CONTRIBUTION

Berkshire Conference on the History of Women CALL FOR PAPERS

The 12th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, "Local Knowledge Global Knowledge," will be held June 6-9, 2002 at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut, USA. The Program Committee welcomes proposals that explore the relationship between local knowledge, global knowledge, the history of women, and the emergence of notions of gender across time and culture. How have people reconfigured their ideas and representations to take account of expanding or contracting worlds, changing economic conditions, and new demands for labor? What are the specific challenges to historians of women posed by indigeneity, nationalism, imperialism and ethnicity? What is the relation between what we can know about women in any local situation and what we can know about women broadly and comparatively? The Committee particularly encourages submissions in earlier periods, those which address sources and methodology, and panels that break down the divide between "the west" (North America and Western Europe) and other regions of the world. Funding for travel costs will be available for some international panelists. 

Please submit three (3) copies of the full proposal, postmarked by December 15, 2000 to one of the addresses listed below. Each proposal must include a standard cover sheet (which can be printed off from our website), listing panel title or roundtable theme and full contact information (address, phone, fax and e-mail) for panel organizer and all participants. It must also include a title and one-page abstract for each paper or presentation; a one-page curriculum vitae/resume for each participant (including the chair and comment); and a self-addressed, stamped postcard. For further information please visit our website at http://www.berksconference.org

The GTZ Pilot Programme Gender 
Dr. Stefani KlosPilot Programme Gender

The Pilot Programme Gender (PPG) is a supraregional sectoral project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)- German Technical Cooperation. Locatde in Eschborn, Germany, it carries out its commission on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The programme aims at identifying promising ways of mainstreaming the gender perspective within technical cooperation (TC). Its findings are then to be developed into application-oriented approaches which can be taken up and replicated. The assignment is embedded in the BMZ's development-policy directives on the promotion of women in development and of equal participation by women and men in the development process.

In order to achieve a broad and sustainable integration of the gender approach in the German TC, the PPG operates both on sectoral and on regional levels. Besides systematically gathering relevant experiences on the topic and developing concepts and instruments, the PPG supports pilot activities to mainstream them in development cooperation. A central focus is to enhance the capacity of organizations and individuals in dealing with gender-sensitive issues within their work. 
In its first phase (1993-1996), the PPG achieved the following results concerning the sustainable dissemination of the gender approach:

- Application-oriented concepts for a systematic integration of the gender approach were developed for specific sectors of the German TC. These have been published and can be applied as practical aids by interested partners and relevant projects.
- Strategic instruments for development and corporate policy were developed with technical divisions and selected projects of the GTZ.
- Staff within and outside GTZ (with special focus on local experts in the partner countries) were qualified to implement the gender approach.
The experiences and findings drawn from the first phase have provided the conceptual background for the activities of the ongoing second phase (1996-2000). Systematic efforts of different actors within the TC and development cooperation are supported on various levels such as, e.g., through co-financing and/or advisory services in implementing the gender approach in pilot countries in Africa (South Africa, Zambia), Maghreb (Morocco), Asia (Mongolia) and Latin America (Peru). Together with cooperating institutions, topics such as macroeconomics, economic and employment promotion, regional rural development and natural resource management/ biodiversity are contemplated from a gender perspective. Our advisory services are both demand-driven and process-oriented. In this way, and due to the fact that our paramount guiding principles are the development priorities of the cooperating countries and their national policies on gender/ women - we are able to tailor concepts for each country together with our partners. Beneficiaries and partners of the PPG include local NGOs and experts, TC projects and counterpart institutions as well as the BMZ.

The aim of the PPG is to contribute to raising the efficiency and effectiveness of projects and programmes as well as to strengthen national policies on gender/ women. The experiences gained in this process will be evaluated and made available to interested organizations.

For further information please feel free to contact us at the following address: 
GTZ, P.O. Box 5180, 65726 
Eschborn, Germany. 
Phone: +(496196) 79-1721, -1612, -1614 
Fax: +(496196) 79-73 32 
E-mail: marion.thompson@gtz.de
http://www.gtz.de/gender_project
 

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