About Us

Atty. Arlyn R. Retardo

Director

“Pursuant to Republic Act (RA) 9710, otherwise known as the Magna Carta of Women, Chapter II Section 4H, Gender and Development focuses on the development perspective and process that are participatory and empowering, equitable, sustainable, free from violence, respectful of human rights, supportive of self-determination and actualization of human potentials. It seeks to achieve gender equality as a fundamental value that should be reflected in development choices; seeks to transform society’s social, economic, and political structures and questions the validity of the gender roles they ascribed to women and men; contends that women are active agents of development and not just passive recipients of development assistance; and stresses the need of women to organize themselves and participate in political processes to strengthen their legal rights.” Therefore, “All departments, including their attached agencies, offices, bureaus, state universities and colleges, government-owned and controlled corporations, local government units, and other government instrumentalities shall adopt gender mainstreaming as a strategy to promote women’s human rights and eliminate gender discrimination in their systems, structures, policies, programs, processes, and procedures…”

MarSU’s Gender and Development Unit’s major functions are the following:

  1. Lead in mainstreaming gender perspectives in institutional policies, plans, programs.
  2. Assist in the formulation of new policies such as the GAD Colde in advancing women’s status.
  3. Lead in setting up appropriate systems and mechanisms to ensure the generation, processing, review, and updating of sex-disaggregated data or GAD Database to serve as basis in performance-based gender responsive planning.
  4. Coordinate efforts of different offices, units of the University, and advocate for the integration of GAD perspectives in all their systems and processes.
  5. Spearhead the preparation of the University’s annual performance-based GAD Plans, Programs ad Budget in response to gender issues of constituents and clients.
  6. Lead in monitoring the effective implementation of GAD related policies and the annual GAD Plans, Programs & Budgets.
  7. Lead the preparation and consolidation of the annual agency GAD Accomplishment Report and other GAD Reports that may be required.
  8. Strengthen the external link with other agencies or organizations working on women’s rights and other gender and development to harmonized and synchronize GAD efforts at various levels of governance.
  9. Promote and actively pursue the participation of women and gender advocates, their civil society groups and private organizations in the various stages of the development planning cycle, giving special attention to the marginalized sector.
  10. Ensure that all personnel of the University including the finance officers are capacitated on GAD.