IIEP-Pole de Dakar office will be integrating a gender perspective into all of its projects

IIEP-Pôle de Dakar, the Institute’s regional office in Dakar, Senegal, held a workshop on 24 May 2019 for all programme staff on integrating a gender perspective into its training, research, technical cooperation, and communication projects. IIEP’s focal point for gender equality and Dakar’s coordination team organized the workshop for 19 staff members.

The IIEP offices in Paris and Dakar first started collaborating in this area during the last Medium-Term Strategy (2014-2018). This work included the evaluation of gender mainstreaming in educational materials for the Pôle de Dakar’s training in education systems management (PSGSE). In 2018, the two offices decided to host the training and expand this to all areas of its activities.

The workshop aimed to highlight how gender inequalities threaten the right to education for all, and specifically in Africa, alongside other forms of discrimination related to geographical and socio-economic origins. The workshop presented strategies that are useful tools for reducing discrimination. IIEP’s focal point for gender equality, Mioko Saito, also held a similar training for staff in the IIEP Buenos Aires office in March 2018, reflecting IIEP’s Institute-wide priority on ensuring gender mainstreaming in all of its work.

Gender mainstreaming in educational planning aims to reduce gender inequalities by taking into account the needs of all children in the design, implementation, and evaluation of education plans and projects. Over the past 10 years, IIEP has strengthened its commitment to reducing gender inequalities by making the subject an increasingly central part of its work. Since 2014, the reduction of gender inequalities has been one of the thematic priorities of the Institute's strategy.

Reducing gender inequalities in education is of paramount importance for two reasons. First, by providing the space in which much of the socialization of children takes place, education plays a key role in achieving gender equality. Depending on how education is organized, it can either reinforce stereotypes and discrimination, or work to reduce them. Second, gender equality is essential to achieving the right to education for all by reducing inequalities in access to education, inequalities in classroom treatment, and inequalities in learning outcomes.

The workshop organized for Pôle de Dakar was also a useful opportunity to reflect on the relationship between the nature of a project and the UN Gender Equality Marker(GEM), and to design strategies to improve the level of this marker in future projects.