“So who does most of the house work?” One father asked his friend. His friend replied, “Well since my wife is out of the house most of the time. I do most of them”. With a questioning look, he replied,” That’s just unnatural. Women are supposed to do the house chores”.
It is this mentality that Gender Sensitivity orientation aims to address. In its advocacy for gender sensitivity, the National Nutrition Council 7 held a Gender Sensitivity Session during the 3rd Regional Nutrition Management Conference held on September 12, 2012. The session meant to equip the Nutrition Action Officers and Nutrition Program Coordinators with gender issues to their action plans.
The talk given by the Dr. Andrea Gomez – Soluta, Assistant Professor, Department of English & Literature, College of Arts & Sciences and also the Coordinator of the Gender Studies Center of the Silliman University, focused gender sensitivity basics like sex identity, gender role and gender sensitivity. She said that sex-disaggregated data be used in the 2012 – 2016 Central Visayas Nutrition Strategic Plan, to make intervention more gender specific.
The Interagency Gender Working Group developed the gender synchronization approach in 2012. Dr. Gomez – Soluta emphasized that gender synchronization is an effective gender mainstreaming structure that ought to be everyone’s concern. // DFB
