Contents
Gender in the Habitat Agenda:
Implications for the
International Federation of Surveyors (FIG)
by Diana Lee-Smith and Sylvie Lacroux, UNCHS (Habitat)
Personalities: Kirsi Artimo
Engineering Education: for Ourselves and for the Public
by Wendy J. Woodbury Straight
Gender in the Habitat
Agenda:
Implications for the International Federation of
Surveyors (FIG)
Background paper for the FIG
Working Week session on
Under-represented Groups in Surveying in south
Africa, 2nd June 1999
by Diana Lee-Smith and Sylvie Lacroux, UNCHS
(Habitat)
This information paper
addresses the relevance of the Habitat Agenda for the work of the
International Federation of Surveyors (FIG). It draws the conclusion that,
in addressing the new type of work implied by the Habitat Agenda, there
are two factors of critical importance:
– the involvement of
under-represented groups in surveying, and
– the centrality of gender
mainstreaming in FIG's work.
The nineteen nineties was
a decade of international conferences that charted directions in key areas
of social and political action. The Fourth World Conference on Women in
1995 produced the Beijing Platform for Action. This in turn influenced the
Second Conference on Human Settlements of 1996 (Habitat II) which produced
the Habitat Agenda. Gender equality is one of the major commitments of the
Habitat Agenda and permeates its detail. There are two aspects of
this:
– Addressing the circumstances of women's lives and
work in human settlements, and
– Women's equal involvement in
decision-making and control of human settlements, which entails higher
levels of skill and technical competence for them.
The two substantive areas of the Habitat Agenda
address:
– Adequate Shelter for All
– Sustainable Human
Settlements Development in an Urbanizing World
It is the first of these areas that most applies to the
work of FIG. The introduction to this part of the document states in
paragraph 61 that the goal of adequate shelter for all
...requires action not only by governments but by all
sections of society....including partner organizations...These actions
include...
(b) providing legal security of tenure and equal access
to land for all including women...
(c) (v) mobilizing innovative
financial and other resources for housing and community
development...
The challenge for the surveying profession is the
extension of new methods, tools and techniques of surveying and land
development to vast areas of new settlement, and to existing informal
settlements, working with low income people and women in particular
through various organizations. This entails new types of professional
working methods, as well as capacity building and skills development for
the organizations with which surveyors will work.
The Habitat Agenda contains many detailed recommendations
in the areas of Housing Policies (paragraphs 66-70) and Shelter Delivery
Systems (paragraphs 71-92) which are of interest to FIG. Shelter Delivery
Systems are addressed in relation to:
– Enabling markets to work
– Facilitating community
based access to housing
– Ensuring access to land
– Mobilizing
finance, and
– Ensuring access to basic infrastructure and
services
Among the shelter delivery mechanisms that will enable
property markets to work, the Habitat Agenda recommends that
governments:
72. (c) Employ mechanisms (for example a body of law,
a cadastre, rules for property valuation and others) for the clear
definition of property rights
72. (e) Undertake legislative and
administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic
resources, including the right to inheritance and the ownership of
land and other property.
Among the shelter delivery mechanisms that will
facilitate community based housing, the Habitat Agenda recommends that
governments:
74. (a) Promote self-built housing...
(b)
Integrate...self-built housing, especially through appropriate land
registration programmes, as...part of the overall housing and
infrastructure system...
(f) Facilitate regular dialogue and gender
sensitive participation of the various actors involved in housing
production...
(g) Mitigate the problems related to spontaneous
human settlements....
Clearly, if FIG members are going to be involved in
processes of this type, they themselves will need know-how in community
development, housing rights, self-help construction processes, gender
issues including women's land rights, traditional systems of land
allocation and so on. Thus there is a need for two kinds of capacity
building in order to work within the scope of the Habitat Agneda:
– Capacity building for professionals on working with
low income communities
– Capacity building for low income communities
on land development.
Among the shelter delivery mechanisms that will ensure
access to land, the Habitat Agenda recommends that governments:
76. (a) Recognize and legitmate the diversity of land
delivery mechanisms;
(b) Decentralize land management
responsibilities and provide local capacity building...
(c) Prepare
comprehensive inventories of publicly held land and, where
appropriate, develop programmes for making them available for shelter
and human settlements development, including, where appropriate,
development by non-governmental and community based
organizations;
(d) ......Utilize land-based and other forms of
taxation... for service provision by local authorities;
(f)
Develop...land information systems and practices for managing
land...and...ensure that such information is readily available;
(j)
Develop appropriate cadastral systems and streamline land registration
procedures in order to facilitate the regularization of informal
settlements where appropriate and simplify land transactions;
(k)
Develop land codes and legal frameworks that define the nature of land
and real property and the rights that are formally recognized;
(l)
Mobilize local and regional expertise to promote research, the
transfer of technology and education programmes to support land
administration systems,....
