Celebrating Women

MCTC was established in 1961 by MASHAV (the Centre for International Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs) with the aim of fostering cooperation with developing countries, through courses, workshops and seminars intended mainly for women. These studies were designed to enhance knowledge and competence, thereby increasing women's involvement in and contribution to the process of development.

For ten years the training programs addressed the practical needs of women in their reproductive, productive and community management roles, with Israel's own development experience forming the basis of the course curricula.

Eventually the problem-solving orientation of the courses led male development workers to apply as well, and since MCTC's opening, 7,375 participants from 124 countries have attended its activities, of whom one third have been men.

MCTC Director Mrs. Fannette Modek was a delegate to the Fourth UN Conference on Women in Beijing. "Following the conference, I decided that we have to do even more at MCTC to create awareness about gender issues. To this end, we are presently developing a workshop on this subject, which is included in every training course, regardless of its professional orientation.

"The workshop begins with an overview of the subject. In the 1970s, policy-makers and developers tended to view women in their reproductive role exclusively, and economic oriented development programs were addressed to men. In the 1980s, Women and Development programs offered work opportunities to already over-burdened women, without changing traditional prejudicial practices towards women.

Today Gender and Development is becoming a more accepted approach. Its objective is to achieve a better balance or interchange between the roles played by men and women, thereby giving women equal access in the economic, political, legal and educational spheres. Sustainable development needs an effective integration of both genders in socio-economic activities and therefore greater sharing of household and family roles between men and women.

"During the workshop, the trainees do a practical exercise, in which they examine the daily schedule of both men and women in their respective countries and determine the practical and strategic needs of both sexes, in view of adapting their future projects to these needs.

In their written evaluations, a number of participants commented that this is a very important topic, an "eye-opener." "We faced this problem in our income-generating project when it came to discussions of labour," commented one. "Men didn't want to type and women didn't want to be involved in the production and financing." Another suggested that "training for sensitivity of society to the role of women would enable men all over the world to give women equal treatment and equal opportunities in terms of jobs, decisions and income." Another suggested that "participants bring videos from their countries to illustrate the reality to the class."

MCTC enjoys the active cooperation of a number of governmental and non-governmental organizations, development authorities and international women's groups. A recent visitor to the centre was Liz Clarke, Acting Director for Community Development, Department of Traditional Environmental Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa.

"My job is to oversee training and deployment and policy for work of field officers in community development," she says. "In the last few years, eight of our trainees have attended courses at MCTC in order to supplement our in-service training. I came to Israel to discuss the possibility of future on-the-spot courses in South Africa and to gain knowledge about what my colleagues were experiencing at MCTC. Here one has the opportunity to talk with people from all over the world and there is as much to be learned in the dining room as in the classroom."

In addition to courses in Haifa and on-the-spot courses in countries all over the world, MCTC hosts international symposia for women and men active in public life on a current theme of development. In 1994, the symposium, which was held in cooperation with Soroptimist International, addressed the subject Women, Family and Society. In 1995, the symposium was entitled Women, Development and Public Policy, its purpose to provide a forum for examining problems and recommending concrete action to encourage greater involvement of women's organizations in policy dialogue associated with the development process. The theme for its 20th International Symposium for decision-makers from developing and industrialized countries, which will take place from October 20th to 25th, 1996, is Economic Development, Entrepreneurship and Gender.

Quoting the Platform for Action 1995, Fannette Modek stresses that "at the Beijing conference, governments committed themselves to review national policies and programs bearing especially on alleviating poverty and promoting employment and social integration. Moreover, they promised to take positive action, in order to facilitate women's equal access to 'credit and capital on appropriate terms equal to those of men, through the scaling-up of institutions dedicated to promoting women's entrepreneurship, including non-traditional and mutual credit schemes, as well as innovative linkages with financial institutions.'"

The MCTC symposium will provide a setting for a dialogue among representatives of government, international organizations and NGOs. Factors influencing sustainable development and the mechanisms for alleviating poverty will be brought to the fore. Participants will have the opportunity to examine the constraints to gender parity in economic life and to suggest ways of overcoming them.

For 35 years MCTC has provided a setting for women and men to develop a greater understanding of the contribution of each gender to sustainable development. March 8th, International Women's Day, accentuates the need for this understanding to reach a much wider audience.