Institutional Management and Leadership masterclass

Task 2: Your Organisation Gender Policy

You have a few days to consider this task, and because we want the final output to be both useful and
relevant to your organisation, we suggest you engage your work colleagues, for this task. Your colleagues
can help you gather the information you need for the policy and even in drafting it. Also, let’s use this
opportunity to put into practice what we learned in this module about gender.

We have broken the “policy” into sections – to help you clarify your thoughts.

Deadline: Uploaded in pdf format by Friday 17th September 2021 at 12h00 West Africa Time – Thank you

The task:
We would like you to develop a gender policy for your organization – as a key output of this
masterclass. We suggest you do this as a simple word document – following any format you
like -, so long as your final document can be saved and then uploaded as a pdf.

A gender policy need be no more than one page long. Its purpose is to ensure everything you
do – from organisational level to project level- is done through a gender awareness lens. Here
is a table to guide you on drafting your gender policy.

Issues to think about
One sentence summarizing your
organisation’s aims (this could be your
mission statement)
Write some policy statements to address these issues
MIFACIG’s mission is to share trees and plants that serve life.
The purpose of this policy is to develop in rural populations the
capacity to practice sustainable agriculture with the integration
of trees, and full considerations for forest protection and
biodiversity maintenance.

Why is gender important to your
organization? This is your rationale for
having a gender policy
MIFACIG is aware that in the areas where it operates;
 There are very different traditional roles of the males and
the females which heavily discriminate against the
females.
 Mostly women are involved in agricultural production
and much of this is subsistence farming to feed their
families, while the men make the money from the cash
crops –coffee and cocoa..
 Women do much of the work, farming, cooking,
fetching firewood, taking care of the babies, cleaning
and washing etc.
 There is virtually no gender bias against the male gender,
while females are fully subdued in the male dominated
societies.
 Traditionally, the man is the head of the family, gives
the wives orders and would not be disobeyed, and this
order of thinks continues beyond the home to public
places and occasions.
  Many of the women still prefer the men to run things, or
are too respectful, shy or reserved.
 Traditionally most women did not own land and were
not permitted to plant permanent crops such as trees,
coffee or cocoa.

Today therefore it is difficult to find a woman who really

owns her own farmland. Right to inheritance is not extended
to women and girls, so she cannot even inherit land.

What are you doing to integrate gender MIFACIG is tackling these problems of gender discrepancy
into all aspects of your work – to ensure through a few measures.
you promote equity and eliminate bias  In MIFACIG elections a certain quota is reserved for
against either gender? women in order to ensure that women are represented.
 In MIFACIG’s assistance programs to local
communities in the form of sensitizations, trainings and
provision of materials, special efforts are reserved for
typically female groups and cooperatives.
 Special sensitization and training packages are prepared
just for women.
 During trainings of various aspects involving men,
gender sensitization is brought in to remind the men that
their women were overworked and over dominated. .
 Develop indicators for purposes of Monitoring and
evaluation that will bring out the real gender situation.
 Develop special grant programs for the empowerment of
women and provide proper follow up.

If your organization already has a gender policy, why not review it based on what you have
learned?