 Jadab in shribing israelian attempt to recognize the need to treat old male and female equitably with respect in all facets of our society from schooling, family life, to the workplace. Jadab in shribing israelian attempt to recognize the need to treat old male and female equitably with respect in all facets of our society from schooling, family life, to the workplace. Jadab in shribing israelian attempt to recognize the need to treat old male and female equitably with respect in all facets of our society from schooling, family life, to the workplace. Jadab in shribing israelian attempt to recognize the need to treat old male and female equitably with respect in all facets of our society from schooling, family life, to the workplace. Jadab in shribing israelian attempt to recognize the need to treat old male and female equitably with respect in all aspects of our society from schooling, family life, to the workplace. Without the gender policy, you don't have any binding policy as to why public service institutions or technical ministries should engage in gender mainstreaming. There is the cultural factor, which may be a barrier, but this barrier is not insurmountable, of course, because more and more women give the proof of their involvement in the development. We carry this discriminatory or oppressive attitude to our workplace. We don't have a policy that ensures quota system, that ensures that you must have a certain proportion of male-female in the world in decision-making position or in strategic position or ensuring that men and women have equal access to production resources. We fight for the promotion of women and families, this phenomenon where it is the boy in the families who must be schooled and not the girl. There is a lot of gender awareness in Cameroon today more than a decade ago. If you listen to the radio, you look at materials, you look at workshops, you look at conferences, everybody is speaking about issues of gender. The ministry regularly organizes the training through seminars, through workshops, through the same sensitivities that are done permanently. It will declare in that policy the role of each institution, technical institution in terms of how do we collectively gain capacity, get the resource to ensure gender mainstreaming. It's important that you link up with an institution or organization that is those gender capacity building or training. If we put in place a policy that requires that project and policy are designed in a gender-sensitive, gender-aware manner, then everybody will roam to build their capacity online. So online is good but there must be utility attached to it. The follow-up of the Beijing conference meant two years of collaborative work between non-government organizations and individual experts and the government to develop a national plan of action for implementing the Beijing commitments. On the other hand we also see that there is a change that is requiring women to come out. There is poverty is increasing, women are getting more into the labour market but because this is not seen as their role in the informal sector, they are therefore not paid enough, they are under double triple burdens. So while their traditional role is not changing, more roles are added on to them. We really feel that good governance means engaging with gender-sensitive policies and programs but equally engaging with implementers at the ground level. In Pakistan that policies are gender-sensitive and programs, some of them are definitely gender-centered or address gender concerns but we find that implementation is not. If it is perceived as something that is coming because some donor is pushing it, there is a resistance. So there has to be a demand that is created at the level of delivery and that demand comes from both sides. That demand can come from the mobilization of people in that locality. On the other hand there has to be a responsive system which responds to it which can be the political governance system as well as the administrative system. So in both instances people who can make the change have to be sensitive. It's great privilege to be able to be involved with this very important conference occurring in London and I speak to you as 0.9% of the Parliament of Papua New Guinea. I come from the Pacific region which is the lowest region for women's representation in the political arena throughout the world. It is also the only region in the world that has shown no improvement in women's political participation between 1995 and 2008. So I think it's really clear that we are a nation and a region that have to look very seriously at how we work on the issues of gender mainstreaming. We look back traditionally at a society that was based on networking not on hierarchies a society based on a partnership between men and women and roles that are often now misinterpreted. On top of that we had introduced with colonialism a very patriarchal, a hierarchy consistent and I think that has really remained become well entrenched because it did reinforce concepts of male dominance. And then on top of that we have to think of the situation today although there have been some determined efforts to move forward on gender mainstreaming we have the problems of distance, geography etc. we have the problems that the actual original public service training institutions are no longer doing generalised public service training and so I think there we have to look at rethinking the training aspects of public servants and rethinking them in a new way and obviously to do that we're going to have to deal with the geography of the nation and find ways to overcome that with distance learning mechanisms. Good governance is fundamental to any developmental issue be it gender mainstreaming, be it sustainable community projects governance is the actual foundation. If you don't have good governance in the first place you can be pretty sure that whatever you're working on will fall apart. I'd say it's a foundation stone and on that foundation stone of good governance we then build creating learning societies we are now in a learning information world so creating learning societies we have a lot to do in Papua New Guinea an enormous amount to do because we have large numbers of marginalised people we've been marginalised from the formal systems of education that's why we must break free from the formal systems and work the whole spectrum of learning from informal, non-formal, formal call it what you like, let's talk about learning societies and not get ourselves stuck in old models of formal systems we cannot be bringing our public servants in and out of their postings in the remote areas of Papua New Guinea so we have to use new and innovative ways of reaching our public servants this will of course mean a lot more financial and technical input to open and distance learning preparation of DVDs, preparation of module materials that can be used in remote areas of the country in learning institutions of the country and in the various agencies and divisions of the government agencies right throughout the country from provincial level down to district level, down to local level government the task ahead is enormous I think we as many developing commonwealth nations will need extra resources put into this area like Papua New Guinea where we still do not what you would call a very efficient bureaucratic system we have a certain amount of dysfunction I'm sure we're not alone in that in terms of developing commonwealth nations it's really imperative that we learn new relationships in our development process and with this learning of new relationships learning and developing new relationships we need to look at civil society agencies as well I firmly believe that government alone cannot grow a nation it's about the interaction between government and civil society agencies we have many agencies out in Papua New Guinea who are working on issues to do with education to gender all sorts of things and we have to make sure that they also understand the message of gender mainstreaming so it's got to be what I call a warg and was approach whole of government, whole of society approach if we're going to really move for the issue of gender equity gender equality and so it needs a concerted effort it needs commitment from the highest political level and it needs an understanding at the community level so even say with our new policy frameworks of integrated community development we need appropriate materials they can be understood at community level about what gender mainstreaming in community activities is about we need then another set of appropriate materials for civil society organisations appropriate materials for the bureaucrats at the varying levels and so it is a huge task but it can be done we are in a global society enormous advances continuous advances of information technology and so we must capitalise on the information technology revolution we have passed the industrial revolution we are now into an information technology revolution we must capitalise on this and we must move forward with this all societies have gone through the era of the glass ceilings the glass doors that women cannot break through and so we have got to really be sensitive not just to learn but to understand and to adapt our behaviour patterns and so it will take a lot of effort because some behaviour patterns are deeply entrenched so again the whole process I can't say it I can't say it enough learning and opportunities to learn by learning we take on hopefully a willingness to accept the learning which brings to understanding which brings to behavioural changes and for gender mainstreaming to truly occur at all levels of society we need some thought mindset changes paradigm shifts in the mindset and behavioural changes as well