Written by Dr. Mary Ruby Palma, Executive Director, Quezon City Gender and Development Resource and Coordinating Office; Founding President, SENTRO ng Manggagawang Pilipina, and Convenor, Gender Resource Network.

Originally published in Gender-Responsive Governance at Work: LGU experiences in Using the GAD Budget. A prequel to this article was published in the Review of Women's Studies Journal, Special Issue on Gender and Governance, Vol.XII, Nos. 1&2, Jan-Dec 2002, also by the same author entitled " Engendering Quezon City ".

This case not only documents the Quezon City government's efforts towards gender-responsive governance but also presents lessons and insights about gender mainstreaming that GAD stakeholders could immensely benefit from. Further, Quezon City's experiences in gender mainstreaming underscore the importance of a coordinated and holistic GAD approach, a principle that all stakeholders say they subscribe to, but not all of them are able to effectively implement.

Overview

The Quezon City boasts of many "firsts" in the area of gender and development. It is the first city in Metropolitan Manila to pass a City GAD ordinance allocating for a gender budget; to create a Gender and Development Resource and Coordinating Office (GADRCO); to form a City Gender and Development Council; and, as part of its Gender Empowerment and Mainstreaming (GEM) Program, to enact a citywide Gender and Development (GAD) Code. The city is also the first in MM to institutionalize a localized GAD Focal Point System for the barangays and for the departments/units under the Mayor's Office, and to initiate the Most Gender-Sensitive Film Award in local cinema through the annual Metro Manila Film Festival. Finally, it is the first local government unit in the National Capital Region to produce a citywide GAD tabloid. The tabloid, titled We Connect, to which writers from the city departments, NGOs, media and academe contribute, gets funding from the city government.

Underlying these achievements is the Quezon City government's sustained commitment to gender-responsive governance, a commitment that goes a long way back in the city's history.

The initial years: Forming alliances for a unified GAD vision for Quezon City

Moves to address the specific needs of women started when then Vice Mayor Charito Planas established the first women's desk in the city police force in the mid ‘90s. Later, Congressional Representative for Women Justice Leonor Ines Luciano and Ms. Mary Ruby Palma, SENTRO's founding president, held coordination meetings with women leaders in the city and negotiated with the city government for the establishment of a GAD mechanism and the passage of a GAD ordinance, which were envisioned to move the city towards gender equality and empowerment.

In 1997, then Mayor Mel Mathay, Justice Luciano, and SENTRO entered into a partnership commitment to carry out GAD programs and activities in Quezon City. PROGAD, acronym for gender and development program was born.SENTRO provided the womb for PROGAD's birth (such that it became known as SENTRO's PROGAD) and committed to manage the program for five years to start off GAD activities in the city. During these five years, SENTRO and the TWG of PROGAD would represent and carry out the city's GAD agreement with the NGOs. It was envisioned that after five years, the city would have passed a GAD ordinance that provides for a GAD budget, a city GAD Council, and a GAD office under the Mayor's office. It was also envisioned that upon the establishment of the GAD office, PROGAD will be institutionalized.

Initially, there was no formally allocated budget for PROGAD; the Mayor's office funded the activities related to training and capacity development of employees. It was only in October 1999, with the passage of Ordinance No. 821 (sponsored by then Councilor Nanette Daza), that the program was provided subsidies. However, only a portion of the fund was released, and this was used mainly for operating expenses, maintenance, and training. Thus, from 1997 to mid-2002, SENTRO was running the program practically on voluntary basis. To support its work, it created a Technical Working Group (TWG) composed of gender and human rights activists residing in the city and who became PROGAD's comadronas (midwives) and godparents. The TWG members supported SENTRO's work as volunteer trainors, advocates, activists, etc.

SENTRO also looked into an office space where the PROGAD could be based. With the support of a few city officials, it found, renovated, and refurbished a former warehouse and used it as its office. Despite its small physical space, PROGAD struggled to be visible and have its presence felt by city hall. The TWG and other women leaders started a donor-driven GAD knowledge center, for use by student researchers and the councilors' staff members. Soon, abused women and men were knocking at its door, seeking free orientation and referrals for their cases. PROGAD worked with network NGOs, such as the Women's Legal Bureau and Women's Crisis Center. College and graduate students from the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Ateneo de Manila University linked with PROGAD in community immersion activities.

