Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
training on a broad range of gender issues in the areas of leadership, governance
and development policy.
20
In its assessment of the contribution of 14 benefit-sharing enterprises to commu-
nities' well-being, the UNEP report cited earlier assigns scores to each community's
achievement of its basic needs. Under the category of 'Equity in transactions' (part
of 'Belonging needs'), indicators include gender equity under both economic activ-
ity and leadership. Thirteen of the communities had made 'much improvement' with
regard to the involvement of women in leadership, meaning that women now occu-
pied at least 25% of leadership positions
as a result of the beneit
-
sharing enterprise
(Suneetha and Pisupati
2009
: 35-39). The report is intended to provide input to help
policymakers understand the basic principles that apply in benefit-sharing practice
at the local level, in order to make provisions and policies both relevant and possible
to implement. This evidence of how benefit-sharing processes can start to work to
empower women, even where gender has not been foregrounded as an issue, indi-
cates that there is both will and potential at ground level towards achieving gender
justice in benefit sharing. The process of building on this existing capacity could
be meaningfully supported through requirements for gender justice within benefit-
sharing guidelines, such as those now contained in the Nagoya Protocol, which the
UNEP study suggests would be implementable within communities in practice.
6.8 Imposition of a Western Gender Framework
as a Further Injustice?
Jeanne Simonelli and Duncan Earle discuss the importance of researcher reflection
on gender issues in their account of obtaining consent for anthropological studies
among indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico:
[T]he majority of the men had closed themselves up for yet another meeting, this one pri-
vate. We had hung out waiting, where else but in the kitchen. Most of the women were
either there or arrived shortly afterwards, and before we knew it, there was a meeting hap-
pening to the sound of making tortillas and gurgling babies. The meeting was very ani-
mated; everyone opined.
'Is the other meeting in the house just for the men?'
Luz, one of the leaders, responded casually, 'Yes, they have a meeting with themselves
now, and we have ours too; and then later we meet together. Everyone has a chance to
speak of how they see things.'
We realized then how we had jumped to conclusions about gender inequality, not
respecting the indigenous idea about complementary opposition that precedes the
dynamic union, how both segregating and integrating are part of their process of consen-
sus. (Simonelli and Earle
2003
: 82).
It is sometimes claimed that imposing Western ideas of gender equality on
other cultures, especially indigenous peoples, is just another example of cultural
