Gender

MFF and Gender

MFF realizes that women are frequently the environmental stewards in their communities and that a truly successful coastal restoration effort requires empowered women as full partners in the process. The community action component of MFF targets involves promoting coastal residents', especially women's, support for, participation in, and benefit from, the conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems for long-term human well-being and security. Gender considerations to ensure equitable benefit sharing of coastal resources amongst women and men are paramount to the MFF vision. Gender has therefore been adopted as a cross cutting issue for MFF and is addressed in all areas of the MFF implementation framework. This includes each of the 15 Programmes of Work (PoWs) that are implemented at the regional level, as well as national project level activities.

Men and women in coastal communities
Both men and women in coastal communities are dependent on coastal zone ecosystems for their livelihood, whether it is for subsistence or income generated from fishing, tourism and other industries. Yet, men and women depend upon, exploit and manage coastal environments in different ways. MFF projects are well designed coastal zone conservation and management projects that specifically take into consideration these gender differences in the way men and women depend upon, exploit and manage the coastal environment. They also promote equal opportunities for men and women to participate in decision-making and consider their unique knowledge and experience in coastal zone management.

Integrating Gender Considerations in MFF supported projects
To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, MFF projects must explicitly integrate gender issues and/or address gender related concerns into the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation phases. It is a requirement for all MFF project proposals to consider how the project will take into account and integrate gender issues, giving special attention to any differences between men and women with respect to: access to and use of resources, means of production and credit, generation and use of income, participation in decision making. A thorough social and gender analysis is therefore recommended. This will ensure MFF existing gender dimensions in coastal communities are considered in the design of projects and that equitable benefit sharing of coastal resources amongst men and women results. The impact of MFF projects and programmatic interventions can also be accessed through subsequent analysis and gender aware monitoring and evaluation.

All project proposal requests under MFF must be screened for gender integration as a crosscutting issue to ensure that there is no negative impact, of project activities, on either gender. Future funding proposals should include gender as a crosscutting theme and separate funding allocations should be sought for implementation of gender integration into the project.

Gender mainstreaming is not ensured by simply incorporating women into a program or activity; it must ascertain the participation of both women and men in the definition of objectives and the planning stages, in order to make sure that sustainable development meets the priorities and needs of both (Aguilar L, 2001).