Subverting the women's fund

Help the mother, and you help her whole family. Who can argue with that? Why then has the 7.7-billion-baht Women's Fund got the thumbs-down from many women's rights groups and legal experts? The answer lies in their common concern regarding abuse for political gain. This is a real concern.

During her election campaign, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said she would allot each province a 100-million-baht women's fund. She announced this policy at the National Council of Women of Thailand, where her elder sister was once president and still enjoys wide influence. The message was not missed _ that if she won the election, the Women's Council and its nationwide members would play an important role in the fund's management.

Right from the start, rights-based women's groups have been calling for Ms Yingluck to allow public participation in the management of women's funds _ to no avail. In short, they wanted transparency. They wanted to know who would manage the fund and how to ensure that the money reaches women with real needs, instead of being concentrated among those in the political network of Pheu Thai Party.

They also wanted the fund to focus more on empowerment instead of sticking to the belief that money is the cure-all. For it has been proven that the focus on income-generating for women's development, which has been embraced by successive governments, has failed to ease the deeply-rooted structural problems which keep women down.

Despite their calls, they learned about the fund's details only after the PM's Office had published them as a ministerial regulation in the Royal Gazette on Feb 17, one day before the fund was launched with much fanfare at Government House.

Many of the concerns of these women's rights groups have been proven right. To start with, the administrative structure of the fund is closely linked to the state's top-down administration. This allows easy intervention by political parties currently in power.

Although the women's fund committee in each province must be elected, those eligible to vote and apply for financial support come from a very narrow base. According to the fund's requirements, if you fail to apply for fund membership within a set deadline, you cannot vote or apply for any financial support.

Why operate a fund with such a limited base of applicants?

The Legal Reform Committee chaired by prominent law scholar Kanit Na Nakorn is asking the same question.

The principle of fund allocation must be based on equal access for all. "Why create a loophole which benefits only certain groups of women who have registered with the fund?" asked the committee in a letter of policy recommendation to the prime minister this week.

The Legal Reform Committee has also expressed disapproval with the government's move to place the fund's management under ministerial rules and regulations without public consultation.

The sum of 7.7 billion baht is a huge amount of taxpayers' money. It will also put the country under more public debt. Creating a special bill to manage the fund with approval from parliament should have been the way to go.

The committee also describes the PM's handling of the women's fund as lacking in transparency and public participation. "The fund should promote women's opportunities and empower them to attain gender justice. It should not be a fund to respond to political parties' voting bases," it adds.

How to fix these flaws, then?

While the women's fund focuses on low-interest loans and financial support for women's projects that are proposed, the country badly needs a more sustainable policy mechanism to address gender inequality and disparity at the structural level.

This is what the draft bill on gender equality promotion aims to do. The draft has been put on the backburner for far too long. Speed it up, urges the Legal Reform Committee.

This advice should be heeded. If not, Ms Yingluck risks being long remembered as the woman who wrongly used women's causes to serve her Pheu Thai Party's political gains.

Sanitsuda Ekachai is Assistant Editor, Bangkok Post.

Share your thoughts

Discussion 1 : 24/02/2012 at 11:32 AM
@med142. 'people talk about transparency etc why? because they want a slice of the action.' Err, no it is because transparency means it is possible to see where all the money goes and thus avoid it being sliced off.
Discussion 2 : 23/02/2012 at 10:04 PM
There is nothing subversive about this at all, There are protocols in place to apply for such funds.These funds can not just be given to anyone, they need to register and apply for them. Nothing wrong in that at all. How many would actually know about these funds and how to get access to them? This is where communication comes to the fore. But we all know that some will line there pockets also. How is Thailand going to get rid of all this corruption?
Discussion 3 : 23/02/2012 at 05:47 PM
Dis #3 and #6 – Regardless of the difficulty of the job, it is still the opposition’s job to provide checks and balances. Of course we know politicians will line their pockets or show favoritism if they can, not naivety here. But do you really think any other organization created to oversee the fund would be better? Maybe the government should scrap the plan because it can’t be managed? Or should the program be supported by all, to help better the lives of the under privileged? It really is a shame that all sides can’t work together for the good of the average citizen!
Discussion 4 : 23/02/2012 at 02:24 PM
Last month, or in December, not sure, one of my best friends was approached, asked if she would be interested in being a consultant for this project in her province. She personally believes that at least half of the budget will end-up in the pockets of those who need it least - executives.
Discussion 5 : 23/02/2012 at 01:10 PM
50 % of the voters are women. So make it clear to Yingluck at the next election,that she can fool you only once.
Discussion 6 : 23/02/2012 at 11:31 AM
Make a lofty promise to help your voter base. Get funds from the budget .Finally .... It sounds like the flood plan .No follow through or accountability .Do you think the most desperate people get out and vote and registered house holds ?
Discussion 7 : 23/02/2012 at 11:18 AM
The author here says help the mother help the family. Well yes i agree, then educate the mother. Why are most just subservant to the male? Just look at the way music industry,media portray woman and teenage girls as. Correct this first then maybe, just maybe things will start to get better. people talk about transparency etc why? because they want a slice of the action. It will never change, why even have womans rights groups here. When you see how they are portrade here.
Discussion 8 : 23/02/2012 at 09:53 AM
ggh- discussion 1... Some of your suggestions have merit albe they somewhat naive ... You can bet your sweet Nelly that bureaucrats and politicians will see this as a golden opporunity to plunder and rort the system at the expense of the less fortunate ... WHO FOOLISHLY VOTED FOR THEM.
Discussion 9 : 23/02/2012 at 09:38 AM
I think the headline '.....why has it failed...' is very misleading & premature. Afterall the fund will only be officially launch on 8 March and no work has been done yet. However I can accept that the devil is in the details and there are not much for now. Still it is tax payer money and should be spend for the purpose it is intended for and not for political reasons. All past attempts including the village funds have failed and we want this latest attempt to succeed to better the lives of women who form half the population. We should support this but monitor its progress and then we can judge.
Discussion 10 : 23/02/2012 at 09:31 AM
This should send a clear message to all Thais and not only to women. Bureaucrats and politicians deem GREED more important than the NEED of poverty stricken women and because graft and corruption is now endemic and an integral part of the 'Thai way' of doing things - IT AIN'T GOING TO CHANGE.
Discussion 11 : 23/02/2012 at 09:26 AM
D1@ggh - but one of the issues raised by the Legal Reform Committee is that because this is done by Ministerial regulation Parliament is by passed and therefore it is made much harder for the Opposition to do its job as you suggest
Discussion 12 : 23/02/2012 at 08:35 AM
I think the women’s fund does exactly what it was supposed to do. Before the election Yingluck could use it for her marketing and likely it helped her to get some votes. Now she is PM and now she can make sure that only some selected women will receive the money – like friends, family, canvassers, etc. Why would she want to waste all that good money on poor woman who she does not know and who maybe didn’t even vote for her?
Discussion 13 : 23/02/2012 at 05:43 AM
What is wrong with requiring people to register for fund participation? To be able to manage this fund, I beleive it would be a requirement to know how many people would benefit. Why is it wrong to use existing chain of command to manage this fund? Would this not be more economical than to create an entirely new organizational structure to manage the fund? Yes, transparency is a must. This should be a role of the opposition to insure the transparency of the fund and to insure as many people possible benefit from the program.

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