EGM, 2008 Expert Group Meeting on the Priority theme of the CSW 53 rd Session

1. EGM, 2008 Expert Group Meeting on the Priority theme of the CSW 53rd Session “Equal Sharing of Responsibilities between women and men, including care-giving in the context of HIV/AIDS” “Review of the EGM report and recommendations” Prepared by Fulya Vekiloglu Bahá'í International Community

2. Desired Outcomes: EGM Recommendations • Transformation of the Models of Female Carer and Male Ideal Worker/ Elimination of gender stereotypes. • An Economic , Social, Cultural Strategy for Care and Social Provisioning • A Macro-economic approach that targets and invests in social and individual well-being • Integration of the Equal Sharing of Responsibilities into the Overall Promotion of Gender Equality and Women’s rights • Transformation in Attitudes and especially on the part of Men and Boys

3. Transformationof the Models of Female Carer and Male Ideal Worker/ Elimination of gender stereotypes. Female Carer Model- Assumes that caring is done by women and implies that men continue to be recognized as the ideal worker. • Transforming the stereotypical images of women and men and Public/Private Divide. • The role of State in promoting gender equality and equal sharing is vital. Highest officials should play a leading and exemplary role. • Create and review the employment policies to reduce the wage gap between women and men. Legislation: Should not perpetuate the ideal worker model and discriminate against women but the measures should be defined to reduce work-family conflicts and protect workers. • Promoting of gender equality in work places: Changing working practices. • The Media, Educational and Public Institutions, Religious communities and community leaders have a vital role to play in raising awareness.

4. An Economic , Social, Cultural Strategy for Care and Social Provisioning • An Economic , Social, Cultural Strategy (ESCS) for Care and social Provisioning is needed in order to support fairness and justice in the sharing of responsibilities, so women and men can have equal development opportunities. Such strategy should also acknowledge and value of providing adequate care for all. • ESCS for Care is required to: • invest in care: public funding for caring will have to increase as a proportion of GDP to ensure that those doing unpaid caring are to achieve equality in the labour market. • Should emphasise the societal and individual value of investing in care, as the changing practices are likely to affect social and personal norms (2). • Recognize that equality in distribution of resources and responsibilities of care require public support -whether this would be through subsiding carers, non-profit providers or through public sector). Such strategy should ay attention for improving the standards of care and pay of care workers (3).

5. An Economic , Social, Cultural Strategy for Care and Social Provisioning-recommendations continue: • To improve the care standards: capacity –building measures are needed to enhance female and male care givers’ access to training, education and development opportunities. • Ensure the visibility of care in government policy making. Unpaid care is not free, but paid by those who perform it. Therefore public spending on care should be regarded as societal investments and accounted as capital expenditure. (1) • Public resources for the provision of formal care and the support for informal care should be sufficient enough to ensure adequate and high quality support for all, both care-givers and care-recipients. • Measures to count and evaluate the volume of unpaid care, its contribution to the national well-being and its costs should be a fundamental element of the international policy on care-giving. • There is a need to have a comprehensive labour policy in place that takes care of women’s constraints and problems of balancing work and family on the one hand, and ensures encourages men’s involvement and responsibility in care work. (2)

6. A Macro-economic approach that targets and invests in social and individual well-being. The core recommendation: Expansionary macro-economic policies that targets human development, facilitate employment creation and our capacity to care. Fiscal Policy: Public spending on education, health and the care sector should be treated as capital investment, rather than consumption and spending. -privatization of public services should reviewed and re-visited in the context of provisioning and care to ensure that public spending doesn’t fail to incorporate the essential link between public services and spending. Monetary policy and inflation targeting: -Models of spending and inflation must be recalibrated to reflect that fact that different types of social spending have different effects on inflation.It is recommended that central banks would incorporate development goals into monetary policy-making. (2) -Trade policies must incorporate an analysis of its impact on the care economy and ideals of social provisioning. (3)

7. Integration of the Equal Sharing of Responsibilities into the Overall Promotion of Gender Equality and Women’s rights Why we would like to promote fairness and justice in the distribution of responsibilities? The EGM defines as: To expand the citizenship rights of both men and women, improve their well-being, economic security and equal opportunities and to remove systemic and institutional inequalities in their enjoyment of human rights. National efforts to promote sharing of equal responsibilities has to be linked yo international Legal and policy Instruments. Strengthening measures to implement BPFA and the MDGs, the ratification and implementation of CEDAW, CRC and ILO (156) conventions have particular importance for the achievement of gender equality.

8. Some suggested actions: The state should ensure that women have access to empowerment and recognize the unequal distribution of responsibilities as instrumental in perpetuating gender inequality. • Encouraging and Enhancing technical and financial support for empowerment activities at the grassroots level such as peer programs, support groups working with men and mobilizing activities. Women’s groups and organizations play a central role in this strategy because of their capability to reach out women. • Renewed attention to be given to ensuring women’s access to livelihood, particularly land and property • Measure are needed to increase families incentives to invest in Girls. • Measures should be developed to promote partnership between women and men, Care-giving is an area this partnership could be enhanced. • Care-giving should be linked to social security purposes and result with increased social rights and recognition for pension purposes and other benefits. • Capacity building measures are needed to enhance female and male care-givers access to training, education and developmental opportunities. • Measure should be in place to ensure that caregivers can have an input into programs and policies at all levels.

9. Transformation in Attitudes and especially on the part of Men and Boys • Emphasise the role of men and young men as agents of positive change. • Recognizes men as partners and clients to have reproductive health services and information more accessible to them and encourage them to deal jointly with issues such as contraception, voluntary HIV counselling. • Scale up interventions to reach younger boys and young men to develop their capacity to be the advocates and activists to eliminate VAW and girls, prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and support for orphans and vulnerable children. • Policy makers should use family friendly policies to target men and focus on men’s responsibility for the care and upbringing of their children and other family members. • Leave policies should also encourage paternity leave with special measures and support (leave with salary, compensations etc.) • Measures and policies should actively support on increasing the proportion of men involved in care-giving professions and jobs, just as policies are taken to increase the number of women in male-dominated professions. (1) • Measures and policies should be developed to support the capacity of individuals and public, community and educational institutions working with girls and boys to transform the attitudes and behaviour of men and boys. • In close partnership with civil society (including community leaders, faith based organizations and grassroots organizations) transform attitudes and behaviours to promote equal sharing of responsibilities and gender equality.