The campaign for the GAD ordinance

In 1999, the PROGAD-TWG, with a small grant from the Institute for Popular Democracy, undertook a study of ordinances related to gender concerns. This signaled the beginning of PROGAD's lobby for the passage of a GAD ordinance. The campaign with the city council and finance officials took every conceivable form. The TWG called for a series of orientations on GAD. It convened a meeting with then Vice-Mayor Connie Angeles on the need to have a GAD ordinance, hoping to get her as its co-sponsor. However, only her representative and three other councilors attended the meeting. Undaunted by this poor showing, the TWG took another tack: a "person-to-person" lobbying between council sessions, spot visits to the councilors' offices, and endless reproduction and distribution of materials, mostly GAD mandates and statistics on various issues in aid of legislation. The number of women and men allies in the city's executive and legislative departments slowly increased.

Lesson 2: Pass the GAD ordinance now, and perfect it later – a lesson in guerrilla tactics from the veteran councilors.

During the 2001 elections, Justice Luciano, SENTRO, the PROGAD-TWG and POs actively campaigned and mobilized community women to vote intelligently for a leader who would support the GAD vision for the city. They organized political education caucuses and endorsed their candidate, Feliciano Belmonte, Jr., who showed a remarkable management record in the Government Service Insurance System, the Manila Hotel, and the Philippine Airlines. He actively supported the GAD budget provision in the General Appropriations Act when he was in Congress. (Mayor Belmonte would later on bail out Quezon City from being a debt-ridden city to being the richest in the country).

Lesson 3: The pursuit of GAD objectives is political and the GAD and/ or women's agenda has to be included in electoral pol itics. Advocates have to cast their lots with the most likely winning candidate who has the integrity and credibility to implement the GAD ordinance.

The election of Mayor Belmonte augured a more resonant GAD movement in Quezon City. Recognizing the importance of equality and empowerment in his own vision of a quality community, Mayor Belmonte formally established the Gender and Development Resource and Coordination Office (GADRCO) on May 22, 2002 and provided a modest budget for a small staff and operations. GADRCO effectively dissolved PROGAD. However, the appointment of the SENTRO head as the first Executive Director of GADRCO, and SENTRO's membership in the GAD Council, ensured the continuity of the program. GADRCO serves as the focal point for GAD related activities, doing training and advocacy work and serving as technical and administrative support to the GAD Council. Being under the Office of the Mayor provided GADRCO the formal identity and linkages needed to mobilize human and financial resources and source external support for its programs.

Through EO No. 16, Mayor Belmonte activated the GAD Council as a planning and coordinating body. It is composed of representatives from the City Hall's major departments; and NGO representatives, which the EO provides should comprise 30% of the members. SENTRO is one of these NGOs, and the other six NGOs were elected from among accredited women's organizations or NGOs/POs with gender/women programs. Presently, amendments are being worked out to add several departments and other NGOs to the Council to increase its membership. In the first month of Mayor Belmonte's term, GADRCO held a dialogue (NIIGAN) between him and women NGO leaders, where he pledged his support to the GAD agenda. Later, with the support of the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance and the United Nations Development Program, a pilot training on gender and local governance was conducted for barangay officials to impart the Mayor's GAD policy and elicit their cooperation in his program.

By mid-2002, the GADRCO went full steam. Because its Executive Director sits in the regular executive committee meetings, there is an assured venue for discussing the Council's programs and concerns with city officials. This encouraged the Council to work hard to make Quezon City known for its gender and development efforts. In March 2003, the NCRFW awarded the Mayor a Plaque of Appreciation for the city's pioneering GAD initiatives, and SENTRO for its initiating efforts.

Lesson 4: Government support for NGO-LGU advocates, in terms of specific "push" for GAD PPAs and budget for local governments, is very weak. This weakness is also seen in the absence of feedback and comparative reporting mechanisms, as well as the lack of incentive/ recognition measures for GAD. But it is always prudent to keep national government agencies/officials, as well as interested foreign groups/ funders, aware of what NGOs/POs and local officials are doing, to give credit where it is due and to acknowledge supporters and implementers.