77. (e) Review restrictive,
exclusionary and costly legal and regulatory processes, planning
systems, standards and development regulations.
78. To eradicate
legal and social barriers to the equal and equitable access to land,
especially the access of women....Governments..should...
(f)
Undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women full
and equal access to economic resources including the right to
inheritance and the ownership of land and other property...
79. (f)
(ii) ...recognize organizations as credit
holders...
(iv)...support...capacity building...of non-governmental
organizations and peoples' organizations to make them efficient and
competent partners...
In a later section of the Habitat Agenda dealing with
International Cooperation and Coordination, new forms of cooperation,
partnership and coordination are advocated at all levels in order to
ensure adequate shelter for all (paragraph 194). Global networks are
envisaged for the transfer of technologies, including south-south
transfers, to enhance the capabilities of developing countries, especially
those in Africa, to provide shelter to their communities (paragraph 206).
This paragraph specifically urges governments to:
206. (f) Enhance the identification and
dissemination of those new and promising technologies related to human
settlements that generate employment, especially those that lower the
cost of infrastructure, make basic services more affordable and
minimize detrimental environmental
impacts...
Finally, paragraph 207 recommends capacity building and
exchange of information through technical cooperation to bring this
about.
All of these modes of working partnerships between
communities, local authorities, professionals, NGOs and governments within
and between regions entail some innovations for professionals. It would be
insufficient for FIG members to simply engage in the transfer of new
technologies. Rather, the whole method of professional work has to shift
its focus to working with low-income communities who have limited
resources.
The scope for involving under-represented groups in
surveying is extensive. Not only do the ranks of the surveying profession
need to be inclusive of women as well as men. Surveyors need to be able to
work with women as well as men who live in low-income communities. Low
income women and men also need to develop surveying skills. Members of
previously excluded racial and low income groups need access to the
profession. And above all, members of the profession need to develop a way
of thinking and working that is inclusive of those who were previously
excluded.
The proposed global networks should facilitate the
development of professional land development skills among women, people
from the South and people from low income communities. But those
under-represented groups also have things to bring to the profession. The
profession must also learn from them about gender, about working with the
poor, and about working in countries of the South.
By Diana Lee-Smith and Sylvie Lacroux, UNCHS (Habitat), PO Box
30030 Nairobi, Kenya, e-mail: [email protected]
and Sylvie Lacroux, e-mail [email protected].
 Personalities
Kirsi Artimo, Professor in Cartography and Geoinformatics (45 years) has graduted
in 1977 as an architect and then made her licentiate thesis on the use of
GIS in land use planning. In 1984 she doctorated at the Dept. of Surveying
at Helsinki University of Technology and the topic of the thesis was " On
semantic approach to the design of urban land information systems".
Mrs. Artimo has been working in various public and
private enterprises since 1982 mainly as a systems (GIS) designer or GIS
expert. Main employees in before starting to work at HUT: Soil and Water
Ldt , National Land Survey of Finland, The Finnish Geodetic Institute.
At the moment Mrs. Artimo is acting as a professor in
Cartography and GIS at the Department of Surveying in Helsinki University
of Technology. Besides this she has since 1988 taken part in several GIS
projects mostly as GIS-expert consulting in preparing and evaluating call
for tenders for municipalities, giving statements and evaluating GIS
strategies. Most important projects during the latest years are the
evaluation of GIS strategy of Espoo City and acting as GIS expert in the
Finnish Land Parcel GIS -project of the Ministry of Agriculture. She has
also experience in working abroad and in foreign projects: during 79-80
she worked as a research fellow at Delft University of Technology and also
took part in the Cairo underground map development project with Soil and
Water in 1987. Mrs. Artimo has also worked as an EU evaluator in the GI
2000 projects. On the academic sector she was lately an expert in filling
the GI professorships at Luleå Technical University (Sweden), Uppsala
University(Sweden) and Helsinki University (Finland).Currently she is
lecturing GIS at HUT and leading the Curriculum of Cartography and
GIS.
In FIG she has been working for Commission 2 for several
years, first as the secretary, then vice-chair and now as the chair from
1998. On the topic "Women in Surveying" she was one of the establishers of
the task force. On the same topic ("Women in Cartography") she has been
working in ICA (International Cartographic Association) since 1989.
Engineering Education:
for Ourselves
and for the Public
By Wendy J. Woodbury Straight,
USA
There is recent indication
that the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS) is rekindling
its Forum for Equal Opportunity (EO Forum). An outgrowth of the Forum for
Women in Surveying, the EO Forum once boasted a healthy membership of 150
women and other traditionally under-represented persons in the geomatics
professions. The need to reactivate the Forum is part of an overall NSPS
effort to freshen its image and to retain its membership. Also, it is
recognized that a well-spoken surveyors' association is needed at the
national level to elevate the image of surveyors in the public eye.
