Strengthening Women Empowerment Project Budget Proposal of Phoenix Association in Myanmar

PROJECT ABSTRACT:

          Myanmar is ranked as a high burden country of HIV/AIDS in Asia with an estimated 216,000 people living with HIV, of whom, approximately a third is women. According to Asian Development Bank (ADB), the epidemic has had an adverse impact on the Myanmar economy and will continue to do so at a macro, regional, and household level. While impacts due to the direct cost of prevention and treatment are high, the indirect costs due to productivity loss, higher wages, and loss of skills can be much higher and have a significant effect on the country's development.

           Additionally, the distribution of these impacts is quite uneven especially the poor who suffer the most since they have the least access to services and information and the least ability to protect themselves or obtain treatment.  Since 2003 Myanmar government, with the support of international donors, has been implementing different HIV intervention programs in cooperation with local and international NGOs. This coordinated effort has yield result in reducing HIV transmission as well as number of people die from HIV related diseases. At the same time, affected populations have been encouraged to form groups and allowed to participate in the HIV response. It has been recognized that civil society has played major role in achieving success in controlling HIV in Myanmar and embedded in the National Strategic Plan on HIV in Myanmar 2011-2015. But with the introduction of the life saving HIV drug in Myanmar, the number of HIV infected healthy people is increasing and need to be addressed for them to be in the stable occupation for regular income.

           Phoenix is an association formed in 2005 with HIV infected and affected people from different parts of the country, to improve people living with HIV in accessing health care services as well as create job opportunity and generate regular incomes.  This innovative model has been recognized and supported by different stakeholders, and being shared for replication in country. The organization has done a gender assessment to identify gender issues and gaps, and then to mainstream gender into programs by properly addressing those needs. This proposed project would try to fill those gaps by providing series of gender mainstreaming training including coaching and mentoring to senior staff and establishing appropriate monitoring system to track the progress and challenges.

          The lessons learned from this project will be shared to partners for replication of similar models in Myanmar. This will further contributes for achieving the country's national level policies such as a strategic priority for community system strengthening: promote meaningful participation and empowerment of PLHIV under National HIV/AIDS Strategic Plan (2011-2015), and the National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women (NSPAW) to achieve the improvement of women and fully enjoy their right in accordance with the features of the Constitution of Republic of the Union of Myanmar (2008).

 

"Group work on How the VAT impact on men and women and suggested solutions"
Group members: Ngoc from RRDP & Hosana, Sharita, Yin Yin from GDS

Summarize session by Dr. Reina 

Critical Reflective Writing on "GENDER INEQUALITY AND POVERTY "

      The most interesting significant insight I have realized this week is that the relationship between gender inequality and poverty. At a macro level, seems to reduce economic growth but on the questions of how economic growth affects on it. Additionally, private consumption poverty remains a very widely used concept of poverty, often arrived at through per capita estimates from household level data, not from individual-level data, by using the common international poverty line $1.25 per day of Pushing Power Parity (PPP) by World Bank. The non-linear relationship between inequality and poverty has been discussed with Kuznet’s curve, showing inequality relating to household incomes in an inverted ‘U’ shape, so that inequality initially rises with rising household income then flattens and falls. However, there might be no grounds to simply say that inequality will be declined at higher income levels as well.

      A possible implication of this understanding that gender and growth links are rather than expecting poverty reduction to automatically reduce gender inequality, it would be more realistic to assume that economic growth produces rising household incomes, but gender inequalities are still likely. For example, a rising household income may disempower women in terms of bargaining strength as men behaving more patriarchal ways and a dependent wife may be suppressed. For this reason, such poverty lines are certainly useful within an economic framework of poverty but are irrespective of multi-dimensional poverty. In this regards, there are other alternatives to poverty measurements, such ECLAC’s index of Unmet Basic needs (UBN) which includes household quality, overcrowding, running water, basic sanitation, etc. Additionally, UNDP also introduced multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) that includes health, education and standard of living in 2011.

      Having realized that current poverty measurements are lack of engagement with personal, social, cultural and political factors, Amartya Sen (1999) has noted that, economists’ traditional tendency focus upon the household as the unit of measurement, not taking into account “intra-household” process. This limits the ability to distinguish the significance of incomes and expenses for each individual since there is obstacle to take full advantage of using resources to improve personal well-being, in an aspect of key indicators of MPI: health, education and living standard.  According to UNDP website, “the MPI can help the effective allocation of resources by making possible the targeting of those with the greatest intensity of poverty; it can help addressing MDG’s strategically and monitoring of impacts of policy intervention”. By addressing the centerpiece in poverty reduction strategies in terms of MDGs, gender sensitive policies and programmes should be initiated in every level. Moreover, it needs to ensure for taking account the fact that women as a group face non-economic barriers in terms of social constructs (laws, norms, attitudes) which limit their access to land, inheritance, education, employment, carriers, mobility and personal freedom.

      This learning insight will be useful in number of ways for me. As a student, it could enhance the prospects for overall poverty reduction in terms of effective resources allocation with non-discriminatory manner by conducting research and or in the form of seminars and joint studies. As a development worker, I will advocate policy makers and donors to guarantee women involvement in all stages of the process from designing to implementation of anti-poverty policies and programmes – setting agendas, defining strategies and allocation of resources.  Furthermore, I will explore and recommend different options to women communities to access more opportunities for improving their own incomes and then for enhancing intra-household bargaining power. For instance, bridging community to the microfinance websites, which can help grass roots organizations and community to access loans for improving their standard of living, and introducing conditional cash, transfer (CCT) programme in the development of economic through a gender lens in my country as well. In short, I could be a catalyst in governance institution reforms process as that is one of the key routes to reduce poverty, which can promote gender equality. 

References:

1)   Birdsall, Nancy. (2008). Inequality matters. In G. Secondi (Ed.), The development economics reader (pp. 135-145). New York: Routledge.

2)   Baherjee, Abhijit T., & Duflo, Esther. (2008). The economic lives of the poor. In G. Secondi (Ed.), The development economics reader (pp. 146-171). New York: Routledge.

3)   Coates, Anna., Multidimensional poverty measurement in Mexico and Central America: incorporating rights and equality. (2010). The international handbook of gender and poverty: concepts, research, policy.  Edward Elgar Publishing Limited., USA.

 4) http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/multidimensional-poverty-index-mpi