Book review by Dr. Hellen Kijo-Bisimba

The world is now looking forward to the silver jubilee of the Fourth Women World Conference, which was held in Beijing in 1995. Although it was preceded by three other women’s conferences which had come up with important strategies concerning the empowerment of women, the Beijing Declaration and Platform of Action was more geared towards gender mainstreaming as a process and a strategy and gender equality as the goal. It raised the stakes for a better world and held higher promises for all those who wished to see the end of marginalization, inequality and discrimination against women.

 In this wake comes this book written as a woman’s experience as she struggled to ensure gender is mainstreamed in the processes, systems, policies and culture of the African Development Bank. The book reveals in a passionately censorious manner the poor work environment for gender mainstreaming in an institution where it was supposed to thrive and the dilemma posed by disparaging “jokes” making it difficult for the author, who is a gender specialist to make things work.

Mainstreaming Gender, not only in the African Development Bank but also in many organizations, can be tricky and difficult due to many factors, one being the patriarchal system and culture woven tightly in the minds of the very people, mostly men who have the role of making things happen. The book shows clearly how the misunderstanding or misinterpretation of terms can bring negative connotations in a well-intended matter. The term feminism/feminist agenda has been controversial in many places. While feminism is about the range of economic, social, political and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish and achieve the equality of the sexes, some people find this term biased and cannot see how it is aligned with the term gender. Such negativity has brought about hardship in trying to promote gender equality as is shown plainly in the book.

While the book discusses and analyses the controversy in gender mainstreaming, it also touches on patriarchy and the neo-liberal economic policies as twining concepts underpinning the context in which gender equality policies and progress are being executed.  While reading what seems to be a story in a lone tussle, a spark of disbelief comes forth on matters, which one would not have expected in an organization with a Vision Statement explicitly prioritizing gender. The stereotypes of assigning meagre financial, human and other resources in the promotion of the gender equality goal is one of such issues and has been detected in many places where gender is just a cosmetic term. 

 Although there are positive indications of how gender policies were initiated to the level of recognition at the international level, yet in practice the real mainstreaming is not that evident, so much so that the gender specialist seems to be suffocating while trying to push and pull strings in trying to make her work meaningful.

The author has come out as a voice on issues over which there is silence in many places. And, as she correctly claims, this has been possible because of what she has lived - a combatant disposition due her earlier life experience.

The second part of the book named “the struggle for women’s rights begins with me” portrays the personal encounter in which she had to fight for justice and in the process gets dismissed from her job. It raises some questions of how many women would be courageous enough to follow up on their rights when infringed upon by a very powerful man to the extent of facing an administrative tribunal to seek justice. The last part is a gleam of bright light with a very radiant title ‘from a walk of shame to a walk of grace’. At last justice was done to the individual who has decided to provide the whole account of what the institution and the top leadership takes gender and feminism to mean as well as the ethical conflicts, accountability and governance issues. Reading this narration will make all those who are evaluating 25 years of the Beijing Platform of Action sink and think deeper, not by searching the documents in organizations but by looking beyond, in a qualitative manner how such documents are being lived and implemented. The road to gender mainstreaming is meandering but moving uphill following this account which is but one voice of an assertive gender expert whose efforts must be praised.

Dr. Helen Kijo Bisimba

Human Rights Activist

Initiative Dignity Alert

Dar-es-Salaam

Tanzania