"When we learned the formula for mixing cement, it was like preparing dough for bread," proudly reminisced a Santiago woman from the La Chimba shantytown in Chile. She is a member of a women's union that decided to replace their dilapidated domiciles with solid, clean apartment buildings. Helped by the UNIFEM-sponsored Intermediate Technology Development Group, they organized themselves into teams of builders and adapted to heavy tools and construction techniques. They corrected mistakes and faced prejudice and resistance, often violent, and often from their partners, for adopting male-dominated roles. But they built new homes and more projects are planned.
La Chimba is just one of several hundred projects that UNIFEM (the United Nations Development Fund for Women) manages at any given moment. Funding of projects range in size from $1,000 up to a million dollars, the aim being to provide direct support for women's projects and to promote the inclusion of women in the decision-making process of mainstream development programs.
UNIFEM was created in 1976 as the Voluntary Fund for the UN Decade for Women. Based in New York, and with 11 regional offices in Asia and the Pacific, Western Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the fund became an autonomous organization in association with the UN Development Program (UNDP) in 1985. It is overseen by a Consultative Committee of five General Assembly Member States, one from each of the world's major regions. UNIFEM also reports directly to the Administrator of the UN Development Program and through them to the UNDP Executive Board, as well as to the UN General Assembly.
UNIFEM was born in response to the call of thousands of women for a fund within the United Nations system to help improve the living standards of women in developing countries and to address their concerns. It was set up to be an aid to and advocate for women of the developing world-to give them voice and visibility.
It believes that the best way to help women in developing countries is to strengthen the organizations they create and control, while fostering links and partnerships at every level.
It works primarily in three areas:
Agriculture and Food Security
Trade and Industry
Macro Policy-Making and National Planning.
The fund seeks to promote women's access to training, science and technology, credit, information and other tools for development. It also links grassroots women to national and international policy-making bodies and to global debates on issues such as poverty alleviation, the environment and human rights.
Below are some examples of UNIFEM's diverse activities.
Women of the developing world are not usually high-profile users of advanced machinery and equipment, but they are constantly adapting their technical information, skills and production methods to meet new challenges. To give more visibility to this kind of scientific progress and to the kind of science that benefits women, UNIFEM, in 1993, helped the Intermediate Technology Development Group sponsor the Do It Yourself Program: a collection of 22 case studies from 17 nations on women's innovative "invisible technology."
UNIFEM's Africa Investment Plan 1994-95 addressed problems of special significance to African women as well as the role they play in development. It focused on agriculture and food security, trade and industry, environmental sustainability, refugees and displaced persons.
UNIFEM's Asia and the Pacific Development Plan 1994-95 aimed to strengthen the institutional mechanisms that link women at the local level to formal development-planning and decision making structures in areas of agriculture and environment, trade and industry, national planning and politics.
UNIFEM's Participatory Action Program for Latin America and the Caribbean 1994-95 focused on poverty alleviation, environmental management, violence against women and citizenship and democracy.
At the global level, UNIFEM focuses on credit and financial systems, science and technology, women's rights as human rights, trade and industry and sustainable development.
The fund networks with parliamentarians to increase their awareness of UNIFEM's development work and ensures that women are on the agenda and help shape the outcome of key international conferences such as the 1992 UN Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the 1995 World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen. UNIFEM was very active in 1995 Fourth World Conference On Women in Beijing.
UNIFEM recognizes that women are critical actors in families, communities and economic systems, and that they need access to resources as well as to social services. By helping women achieve equality through economic and social development, UNIFEM helps improve the quality of life for all people.
