National Women’s Education Center of Japan

On January 22 (Tuesday), 2013, Ms. Koto Kanno, a visiting researcher, delivered a lecture entitled "Issues and challenges of gender sensitive human resource policies in UNESCO " to the NWEC staff. Based on her twenty-five years of experience in UNESCO, Ms. Kanno noted that there are still some issues that remain unsolved even in UNESCO, a situation remarkably similar to the situation surrounding Japanese women. She cited as an example the concentration of female staff in low-status jobs and the fact that there are only a small number of women managers in UN agencies. She also pointed out that adequate work-life balance policies need to be in place. Gender mainstreaming has been addressed in many UN agencies as part of broader UN reforms. Ms. Kanno reported that in UNESCO, for instance, the Priority Gender Equality Action Plan has been developed, which stipulates that 50% of the managing positions should be held by women by 2015. The plan also requires gender to be taken into consideration when hiring staff. After the lecture, there was a lively Q&A session. Attendees asked questions and made comments on a variety of topics, such as how to enhance the quality of Gender Focal Points and develop their capacity, how to train a wide range of people to understand the concept of gender mainstreaming, as well as measures needed to motivate and raise awareness of implementation of gender mainstreaming among senior managers.