Challenges of the Millennium Development Goals via Gender and Development and Human Rights Policy and Programs: : The Bataan Peninsula State University Scenario / Pascual, Arlene I.

Includes bibliographical references.

The Bataan Peninsula State University, as a duty-bearer and educator, bases its human rights and its gender and development efforts from covenants, agreements and statues issued by international and national establishments. Mechanisms that abide by global community standards were put into place in BPSU through the institutionalization of the Center of Human Rights Education and the Gender and Development Focal Point System. The CHRE and GHPF consciously strives to develop effective programs, projects and plans based on a solid foundation which was sourced from a formidable set of baseline information and real-time analysis of the current setup. Data and information for the study covered reports from AY 2009-2010 until the first semester of AY 2012-2013, and from interviews and focus group discussions among students and the employees across the University campuses who were willing to participate in the undertaking. The study was able to show that the University has managed to develop a unique brand of community dynamics which, from an outsider's point of view, can be described as eclectic. Power shifts from one group to another, or from one sex/gender group to the next, depending on the nature of the undertaking, area of operation, and concern. The dynamics within the University mirrors the ranking of persons and groups along various dimensions of stratification such as gender, educational attainment, sector, and age. The University has also achieved a commendable degree of accomplishment in upholding human rights and gender equality within its campuses. However, much still needs to be done in order to lessen, if not totally rid, reported instances where human rights were neglected, and persons were discriminated, harassed or bullied. It was also revealed that inspite of doing fairly well in the foregoing areas of interest, there still remains a high tendency to perpetuate long-standing biases against one gender. Such bias is pervasive enough to encroach socio-cultural and organizational realities. This leads to the unequal distribution of prestige, power, acceptance and privilege. Individuals and groups at times are ranked into strata that share unequally in the distribution of opportunities, values and rewards. In BPUS, stratification is observed in the hierarchical arrangement and establishment of social, professional and academic categories that has evolved into specific groups how have been assigned different statuses and corresponding gender roles. Each campus possesses a unique constructed equality and inequality, with one group or one gender prevailing over the other. The manifest angles of inequality are constructed on the premises that they have been institutionalized by the campus itself, and the communities outside of the school. Inspite of the presence of a uniform set of policies and standards, the fact that variations exist among the campuses presupposes that each one will construct a human rights and gender culture that is mutually intelligible among its members, one that is based on collective experiences, goal and values in the context of the prevailing social order within their unit. In order to improve upon the current situation, further studies are recommended to be conducted by the individual units where incidents of gender insensitivity, discrimination and bias are prevalent. There include studies that would seek to answer questions on cohort survival rate; the higher incidence of discrimination, harassment and bullying among male students, and among female employees; and the higher mortality rate among male students during second semester of each academic year. Equally important Is to forge collaborative and systematic activities among offices and outside agencies to erase misconceptions about male and female genders. Furthermore, in order to establish the relationship between gender equality and human rights, another recommendation is to plot out programs, projects and activities for gender and development using rights-based approach, and ones that would adopt strategies that would touch very personal chord among the target audience.