S).
La participation des femmes a la gestion et au developpement des etablissements humains, Manuel de formation (Nairobi, 1990) (HSI155/89F).
The Role of Women in the Execution of Low-income Housing Projects, Training module (Nairobi, 1986) (HS/75185). Available in English, French and Spanish.
Women and Human Settlements (Nairobi, 1985) (HS/DP/85/18).
Women and Human Settlements: the Experience. Bibliographic Notes No. 15 (Nairobi, 1989).
Women and Shelter. Bibliographic Notes No. 7 (Nairobi, 1985).
Women in Human Settlements Development and Management (Radstock, Tilden Communications Ltd., 1990).