The engineering profession as a whole has been suffering
from a lack of large-scale, positive press. A Harris poll released last
September and highlighted by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) indicated that members of the American public, particularly women,
feel uninformed about the engineering enterprise. The poll was conducted
last July by commission of the American Association of Engineering
Societies (AAES). The survey reported that 45 percent of Americans are of
the opinion that they are not well informed about engineering, and another
16 percent think that they are not at all well informed about the
subject.
Among women, however, the percentages increased to 55
percent and 23 percent, respectively. While education level correlated
positively to how well the respondent felt informed, the majority of
college graduates (53 percent) still reported that they were not very well
informed or not at all well informed about engineers.
AAES Chair Martha Sloan, a professor of electrical
engineering at Michigan Technological University, said, "Engineers have
played a pivotal role in developing the technologies that maintain our
nation's economic, environmental, and national security. They
revolutionized medicine with pacemakers and MRI scanners. They changed the
world with the development of television and transistors, computers and
the Internet. They introduced new concepts in transportation, power,
satellite communications, earthquake-resistant buildings and
strain-resistant crops by applying scientific discoveries to human needs.
Despite these contributions to society, this stealth profession, whose
membership numbers more than 2 million in the U.S. alone, remains largely
invisible...."
Sloan noted an alarming prospect. "As our nation's
workforce continues the transition from one which is predominantly male
and Caucasian to one which will be majority female and African American,
Asian and Hispanic, the price we pay in our society for engineers having
worked in such obscurity may not be known for another generation." She
pointed out that though women make up 53.7 percent of the undergraduate
student population, only 19.4 percent of students enrolled in
undergraduate engineering programs are female. Enrollments among African
Americans in undergraduate engineering programs declined in 1997 despite
an overall increase in first-year degree programs.
ASCE's incoming president Delon Hampton is the first
African American to hold the association's highest office. Regarding the
survey results, he said, "Over the past thirty years, significant strides
have been made in equal employment opportunity in the United States and we
should be doing much better at reaching women and minorities than these
poll results show." He noted that many Americans, especially women and
minorities, do not consider engineering a field where they can achieve
their maximum potential while utilizing their talents to serve society in
the areas they care most about.
When asked to rate the quality of media coverage of
science, technology, engineering, and medical discoveries, more than 69
percent of the Harris poll respondents assigned fair or poor grades to
engineering reporting. Sloan said, "Essence of engineering is design and
making things happen for the benefit of humanity....We as an engineering
community must speak with pride about our engineers and our engineering
achievements and not allow our profession to be wholly subsumed within the
lexicon of science and technology."
Simultaneously with the Harris report came a paper by
Suzanne G. Brainard and Linda Carlin of the University of Washington.
Published in the Journal of Engineering Education, their research
enumerated various aspects of intervention programs and their effect in
the retention of women in engineering school.
In 1991, the Women in Engineering (WIE) Initiative at the
University of Washington was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to
conduct a longitudinal study of undergraduate women pursuing degrees in
science or engineering. Objectives of the program are to (1) utilize
tracking mechanisms to determine an accurate measure of retention, (2)
examine factors affecting retention, and (3) evaluate the effectiveness of
WIE programs.
Brainard and Carlin noted that women who enter
engineering programs at the University of Washington are highly filtered
achievers who begin with high levels of self-confidence about their
abilities in mathematics and science. Over the course of the first year,
confidence levels drop significantly, and do not fully recover over the
next four years. Most women who switch out of engineering or science do so
in the first or second year. Primary reasons given are losing interest in
the discipline, being attracted by another field, or being discouraged by
academic difficulties and a perception of low grades.
However, in spite of differences in self-confidence,
comparison at the time of switching showed no difference in actual
performance, as measured by grade point average, between women who persist
in science and engineering and those who switch to a non-science
major.
The authors were particularly interested in factors that
affected persistence. Women who are most likely to persist through the
freshmen year had chosen their major because they had enjoyed science and
math in high school. They continue to enjoy these classes and they work
well independently. They consider WIE and faculty to have a positive
influence on them, they enjoy participation in the Society of Women
Engineers (SWE), and they feel supported in their career choice by their
mothers. Persistence in the sophomore year seems correlated to a positive
relationship with an advisor, enjoyment of math and science classes,
gaining acceptance in a department, and participating in SWE and
internships.
Added to factors affecting female persistence in
undergraduate engineering at the junior level are the positive influence
of a mentor and participation in conferences. New factors emerging in the
senior year are the rewarding influences of engineering classes and high
quality of instruction.
