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KABUL, Afghanistan – More than 60 gender advisors, female engagement team and provincial reconstruction team members from across Afghanistan joined together at a gender conference hosted in Kabul to share ideas and get advice on hard topics concerning gender main streaming, Aug. 23.
The conference hosted by Maj Steffie Goothedde, IJC gender advisor, and Maj Nance Wright, IJC FET program manager, is a quarterly event and allows the teams to strengthen their individual roles through the sharing of experiences.
“I want people to know gender advising and female engagement is a completely different mission,” said Goothedde. “FET is more of a tool that commanders use to accomplish their mission utilizing females to engage not only women, but men in order to gather intelligence. Gender advising is used to get the overall picture. It focuses on social differences whether it’s a male or female and it addresses how everything we do affects the people of Afghanistan.”
Gender main streaming, a tactic focusing on unifying the ideas of all men and women in order to help achieve equality and diversity, is much different than the FET mission, but utilizing conferences like these in addition to communication help the two work hand-in-hand.
During the conference the group addressed many topics from the use of Combined Information Data Network Exchange reporting to FET working with female Afghan National Security Forces but overall there was a strong emphasis on communication in order to ensure the process continues to run smoothly. “It is important that the teams are reporting after completing every mission in order to fix the challenges,” said Wright.
“It’s important that we meet to workout issues and talk about challenges in the field. That way everyone can understand what each other is doing, and we can better assist each other through the sharing of our ideas,” said Wright.
Through the open forum the advisors want to accomplish a bigger goal. “We hope that through everyone meeting, and talking about the issues together they will better understand how each of us fits together to accomplish the mission,” said Goothedde.
| Date Taken: | 08.23.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 08.27.2011 06:58 |
| Story ID: | 76043 |
| Location: | KABUL, AF |
| Web Views: | 36 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Gender Conference unites missions across Afghanistan, by MSgt Shane Cronin, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
