In Support of Palestinian Women

Research Report for UNESCO

Summer 2003

Janet M. Powers, Ph.D.

Methodology

Personal InterviewsHand-delivered questionnairesE-Mailed questionnairesWebsites

Types of Organizations Surveyed

Women’s Charitable Organizations

Women’s Political Organizations

The Palestinian Ministries

NGO’s

Women’s Studies Centers and Research Centers

Women’s NGO’’s in the Northern Triangle of Israel

UN Agencies

Conclusions

1. A vast number of programs currently support Palestinian women.

2. Gaps in those programs include lack of programs in rural areas and lack of UNRWA funds to support camps.

Other gaps in current programs

3. Women have received gender awareness training which did not involve their families and thus intensified women’s misery and sense of powerlessness.

Need for Economic Empowerment

4. Women have an overwhelming need to contribute to family income both in women-headed families, which are increasing in number, and in most extended families.

Statistics

5. Statistics on women’s education are discouraging and reflect the need to change family attitudes as well as to fund scholarships for academically able young women.

Need for crisis centers

6. Palestinian society and its governance structure are sill in denial concerning the need for shelters, battered women’s hotlines, and rape crisis assistance.

7. Patriarchal attitudes, endemic to Arab society, will continue to be firmly entrenched as long as Palestinians suffer under Israeli Occupation.

Advantages

1. Triple positioning of key women in the PA Ministries, the women’s political organizations, and the Women’s Technical Affairs Committee means that there is a highly organized group of talented women leaders already pushing hard for a women’s rights agenda at the national level.

Rural Networks

2. Both women’s political organizations and some NGO’s have extensive rural networks, through which women have learned about and participated in shaping the National Strategy for the Advancement of Women.

Existing Women’s Centers

3. A key aspect of women’s rural networks is the existence of women’s centers in many towns and villages, although certainly not all.

4. Necessity has resulted in unanticipated empowerment of the rural women who run these centers; they have learned by doing what needs to be done.

WATC

5. The Women’s Affairs Technical Committee already functions as an effective umbrella organization, with a forward-looking vision. The General Union of Palestinian Women has a similar role that also embraces more conservative women.

Women’s Political Organizations

6. Women’s political organizations have already begun programs of civic education and training in democracy in anticipation of Palestinian national elections being held in the near future.

Economic Relief Projects

7.Two types of empowering economic relief projects are beginning to be implemented with some success: saving and lending projects and micro-loan projects, sometimes in combination.

8. Computer centers are successful in combining vocational training, income generation, and service to rural communities.

Three Main Issues

1. A need to encourage and facilitate women’s education

2. A need to provide comprehensive societal gender awareness training, jointly presented to men and women, boys and girls, through schools, electronic media, awareness-raising workshops, and …

Crisis Services for Women

9. Shelters and hotlines are beginning to emerge quietly in the West Bank and Gaza, although information about them circulates orally and women who make use of them have need of legal assistance.

Three Main Issues

1. A need to encourage and facilitate women’s education

2. A need to provide comprehensive societal gender awareness training, jointly presented to men and women, boys and girls, through schools, electronic media, and awareness-raising workshops, and…

Main issues continued

3. Computer centers, or similar multi-purpose information projects which empower women, need to be extended to more communities, especially in rural areas.

Three Possible Models

1.Central UNESCO Women’s Observation Center, which would contain a documentation center and promote studies and research on the status of women in Palestinian society; share resources and infrastructure with key women’s organizations; and implement a family gender awareness training program.

Three models

2. Family Gender Awareness Training and Media Training Grants to existing organizations, which would make use of existing NGO networks, encourage the further development of computer centers, and train women to make videos and maintain equipment.

Three Models

3. Information Center in every village, making use of existing rural networks extended further into every village, which will deliver family gender awareness training, offer tawjihi classes, and train women to run businesses such as VCR rentals, libraries, videography, and computer center.

Arguments

1. Would such a center be located in Gaza or in the West Bank?

2. A central women’s research and monitoring program would duplicate the efforts of existing organizations as well as the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Arguments

3. Putting grants into the hands of existing organizations will have the effect of making existing NGO’s more prosperous and will reach the same audiences already targeted by those organizations.

Arguments

4. Community-led development, which addresses women’s multiple needs, and in which women themselves choose programs appropriate to those needs, is the best approach to a conservative, rural society and will bring to it the information desired by that society.

Recommendation

The best assistance for women would be the development of UNESCO information centers accompanied by training in the use and maintenance of equipment, as well as knowledge of how to run a small business. Information centers could include computer centers, video centers, and libraries.

Directorate of Gender and Planning

Strategic gender needs:

1. Offer equal work opportunities for men and women, as well as offering necessary training for women to gain access to job opportunities and reach decision-making positions.

2. Encourage women to gain access to all forms of knowledge, including industrial technology, agricultural services, and legal literacy.

Main Results

1. Access to information will transform women’s lives in other ways.

2. Families will them them more respect.

3. A demand for more education will emerge.

4. Communities will choose the type of information center suitable for them.

Existing Networks

General Union of Palestinian Women Arab Women’s Societies ANERA Bisan Institute PARC Ma’an Development Center UPMRC

Implementation

Mapping (done by women themselves) Analysis of Data: lacks and overlaps Decision-Making: identify needs,explore

options, make choices Applications from communities Screening, program approval, funding Training of trainers (equipment, small

business, tawjihi, family gender awareness)

Community-led Development

Should involve rural women from the mapping phase on, with women at all levels involved in the initial survey.

Mentoring will help them undertake analysis of data, preparing a simple application for funding

Screening, program approval, and allotment of funds will occur at the level of the supervising organization, according to recommendations.

Community-led Development

Local women leaders will be trained, via Training for Trainers courses, to deliver family gender awareness training and techniques for running small businesses.

Trainings in equipment use and maintenance will be run by Palestinian businesses and NGO’s.

UNESCO Focus

Education Science (applied)Information Sharing