Active Citizenship and Gendered Social Entitlements (ACGEN) is a regional action-research project of CRTD.A with support from IDRC. Using Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine as case studies, the research explores the relationship between the state, NGOs and active citizens in bridging the gender gap in health, education and welfare.

The 2002 Arab Human Development Report identified the lack of women’s empowerment as one of three major deficits in the Arab region. Since then the region has seen the launch of numerous initiatives by NGOs, governments, donors and their partners to address this deficit. It is in this context that CRTD.A has taken the initiative to launch its programs that targeted increasing women’s political participation, citizenship rights, and access to social entitlements.

However, citizenship is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a means to social, political and economic participation in society and implies a reciprocal relationship between citizen and state. It is as active citizens that individual women and men are empowered to claim their basic rights and entitlements: not only the right to vote or engage in political decision making, but the right to work and to earn a decent livelihood, the right to affordable healthcare and education for themselves and their families, and the right to social welfare benefits. Active citizenship is a means to expanding human opportunity and achieving social justice and gender equality; it denotes equality between citizens, and promotes collective action as a means of securing that equality.

It is in the context of gender relations that active citizenship and entitlements in the Mashreq and Maghreb region are particularly meaningful. The exercise of rights and access to social entitlements are highly gendered and often hampered by social practices, traditions, dominant cultures, and institutionalized discrimination against women. Social security and welfare programs are often gender blind and based on an unrealistic model in which women are legally defined as dependents supported by male breadwinners. Seemingly inexpensive schools fees can make primary education prohibitive for poor and low-income families, pressuring families to choose between schooling boys or girls. Meanwhile, women at the community level are often excluded from the decision-making processes that determine what services are provided, where and how. These are but a few examples of the less obvious but very real ways that gender blind social policies can negatively impact women.

What roles should be played by civil society, the state, NGOs in realizing equal access to social entitlements is now the subject of avid debate. This is relevant to broader discussions of good governance and pressure in and outside the region to give civil society a greater voice. In some countries in the Mashreq and Maghreb, NGOs play a vital role in providing health, education and social welfare services, and advocate alongside women’s national machineries on a range of vital issues such as political participation. This includes a wide range of nongovernmental and civil society organizations. Their services fill a gap left by states which, because of infrastructural, economic and other weaknesses, provide insufficient services or even none at all. In other countries, there is a growing push to involve civil society and NGOs in service provision and development efforts. Previous work, however, suggests that in doing so, NGOs may be further weakening the idea of public goods and services. Moreover, NGO services and activities may discourage rather than empower citizens to assume their rights and responsibilities in claiming entitlements.