Gender equality mainstreaming

For the most part I feel that I am lucky to work with people who like what they do, are good at it, and believe in it. Then every once in a while I come across cases that scare me. I'm currently participating in a knowledge sharing event about mainstreaming women's entrepreneurship in our programs, hosted by the key project team globally. 

I've spent the last two days in a room with technical specialists in women's entrepreneurship development and national program coordinators from Africa and South East Asia, as well as colleagues from our global team in Geneva. Mostly, it's been engaging and interesting. People clearly are passionate about what they do and believe in the core goal of promoting women's entrepreneurship/economic development and gender mainstreaming. 

Then there are people that make statements that I simply can't believe. And from people who are in a position of authority in some ways and are responsible to the work we do at the country level. Today, I just had to take a picture of the statement. This particular individual made a similar comment about God wanting men and women to be unequal on our opening day, albeit verbally in an exercise called Cynics and Believers, where we are challenged to play the role as the champions of WED and also the devil's advocates. However, this statement came from an exercise today in which we were addressing the mental modules that contribute to the creation of structures and patterns. After we identified some in small groups, we were then given red stickers to vote on the mental modules that resonate with us. Alas, on the photo below, you see a red dot. 

The fact that these ideas persist amongst project staff who are tasked with changing attitudes and opinions and promoting gender equality scares me. And this isn't just true in my organization. I know of people who work in major health-focussed NGOs who believe in "miracle cures and madness."

I suppose the point of this rant is that we have a long way to go. Even amongst some of our supposedly well-educated and enlightened colleagues when it comes to some of the core issues we are up against as development workers.