Some problems and how we addressed them

As a pioneer city in gender mainstreaming in Metro Manila, Quezon City did not have the benefit of learning from the experiences of cities in similar highly urbanized areas. Moreover, it did not receive any support from national agencies during the initial years of its GAD operations. More specifically, the GADRCO has had to contend with the following realities confronting gender work:

• weak monitoring and reporting on GAD compliance; limited sharing of GAD experiences and achievements among local governments;


• very little, if any, encouragement and support for advocates and LGUs that have struggled in their GAD work, and lack of incentive or recognition schemes for their innovations and outstanding accomplishments in gender mainstreaming;


• very little attempt to translate GAD materials and/or train users on the application of GAD tools in local planning and budgeting, and integrating these in existing planning and budgeting system in city/departments/barangays;


• limited documentation and sharing of good and bad experiences on GAD in local governance; limited dissemination and verification of reports on LGU GAD plans and budgets collected by NCRFW and DILG as to provide good examples to others; and


• lack of parallel local-level guidelines on the annual GAD budget issued; local guidelines merely mention GAD-related plans, budgets and PPAs with the words "encouraged" or "may" which are not necessarily taken as mandatory instructions.

The GADRCO and the Quezon City government thus undertook efforts to make their work and accomplishments as widely known as possible, and to play up the role of their supporters, particularly the Mayor and the other local officials. In particular, the following were undertaken:

• invited NCRFW officials to advocate for the inclusion of GAD as an agenda of the city government's ExeCom; NCRFW's endorsement provided a national "flavor" and mandate for the Mayor's GAD initiatives;

• awarded a Plaque of Appreciation to Mayor Belmonte during one Women's Month Celebration in a flag ceremony so that everybody was made aware of his contributions to GAD efforts;

• invited departments heads/officials, the GAD Council, and NGO members to talk about their GAD activities/experiences during briefings for foreign and local delegations inquiring about Quezon City's GAD; and

• forged informal partnerships with other LGUs (Quezon City also plans to initiate a league of GAD focal points and establish "sister GAD cities" with Angeles and other areas).

Working for the GAD Budget

Upon her appointment as the first head of GADRCO, the author prepared and defended before the new finance committee under Mayor Belmonte and later before the city council, the GADRCO organizational structure, contractual staff composition, and budget.

Lesson 5: Even if provisions are enshrined in national and local mandates, there are no shortcuts in accessing the GAD budget; creative strategies need to be employed.

Sharing resources with all parties in implementing GAD PPAs and reporting such investments, while quietly prospecting entry points and allies in the city government are practices that worked for Quezon City.

In 2002, GADRCO received a budget of Php1.5 million, which was allocated for contractual staff and operating expenses. The budget was slightly increased for 2003 and 2004 (see Table below). The amounts are definitely small, if reckoned against the 5% provision under the General Appropriations Act. This is because GADRCO is not expected to implement the PPAs but only to influence the gender responsiveness of the PPAs of departments and offices. However, aside from the GADRCO budget, there is still no separate line item budget for GAD in the city's budget plan. This is expected to be addressed by the passage and implementation of the GAD Code, which requires the allocation of a GAD budget for the city's various departments beginning 2005.

In the meantime, GARDCO reckons allocations for gender mainstreaming through the following:

• tapping the Mayor's Fund or the General Fund for the implementation of proposals and activities towards capacity building and awareness raising on gender issues and local governance; publication of a quarterly GAD newsletter; Women's Month Celebration; annual Gender Summit; annual QC GAD Awards in the Metro Manila Film Festival; and counterpart NGO-LGU activities on GAD;

• working with the GAD Focal Points of departments and barangays in conducting advocacy work for the allocation of budgets for gender mainstreaming, and for the inclusion of GAD planning and monitoring forms in their respective offices' budget meetings; and

• imputing, as part of the GAD funds, the cost of programs and projects that primarily target women, such as livelihood training under the Social Services and Development Department (Php 1m yearly); loans and training for livelihood ala Grameen banking under the Sikap Buhay Program involving 3,000 women (P59m); and the regular maternal and reproductive health programs of the city (P10 m).

