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The Heinrich Böll Foundation (HBF) has been supporting the Gender Forum since 2000. The forum has the objective of promoting gender dialogue in Ethiopia, raise the awareness of the public and increase the visibility of the gender experts by providing them with a platform on a regular basis for experience sharing. Previously, the Gender Forum used to be organised by PANOS, with the support of HBF. Now that HBF has reopened its office in 2006, it has started to directly organize it. The recent emphasis during the Forums has been to inform and stimulate a dialogue on policy and decision making regarding gender equity and equality; and this focus serves as a basis for the publication of the “Reflections”.

Accordingly, this issue of reflections (number 15), is published based on the presentations on the Gender Forums organized by HBF Ethiopia in 2007. The forums organized in 2007 focused on the review of gender equality in Ethiopia and its policies.
In January 2007, a topic on gender equality from an empirical perspective was presented by Aster Worku. This presentation brought out the gaps in terms of addressing gender issues and provided a wider perspective of analysing gender issues from the application of the “Integral Model” of Ken Wilber. Based on the request of participants, this topic was repeated in February. It shed important light on the possibility of using various tools for analysing gender equality issues.

Following the sharing of the personal perspective on gender equality in the country, the Forum in May concentrated on issues of gender mainstreaming and the National Action Plan on Gender Equality (NAP GE). This presentation made by Tiruwork Tizazu (Ministry of Finance) and Hanna Abate (Ministry of Women Affairs) laid the ground for continuing the dialogue on what has been planned and what has been in fact implemented so far at policy level. This first presentation on NAP GE brought out all the main issues of gender equality as addressed by the national policy and macro level programs.

The NAP GE is one of the documents that is currently guiding the implementation of gender policies. The review of this planning document was found to be an important contribution to future policy making. The Gender Forum in June initiated for the first time a dialogue: NAP GE was appraised by experts from civil society, namely Zewdie Abegaz and Tesfay Solomon (Ph.D). This presentation was also repeated upon the request of the participants and provided a broad participation from policy makers, academia and development practitioners.
With a belief that the discussion of gender equality provided relevant insights, the Gender Forum organized in September brought in a global perspective. The gender equality status of Ethiopia as compared to the global context was analysed by Amdeberhan Gizaw and Meaza Ashenafi.

HBF has taken the opportunity of including the relevant parts of the NAP GE in this issue of ‘Reflections”, with the belief that a wider circulation of the National Action Plan on Gender Equality would help the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the various programs and projects being carried out in the country,

This issue of ‘Reflections’, therefore, presents the compilation of the presentations on the Gender Forum held in 2007 and the most important aspects of NAP GE. We believe that the publication of this issue will be both a helpful documentation on gender issues in the country and a contribution to the ongoing dialogue on how to put good gender policies into practice. 
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the resource persons for having researched and presented very informative papers during the Forums. We also thank all participants who have been actively attending and making valuable contributions. Since not all the presentations made during the Gender Forums in 2007 were accompanied by an elaborate paper, we published only the above.
We hope that this publication will provide readers’ knowledge and provide insights on the gender concerns that need to be addressed during policy-making.