Gender and Chemicals: Issues, Stakeholders, Strategies; and Gender and SAICM Beyond 2020
May 2017 – December 2018; February 2019 – December 2020
Project website: gender & chemicals
Background and Goals
There is a number of gender aspects relevant to chemicals and chemicals and waste management. However, many of them are not receiving the attention they should in order to ensure the best possible decisions in policy-making and effective implementation. MSP Institute is aiming to create more focus on gender aspects and to increase the participation of women’s organisations and gender experts in the SAICM Beyond 2020 process. The goal of this project is to improve integration of gender aspects in international chemicals and waste management policies and implementation.
Activities
Gender Analysis:
- Issues: We conducted a gender analysis of chemicals, chemicals management and sustainable chemistry in order to deepen understanding of the relationships between gender and chemicals and identify relevant gender aspects – relating to health, work, nutrition, education, innovation, investment, risk perception and other areas.
- Political processes: We looked at on-going international and regional policy processes with regard to their relevance to gender and chemicals issues and identified possible entry points for strengthening the integration of gender aspects in chemicals-related policies.
Stakeholder Analysis: We looked at SAICM and other relevant international policy processes in terms of which gender aspects they have been included, which organisations, networks and individual gender experts that have been engaged, and which organisations working on gender and sustainable development issues have not been engaged and why.
Communication and Engagement: Based on the gender and stakeholder analyses, we developed communication and engagement activities aiming to identify tools and measures that could help improve the integration of gender aspects in the SAICM process and motivate women’s organisations and networks as well as individual gender experts to engage in the process.
Policy Suggestions: We developed policy suggestions for a framework of SAICM Beyond 2020 and are advocating in the SAICM process and other related fora.
Publications: There’s a project website sharing information about the on-going work and results, links to relevant organisations and processes. It includes a blog series with brief articles, an occasional newsletter, tweets and more: www.gender-chemicals.org.
Seeking your input, guidance and collaboration!
We are seeking to talk to colleagues from women’s organisations, governments, UN and other stakeholders as well as individual experts to discuss questions relating to the project activities and goals. If you would be prepared to discuss gender and chemicals issues, relevant processes and strategies with us, please let us know!
Contact
Dr Minu Hemmati, project lead, Associate, MSP Institute – minu.hemmati(at)msp-institute.org
Anna Holthaus, project coordinator, MSP Institute – anna.holthaus(at)msp-institute.org
We thank the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety for their generous, continued support for this project.