Gender Equality Part3 - Gender Mainstreaming

Gender mainstreaming is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality.
Mainstreaming is not an end in itself but a strategy, an approach, a means to achieve the goal of gender equity.

Mainstreaming involves ensuring that gender perspective and attention to goals of gender equality are central to all activities policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation and planning, implementation and monitoring of programs and projects.

SNAP SHOTS OF CURRENT DATA ACROSS SECTION
The snapshots presented in this section were delivered mainly from the report published by the British council on Gender in Nigeria(2012).
The scenario is here presented to drive in the point and justify why mainstreaming is inevitable and must be now.

A. Education Sector
Many supply and demand side factors are used to explain this including the state of schools; gender quality of education; and poverty in homes among others.
ii. Although the gender gap is closing in the education sector, however, the net enrollment rate for girls is 22% compared to 29% for boys. This situation is  worst in the North where in some places, only 4% of women complete secondary school.

I. Girl's dropout rates are still high in Nigeria. According to to a British council Gender in Nigeria reports(2012), Nigeria has the largest number of out-of-school children in the world (70.8% of young women aged 20-29 in the North-West are unable to read or write; compared 9.7% in the South-East).

iii. Corporal punishment, sexual harassment and violence are prime factors for high dropout rates among girls.
iv. Doubling the proportion of female teachers has not doubled girl's enrollment, especially in secondary schools.
v. A decline in the number of female students who meet the threshold of five credits, including credits in Mathematics and English.
vi.Although the number of young women admitted into university has more more than doubled, the gender gap is widening (worst in Science and technology based disciplines).

B. Health Sector
I.47% of Nigeria women are mothers before they reach 20.
ii .One Nigerian woman dies in child birth every ten minutes and she is most likely to be poor and young.
iii. National figures present maternal mortality rate as 545 deaths per 100,000 live births, nearly double the global average. In the rural North-East region the figure is 1,549( which is over 3 times the national average). 


See You in Part 4 cheers.