Women development and gender mainstreaming in cooperatives is one of the priority areas of ICA. We are very much concerned about low and negligible participation of women at all levels of cooperatives in the region i.e. 30% at membership and 8% at leadership and decision making. This is not a comfortable situation given the fact that 60-70 % of farming and food production work is done by women.

Therefore, ICA AP is implementing a number of capacity building programme for the member cooperatives for gender mainstreaming and enhancing number and quality of women participation. Towards this endeavour, a skill development programme -“Management Capacity Building of Women for Co-operative Development” is being conducted regularly.

This year the programme was organized for the cooperative movement of Malaysia and held in Kuala Lumpur from 28 June to 3 July, 2009.

This programme aimed at assisting the cooperative movement of Malaysia to review the status of gender integration and women’s participation, constraints and possible solution to enhance the quantitative and qualitative participation of women.

The methodology involved presentation of status paper by ANGKASA and discussion on various aspects facilitated by resource persons. The discussion led to creating a road map followed by education and training on various skills crucial for quality participation in cooperative business and management. Besides training on business issues, a session was also held on social and developmental issue of HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention.
The following topics were addressed during the programme:
• Effective and gender-responsive leadership
• Entrepreneurship development
• Various aspects of management of a co-operative i.e. product development, member services, accounts, balance sheet, book keeping etc.
• Coping with challenges and Personal Development
• HIV/AIDS Awareness