60 (PNG), adopted in July 2009 and operationalized through a Three-Year Operational Action Plan (PAO) 2011-2013, adopted in December 2010 under the institutional leadership of the Ministry of Women’s Promotion and Gender. According to PNG: « gender must be analysed in terms of disparities and inequalities between men and women by examining the various social categories for the purpose of greater social justice and equitable development». In the same vein, the Government developed strategies for the promotion of greater social justice. This specifically entails the constitutionalization of gender, application of a quota system in legislative and municipal elections and the law on land and agrarian reforms and, lastly, the holding of a biennial national forum of women since 2008. The national forum of women held in Ouagadougou in September 2012 reaffirmed the need to build the capacity of women through training, promotion of female entrepreneurship, employment creation and facilitation of access to technologies. To address these challenges, the need to combine the efforts of Government and those of its partners to mobilize CFAF 25 billion by 2013 was affirmed. However, major challenges remain as the Minister of Women and Gender indicated as follows: “We must now take concrete action and know which sector we must focus on, attend to the economic empowerment of women and their access to credit and public services, support them technologically, and endeavour to train those who were elected to enable them defend the rights of women and qualitatively represent them”. Indeed, Law 010-2009/AN/ of April 16 2009 setting quotas was tested at the combined elections of 2 December 2012 but it did not yield the expected results. This law, which should contribute to increasing the number of women elected to decision-making bodies through elections, did not receive the necessary technical, financial and material support. In the course of 2012 the ministry formulated the sectoral gender policy for ministries and a manual on gender mainstreaming in development policies, programmes and projects.

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