PROMOTING WOMEN'S ROLE IN THE PROFESSION

Haymarket Publishing, March 4, 2005

Women must be in the vanguard of efforts to tackle inequality in the
planning profession, insists Olusola Olufemi.

The Commission on the Status of Women was established by the UN in 1946
'to prepare recommendations and reports to the economic and social council
on promoting women's rights in political, economic, civil, social and
educational fields and to make recommendations on urgent problems
requiring immediate attention in the field of women's rights'.

In 1987 this was expanded to include advocacy for equality, development
and peace and monitoring of the implementation of measures for the
advancement of women at regional, sectoral, national and global levels.

The millennium development goals of 2000 emphasise the empowerment of
women and the promotion of gender equality. International planning
associations such as the Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) have
stepped up their role in promoting gender equality and changing the
culture of planning across the Commonwealth through education, training
and networking.

CAP seeks to focus and develop skills of urban and regional planners
across the Commonwealth to meet the challenges of urbanisation and
sustainable development of human settlements. Its presence has been felt
in initiatives in the Caribbean regions, in east Africa and the Pacific
islands. More importantly, CAP's women in planning (WiP) network reaches
out to women and men in the disadvantaged regions of the Commonwealth,
thus making efforts to reduce the inequality gap.

As the co-ordinator of WiP my role was not clearly defined at the Belfast
meeting in 2000. I had to define it by formulating the aims, objectives
and crucial issues for the CAP WiP in conjunction with CAP president Cliff
Hague. In addition I gave a quick snapshot of what the issues were in 2000
by sending out a five-question outline to the female planners who I knew
or met at conferences. Feedback was received from Uganda, Australia, the
UK, Kenya and the Caribbean, and the secretariat subsequently contacted
those who had replied through the CAP newsletter. My role was to lay the
foundation for WiP.

The CAP WiP network focuses on the under-representation of women in
planning and the impact of planning on women's lives in the Commonwealth
regions (www.commonwealth- planners.org). It continues to develop a viable
and sustainable network in the Commonwealth countries by:

- Promoting the role and vision of women in planning.

- Seeking active participation and empowerment of women planners.

- Disseminating information and knowledge about planning through research
and publication, the CAP newsletter, the internet and e-mail.

- Promoting planning education and the profession through awareness and
consciousness raising among planners in the profession and the community.

Since its inception the WiP network has:

- Featured articles on women's emancipation in the CAP newsletter and RTPI
News.

- Conducted a short survey in 2000-01 among 25 male and female planners in
various regions of the Commonwealth seeking answers to the impact of
planning on women and vice versa. A report is available on the CAP
website.

- Organised a workshop: participants in Manchester in 2002 included 14
women and 11 men from the UK, New Zealand, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia,
Trinidad and Tobago, the Solomon Islands, Canada, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe,
Malaysia and Uganda.

Some of the issues that women planners have to deal with in the planning
profession in the Commonwealth regions were identified. These include
exclusion from issues relating to planning and decision-making at all
levels of government, under-representation, glass ceilings, workplace
obstacles, inflexible work time, cultural barriers, HIV and AIDS, lack of
access to training and continuous professional development.

Working together with Dory Reeves, former co-ordinator of the RTPI equal
opportunities women's panel, the network calls for meaningful action by
planners in the Commonwealth to recognise and embark on a gender
mainstreaming agenda in their various institutions.

We must, however, continue to remember the challenges facing women
planners:

- Equality in planning education: equality with regard to access to
educational opportunities.

- Stereotyping: the need to de-emphasise popular terms used to connote
women's under-representation - invisibility, exclusion, and gender
blindness and insensitivity.

- Discrimination: eradicating discrimination and the harassment of female
planners by their male counterparts.

- Overcoming the patriarchal hegemony embedded in institutions, cultural
practices and rigid written and unwritten laws in some Commonwealth
nations.

CAP must explore ways to liaise with women planners in their various
regions and sub-regions. Women's knowledge and experience are invaluable.

Female planners have a lot to contribute to human settlement planning
because women are the major custodians of these settlements. As an
international body with a customised approach to individual networks in
each continent, the CAP WiP network should ensure that it utilises women's
knowledge and that its strategies fit into the broader environmental
context.

To ensure the sustainability of the WiP network CAP should:

- Entrench the network in the CAP constitution.

- Reach out to women planners in disadvantaged Commonwealth countries.

- Organise an international forum that brings together women and men from
a wide variety of different countries to discuss education, practice,
professional ethics and the experiences of women planners.