The GADRCO also taps external sources for additional funding, such as those coming from the UNDP, UNICEF and congressional funds of Abanse Pinay and NGOs (e.g. Soroptimists of QC) as seen in the table below. GADRCO is also proposing the establishment of a GAD Foundation to supplement its resources in light of present government austerity measures.

With the approval of the GAD Code, the Mayor allocated a sum for the GAD Council to draft the IRR. Prior to the finalization of the IRR, GADRCO conducted orientation and consultations about the Code with all departments and offices, barangay officials, including the courts and jails based in the city. Abanse Pinay, through a MOA with the city, gave an initial grant of Php400,000 for the finalization and reproduction of the IRR and for the conduct of activities related to sharing information about the QC GAD with national and international groups.

Another step being undertaken is the conduct of a gender budget peer workshop this September to enable departments/offices to include GAD allocations in their 2005 budget. In the coming years, the GAD Code is expected to guide and systematize gender planning and GAD budgeting in Quezon City.

The Quezon City GAD Mainstreaming Program

Quezon City is particularly proud of two major breakthroughs: its gender mainstreaming program and the passage of the Quezon City GAD Code. The Quezon City five-year GAD mainstreaming program was conceptualized in 2002 and its budget, most of which was incorporated under the capacity-building program and new programs of GADRCO, was approved in 2003. The program hopes to institutionalize and sustain the GAD gains through the second term of the Belmonte administration. The program envisions a gendersensitive city by year 2007, achieved by building gender-responsive mechanisms in local governance. Its objectives and targets cover mainstreaming entry points in policies, programs and mechanisms, and people. Its main objectives are to:

• Integrate the GAD objectives/values of equality, equity, and empowerment at the policy level;

• Establish and institutionalize mainstreaming mechanisms inside and outside the city government; and

• Develop a gender-responsive workforce and a public which is aware of gender issues and the city's GAD efforts. This includes drumming of support from the media, NGO/PO, and other members of the private sector.

Initial results of gender mainstreaming

The Quezon City GAD Code will henceforth guide gender mainstreaming in the city's programs and projects to ensure that the Code's objectives are achieved in the long term. After two years of implementation, gender mainstreaming is showing some results, made possible by the support of the city government and the synchronized efforts of the gender advocates from the NGO/PO community, media, the academe, and other civic organizations. While it is not possible to measure the impact at these early stages, progress is seen in terms of three mainstreaming entry points:

At the policy level

• Presence of enabling policies on GAD. These policies include GAD Ordinance No.1030 of 2001, which created the GAD council, and EO 16, which reactivated this Council. Another landmark policy achievement of the GAD program is the GAD Code. The GADRCO also had some success in advocating for ordinances and resolutions that have influenced the city's other programs, such as the ones on solo parents, nondiscrimination at work on the basis of sexual orientation, and reproductive health.

• Allocation of GAD budget. GADRCO has been provided with an operating budget, and some city departments, offices and barangays have started allocating amounts for gender mainstreaming. The City Council also passed a resolution providing funds for a yearly Quezon City GAD Award for the Most Gender-Sensitive Film during the Metro Manila Film Festival, an initiative of the Mayor and the GADRCO. It was the Quezon City government's first mainstreaming outside of the locality. The first award was handed out in 2003, to Teamworks Production and their film Homecoming.

At the mechanisms and program level

• A stable and sustainable GAD mechanism. The GADRCO is in place to support the vision of a gender fair city. The GAD Council has been actively leading and supporting GAD efforts such as lobbying for gender-sensitive data collection and reporting, working for the formation of department/office GAD focal points, and networking with other NGOs with city officials, thereby increasing the consultative base of accredited women NGOs/POs.

• A GAD focal system in place. The city has a localized GAD focal point system involving 38 offices and departments and consisting of 61 focal persons. A resolution urged the Sangguniang Barangays in Quezon City to designate GAD Focal Persons and to allot a barangay GAD budget and a yearly budget for a gender capacity-building summit to facilitate mainstreaming in each barangay's planning system and services.

• Gender mainstreaming in city programs, through such activities as the following:

  • increased advocacy, by the health department, for males to undergo vasectomy;

  • conduct of gender-responsive public information and community newspaper workshops for editors/writers of departments/barangays with publications;

  • gender analysis of the DTI module on achievement motivation and values;

  • development of a city gender profile and a sex-disaggregated geographic information system; and

  • monitoring, by the PNP Women's Desks, of the incidence of crimes against women/children (said to be decreasing from 2000-2002).

