Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women

Summary of e-discussion facilitated by ActionAid International, United Kingdom
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(only eight responses were received in the first week), but once it did, the discussion
averaged five responses a day.
Response volume
A total of 1,538 people were subscribed to the discussion group at the beginning
of the dialogue. On July 5, at the end of the three-week discussion, 1,272
members belonged to the group. The decrease is primarily the result of incorrect
email addresses, although 33 people unsubscribed.
Approximately 1,100 subscribers were members of the Education
Rights2Realities discussion group hosted by Global Campaign on Education
over the past year. Some 538 new names were automatically subscribed from
the list compiled by ActionAid International and Commonwealth Education
Secretariat. An additional 261 people voluntarily subscribed to the group.
Participant profiles
There were 69 responses from 25 different countries over the three-week
period. Accounting for multiple messages sent by any one participant, a total
of 47 people participated—28 women and 19 men. They represented international
NGOs, local civil society organizations, academia, and donor agencies.
A regional breakdown of the 47 responses is provided below:
• Europe (Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, United Kingdom).
• Asia (Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines).
• Latin America (Argentina).
• Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa,
Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia).
• Middle East (Yemen).
• North America (Canada, United States).
Week 1: opening the forum for discussion
This first week of the dialogue was intentionally left “unstructured” to monitor
the areas participants felt were important to discuss. A few questions on how
the report was framed as a whole were asked in order to catalyze discussions:
• Do you agree with the interpretation of the goals in the Millennium
Development Goals report?
• Does the report miss the opportunity to highlight a failure and demand
more immediate action to achieve the education target by 2005?
• Will this report succeed in galvanizing action on this Goal?
• What relevance do these goals have to your work?
Comments here related to the need to approach strategies from a gendered
lens, transforming schools to be centers of learning, the report’s capacity to
pressure the international community on the unmet Millennium Development
Target of gender parity in primary and secondary schools by 2005, recommendations
for developing indicators to measure progress, and discussion on