Gender
The way men and women perceive themselves and each other is determined by social values and norms, which often translate in hard-to-modify stereotypes.
Institutions and organisations
Institutions such as churches, schools and businesses represent sets of norms, values, rules, habits, customs and routines. Organisations are the ‘units’ where these sets are reproduced and changed.
Women overlooked in training and research?
An example: women in Africa have a strong presence in subsistence agriculture, while the men are more involved in agricultural commodity production. However, women’s economic role and knowledge of agriculture is often seriously undervalued. Post-secondary institutions are supposed to provide a scientific and knowledge support system to help develop the agriculture sector.
But what is on their training and research agendas? To what extent do they address the needs of female subsistence farmers and build on their specific knowledge? How much of the research budget is spent on subsistence agriculture and how much on commodity production?
And are women targeted for commodity production? What is the impact of such a scientific and knowledge support system on the development of these sub-sectors and, thus, on the opportunities of men and women to improve their livelihood?
The role of post-secondary education
Post-secondary institutions, universities in particular, produce the future leaders of governmental, non-governmental and private sector organisations. If they ignore the different roles of men and women in society in their organisation and in their training and research, how will they be able to address these issues in their future occupations?
Safe learning environments
Another major issue is the growing awareness that violence against women is a problem that afflicts higher education. Organisational gender strategies need to recognise this problem and formulate an answer to make sure that the safety of women is guaranteed in higher education.
Introducing gender awareness in Higher Education
New, gender-sensitive practices in post-secondary institutions can offer students and graduates a new reference model. Thus, Higher Education Institutions can be considered as key actors in a process of change.
Capacity development programmes, such as NFP and NICHE, that are aimed at post-secondary institutions offer an excellent opportunity to include a gender focus. By implementing gender-sensitive practices, they can contribute to more equitable societies.
Lessons learned from NPT and NFP
If we ask ourselves if Nuffic's capacity building programmes NFP and NPT have contributed to reducing the gender gap, the answer, unfortunately, has to be negative.
Experience with NPT shows (see the 
gender review(669.5 kB)) that female staff hardly benefit from NPT projects. Many projects fail to create training opportunities and offer management positions for women.
According to Nuffic’s gender policy, increasing the gender gap is unacceptable and therefore providers need to come up with innovative strategies to increase the participation of women in training and in project management. It is paramount that the NICHE programme effectively contributes to a narrowing of the gender gap.
Geographical gap
Although globally the Netherlands Fellowship Programmes do reach the 50/50 gender target, there remains a clear geographical gender gap. This is particularly the case in Africa and in the Middle East, where the programme is still unbalanced in terms of gender.
Significant female higher education is essential to enhance their participation in decision-making processes at the national level. This is a prerequisite for sustainable development. All stakeholders have to make more efforts to ensure that the opportunities of such programmes effectively help reduce the gap.
Gender seminar
On 17 June 2010, 55 people came together to share their experiences with gender in NPT and NICHE capacity development programmes. Nuffic organised the seminar to encourage implementers to better address gender issues and to offer a forum for joint learning and networking.
Download the report, presentations and recommendations (ZIP file)(790.9 kB)
More information
Read more about Nuffic's identification of obstacles in mainstreaming gender
Download the report of the NPT/NFP gender review (669.5 kB)
Download the NFP and NICHE gender strategy document(70.2 kB)