Gender and Women Empowerment Policy 2010-2020.

The Gender and Women Empowerment Policy is a national cross-sectoral policy of the Gambia for the period of 2010-2020. Its overall goal is to mainstream gender in all national and sectoral policies, programmes, plans and budgets to achieve gender, equity, equality and women empowerment in the development process.
The Policy covers the area of food and nutrition. It plans to ensure increased production and intake of high quality food by men, women and children to reduce the major nutritional disorders prevalent in the country by 2015. For this, it will advocate for effective implementation of national policy/strategy on nutrition; promote the consumption of food rich iron, vitamins and proteins among men and women particularly pregnant /lactating women; create awareness on the importance and use of iodized salt; ensure continued increase in food production and consumption, diversification of livestock and crop production so as to improve food sufficiency; advocate for the development of food standards and guidelines for processing, preservation, storage, food hygiene, safety and sanitation; advocate for enforcement of quality assurance and safety standards in foods produced locally and imported foods; promote exclusive breastfeeding for first six months and continued breastfeeding for two years; promote appropriate nutrition education programmes at all levels; and lobby for the training of more nutritionists, food technologists, food scientists and dieticians.
Further, the Policy treats the issue of environment and gender. Namely, it targets to ensure women’s participation in the management of and accessibility to environmental resources including portable water and disaster management and prevention. For this objective, the following activities are planned: review the current national Environmental Policy/Strategy to ensure its gender responsiveness; advocate for total coverage of the population with access to potable water supply; empower both women and men to explore and manage, and benefit from their environmental resources; advocate for women to be actively involved in and represented in natural resource management and water management decision-making bodies; mobilise women, men, girls and boys in the planning, designing and management of water facilities, and their local natural resources; ensure the provision of adequate and less labor intensive water supply technologies for horticultural farming; provide adequate protection for all users and managers of the ecosystem; ensure that women have adequate, current and quality information on the environment and its resources; create awareness on environmental resources, their availability, benefits, utilization; promote women and men’s equal rights to such resources; lobby for land reform pertaining to land ownership and inheritance; encourage agro-forestry by women and men for land conservation; promote sustainable utilization and conservation of the land resource; advocate for the full implementation of the National Disaster Policy and Strategic Plan 2010-2014; and encourage the full participation of women and men in the global fight against climate change and its effects.
Furthermore, the Policy aims to reduce rural poverty. In particular, it provides for advocating for the implementation of the National Employment Policy and Action Plan, first reviewing it for gender sensitivity and making recommendation for incorporation of gaps, where it exits; promoting women's and youth economic rights and independence through ensuring access to employment with appropriate working conditions, control over productive resources such as financing, land/property, information and services; advocating for the increased access by women to agricultural extension services and to technologies for processing and marketing of agricultural produce; and advocating for the formulation of a gender sensitive rural development policy and its effective implementation.
Moreover, the document includes strategic goals for rural development and women’s role in it. Specifically, it aims to empower community members, especially women to actively participate and take ownership of development projects and programmes. For this, it will advocate for the improvement of the socio-economic status of vulnerable groups such as women, children, youth and the physically challenged particularly those in the rural areas; promote the effective implementation of the Local Government Act; advocate for expansion of rural electrification, improve access to transportation, water, ICT, housing, and market facilities at the rural areas; advocate for the formulation of a gender sensitive rural development policy and its effective implementation; train leaders at grassroots level to understand and overcome gender issues that hinder community development; promote community policing and other grass root mobilization initiatives; ensure full participation of religious and traditional leaders in gender advocacy; and advocate for women’s participation in all project/ programme cycle.
The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Gender is responsible for the overall coordination and harmonization of efforts by all stakeholders. Women and Gender Bureau will provide technical support on gender mainstreaming to ministries, institutions, organizations, local governments bodies, civil society organizations and private sector. The Bureau will also be responsible for coordinating monitoring and evaluation within the National Gender Monitoring Framework. Gender units at organizations or institutions will provide quarterly reports of activities, which will be fed into a data base.