Undergraduate engineering enrollments in the U.S. reached
an all-time high of 406,144 students in 1983. By 1996, this figure had
decreased to only 317,772. However, Brainard and Carlin pointed out that
this decline was disproportionate between females and males. The
enrollment of males declined 25 percent from 1983 to 1996, while the
enrollment of females declined only 4 percent during the same period and
has actually increased every year since 1989.
It appears that national efforts to increase the
participation of women in engineering are having an impact. WIE was
established in 1988 with the mission of increasing the enrollment and
retention of women in undergraduate engineering programs. Changing
demographics in the workforce had made it apparent that engineering
disciplines were obligated to match stride with the increasing numbers of
women in other fields. Yet various studies had shown that many women and
other traditionally under-represented persons suffered from a lack of
self-confidence in their math and science ability from high school onward,
even when their skill levels were high.
At the University of Washington, WIE created a series of
interventions or contact points to be implemented by personal interaction
with each female student throughout her academic career, but focusing
particularly on the freshman and sophomore years. Academic and social
support, career planning, peer activities, orientation sessions, tutoring
and mentoring are all integrated into the program.
Similar programs exist for women and other traditionally
under-represented groups in engineering schools across the country.
Evolving over the past decade, support groups have stressed the importance
of hearing a mentor's story, sharing in both the successes of and barriers
faced by those who have gone before.
Another article in the Journal of Engineering Education
last October featured the journeys of women in engineering and computer
science. Authors Susan Ambrose, Barbara Lazarus, and Indira Nair said,
"These stories underscore the various factors that have been described in
the literature as reasons women choose and stay in engineering." Examining
anecdotes and personal histories of several women in engineering, and then
reviewing a model of perceived self-efficacy, the paper provided insight
into effective teaching and advising in engineering schools. Ambrose,
Lazarus, and Nair pointed out that several authors have shown that
occupational stereotypes are set early in a child's development. Few women
are given the opportunity to consider engineering on their own when they
are children. Many women tell how their parents had believed in them and
encouraged them to follow their dreams; yet, the choice of engineering did
not always meet with parental or counselor's approval. Numerous women
explained that even one teacher or counselor taking the time to encourage
the study of science or engineering made the crucial difference in their
choice of a college major.
The literature on women in science and engineering
discusses many stumbling blocks, said the authors, and among those are the
unintended consequences of formal instruction, the negative attitudes of
peers, and blatant sexism or harassment. Most women have had a mix of
positive and negative experiences, but almost all have survived the
periods of loneliness and self-doubt that plague members of an outgroup in
engineering and related fields. They exhibited various coping strategies
when they were discouraged or frustrated. Some women were naturally able
to shrug off unfairness, and others learned to pick their fights
carefully, paying attention only to those they could win in a relatively
brief time commitment. Others employed a constructive sense of humor to
point out lack of consideration demonstrated by colleagues.
A universal constant was that engineering had become part
of the life of each woman interviewed. Each had found a way to integrate
her career within a contented, well-balanced existence. The authors found
a pervasive theme among women of wanting to be useful to society. Many
made links between their personal ethics and their approach to their
work.
Albert Bandura's model of a person's approach toward and
attachment to a field of endeavor was presented. Bandura and several other
researchers have noted that for women [or other traditionally
under-represented groups] to perceive themselves as successful in their
careers, talent and training are not enough; they must also feel that
their profession is of service to society. The model proposes that
efficacy information relevant to a career comes from four factors:
performance and accomplishments, observing and learning from others,
freedom from anxiety with respect to work and conduct in field, and
persuasion and support from others.
Though institutions of higher learning have recognized
the importance of these factors, many have missed Bandura's point that the
requirements are not independent. Too often, said Ambrose, Lazarus, and
Nair, one of these factors is unintentionally omitted by an institution
that then finds no significant change in minority engagement in the field,
drawing the conclusion that the intervention program is of no help.
The self-efficacy model advances the possibility that all
four aspects of influence are equally important. Moreover, if engineering
associations expand their public relations programs while universities
continue their intervention initiatives, the up-ward climb will become
less and less steep for women and minorities in engineering and related
fields. Personnel profiles in the industry will reflect the changing
workforce demographics of the coming century.
By Wendy J. Woodbury Straight, Professional Land Surveyor,
12
East Fifth Street, Dunkirk, NY 14048, USA, e-mail: [email protected]
Editor: Chair of the Task Force on Under-represented Groups in
Surveying
Ms. Gabriele Dasse, Kleinfeld 22a, D-21149 Hamburg,
Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
fax:
+ 49 40 2375 5965, tel.: + 49 40 2375 5250,
web site: http://www.ddl.org/figtree/TF%20Underrep/index.html
3/99, month of issue: September
© Copyright 1999 Gabriele Dasse.
Permission is
granted to photocopy in limited quantity for educational
purposes.
Other requests
to photocopy or otherwise reproduce material in this newsletter should be
addressed to the Editor.
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