People-based interventions

These consist of interventions aimed to promote greater awareness about gender concerns among the population, and include:

• workshops with 700 personnel from 31 departments and offices on GST and gender responsive governance;

• print (We Connect tabloid) and television promotional materials;

• advocacy stickers against violence for 20,000 tricycles in the city;

• seminars and GSTs for school administrators, QC parolees and pardonees; and

• mentoring programs for women NGOs/barangay officials seeking skills in local GAD applications

• inclusion of laws on youth and women, key concepts on gender and gender issues as a regular topic in the counseling sessions for public high school students

The city's gender mainstreaming program is moving forward. With the same vigor of the city government and women advocates, the effects of GAD mainstreaming are expected to be felt on broader and deeper scales in the coming years.

The Quezon City GAD Code

A recent achievement in legislative advocacy is the successful lobby for the passage of a City GAD Code and its approval on 1 April 2004. The Code is very comprehensive in scope and its formulation process is very participatory. Believing in a resource-sharing and a participatory policy, the GAD Council, chaired by the Mayor, mobilized barangay officials, NGOs/POs and the private sector through a series of district consultations – from identifying priority concerns in the city's four districts, adopting a framework, to the drafting of the City GAD Code. Representative Pat Sarenas of Abanse! Pinay provided P400,000 in grant for the cost of the consultations and reproduction.

A second round of workshops focused on the GAD Code and the IRR is being conducted for more than 400 representatives from departments/offices/courts and other sectoral organizations. Both in its formulation and later on in its implementation and monitoring, the Code can thus be regarded as a tribute to the values of community ownership and empowerment.

The Quezon City GAD Code contains a declaration of policy on gender equality, as well as provisions on the basic principles underlying the issues of gender and development and the mechanisms through which these issues may be addressed. Some of the key issues discussed are violence against women, support mechanisms to empower women, political and public sphere participation, labor and employment, health and education rights, and socioeconomic rights. Penal provisions for gender-related violations are likewise set in the Code.

Future Challenges

The Quezon City GAD experience has shown that active civil society participation/advocacy, dedicated and creative executive leadership, and support from the legislative serve are the best ingredients in mainstreaming gender in local governance.

Despite their many achievements, the GADRCO and GAD Council remain on their toes particularly at a time of changes and scarcer resources, and before a formidable team of mostly male managers particularly the Finance Committee. Then again, there is always the threat of GAD being misunderstood as "for and by women only", and of the GADRCO/GAD Council as meddling if not "usurping" regular department functions such as social services, personnel development, and health matters. Resistance and suspicion are always expected, but these can be erased with the help of capacity-building of department heads and focal points. Another misconception that has to be corrected is that GAD is a motherhood program that does not merit debate and discussion like "breakthrough" or "high-impact, cost-efficient" programs. There is also a tendency and a perception that gender need not be included in budget deliberations and defense, thereby depriving advocates the opportunity to explain GAD to the decision makers as a framework for governance.

In the first city report of the Mayor after his initial year in office, GAD accomplishments were acknowledged under "services for women". During the second report, GAD accomplishments were mentioned under "personnel capacity-building". In a recent planning conference composed of top-level executives, the GADRCO was included in the "education and services" cluster. The GADRCO and advocates have to constantly prove that GAD is encompassing as it is unifying and, if it has to belong to only one group, it should be the "governance" cluster. Budgeting for 2005 is a major challenge, requiring risk-taking and serious commitment from departments/offices. But the DILG Budget circular for LGUs only includes one item for GAD PPA, which in effect glossed over the need to allocate for a separate GAD budget line item. Another gap is the absence of a GAD budget directive for local governments similar to the Joint Memorandum Circular No. 2004-1. This circular serves as mandate and application guide for budget planners in pursuing GAD PPAs, and recommends the forms to be submitted to the DILG, DBM, and OP-NCRFW. If a parallel local-level document is available, GAD budgeting advocacies and application capacities in local governments will be facilitated.

ACRONYMS