Twenty years after the Beijing Platform on Women, the Ministry of Basic Education, MINEDUB, has also joined other ministries in the country to evaluate how gender considerations have been taken into account in its activities. Opening a two-day seminar on “Gender Implementation And Follow-up,” for senior officials in Yaounde on July 28, 2015, the Secretary General in MINEDUB, Prof. Ivo Leke Tambo, said gender is a major concern in the 21st Century.

In the Ministry of Basic Education, he pointed, gender mainstreaming is evident in policy implementation, pedagogy, management, appointment of women into senior positions, among others. He promised that participants at the seminar will draw up a strategy for strengthening gender mainstreaming in the activities of the ministry. He commended partners like the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, UNICEF and Plan Cameroon for standing by MINEDUB in implementing its gender policy.

Speaking earlier, the Focal Point for Gender and Inspector General of Education, Mrs. Mispa Itoe, listed a series of gender-related activities carried out, including the implementation of the 2011-2015 Plan on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmissible Diseases, STDs, for teachers and pupils. The campaign was carried out through radio awareness programmes. Similarly, the ministry and Plan Cameroon assisted underprivileged children in acquiring birth certificates.

As sign of how much progress MINEDUB has made in gender mainstreaming, Mispa Itoe recalled that three women were in 2012 appointed as Directors in the ministry. In strengthening the gender policy, she said the seminar will try to find out why students do well in certain subjects in a bid to ensure that the Millennium Development Goal on Education for All becomes reality in Cameroon.