Beginnings Issue 8.pub - Planning Institute of Jamaica

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P a g e 6 B eginnings I s s u e 8 Off the Bookshelf Healthy Women and Children ■ Who's Got the Power? Transforming Health Systems for Women and Children This report puts forward that meaningful, sustainable progress toward decreasing child and maternal mortality requires an intense focus on improving health systems. Who’s Got the Power responds to the challenges posed by high rates of maternal mortality, continued child deaths due to preventable illnesses, enormous unmet need for sexual and reproductive health services, and weak and fragile health systems. In addition to identifying the technical interventions to address these problems, the report proposes bold and concrete steps that governments and international agencies can take to ensure that health sector interventions have significant effects on all aspects of development and poverty reduction. Who's Got the Power? Transforming Health Systems for Women and Children Author: UN Millennium Project/United Nations Development Programme http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/document s/maternalchild-frontmatter.pdf Excluded and Invisible ■ State of the World's Children 2006, The: Excluded and Invisible The State of the World’s Children focuses on the millions of children who have not been the beneficiaries of past gains, the ones who are excluded or ‘invisible’. The report assesses global efforts to realize the MDGs, the central development targets of the agenda, and demonstrates the marked impact that their achievement would have on children’s lives and future generations. It argues that reaching the MDGs should benefit not only the better off, but also those children who are most in need, whose rights are most abused and undervalued and who are currently excluded from services, marginalized and unprotected by society and the state. State of the World's Children 2006, The: Excluded and Invisible Author: United Nations International Children's Fundhttp://www.unicef.org/publications/files/SOWC_2006_English_Report_rev( 1).pdf For the Children ■ We the Children—Meeting the promises of the World Summit for Children This report demonstrates with facts and figures how the 1990 World Summit for Children was systematically followed up and rigorously monitored, resulting in i m p r e s s i v e a c h i e v e m e n t s . Part one reviews the commitments made to children in 1990 at the World Summit for Children. Part two summarizes the progress made in implementing the World Summit in three main areas: health, nutrition, water and sanitation; education and literacy; children's protection and civil rights. Part three, the final section, offers perspectives for the future by looking at lessons learned from the past decade. We the Children—Meeting the promises of the World Summit for Children Author: Kofi A. Anan, Secretary-General of the United Nations http://www.unicef.org/specialsession/about/sgreportpdf/sgreport_adapted_eng.pdf
P a g e 7 B eginnings I s s u e 8 MDG 3: Measuring Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (Part 2) In our last issue we began to explore the target and indicators under MDG number 3 and Jamaica’s progress towards meeting the goal. In Part two the author seeks to analyze the targets and indicators Analyzing the targets and the indicators Goal Number 3 of the MDGs seeks to promote gender equality and to empower women. In this regard the target identified the elimination of ‘gender disparity in primary, secondary education preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015’. In analyzing the target and indicators one has to examine the extent to which the MDG targets for Goal No. 3 facilitate equality and empowerment. An overview of gender and education trends, allows us to look at the ways in which gender inequality is perpetuated and empowerment is impeded. The target statement, which speaks primarily to capabilities through educational attainment, gives an underlying assumption that education can be used as a vehicle for gender equality and women’s empowerment. At the same time, this is not necessarily a good indication of Caribbean reality. On this note, Barbara Bailey ( )makes the point that: education has not proven to be the vehicle for Caribbean women’s economic, political or personal empowerment. In By Taitu Heron spite of their overall higher levels of participation and performance at the secondary and tertiary levels of Caribbean education systems, the majority of the women in the region continue to be positioned in the lowest sectors of the capital market, earn lower wages than men, suffer higher rates of unemployment, experience greater levels of poverty, are under-represented in decision-making positions at the meso and macro levels of social and political institutions and lack real personal autonomy. (p.136) Grown et al (2003) argue that the ratio of boys to girls in school only reflects the input side of education and not the output side, which is more relevant – completion and learning outcomes. Bailey (2003) contends that the focus on the quantitative gains that Jamaican women have made in education masks and undermines the qualitative dimensions, ...the focus on the quantitative gains that Jamaican women have made in education masks and undermines the qualitative dimensions, that beyond school, females have less of a competitive advantage than their male counterparts. that beyond school, females have less of a competitive advantage than their male counterparts. Higher rates of performance and attainment by females do not necessarily translate into increased labour participation, or increased involvement in decision-making processes. A study done by Odette Parry (2001) on students in Kingston high schools provides evidence that traditional socialisation patterns such as suggesting subjects such as English Language, Literature and History are ‘girl subjects’ and subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry etc, are ‘boy subjects’ adds to the handicapping conditions that contribute to higher male dropout rates, particularly when the subject of English, the basis of participating in all OTHER subjects, is increasingly perceived as "female". In 2002/2003 the English language pass rate for secondary high schools stood at 71% for females and 55% for males. The national average was 51% for females and (Continued on page 8)
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