CEDAW/C/1996/3/Add.4 English Page 9 included gender in a FAO-sponsored dairy development seminar held at Harare in 1994. 33. In 1994, the FAO Panel of Experts on Agricultural Engineering of the Agricultural Services Division devoted one full day of its three-day session to gender issues in technology development and transfer. To increase women’s participation in rural organizations, the Division on Women and People’s Participation in Development financed a workshop on the role of women in farmer self-help organizations in West Africa and with the International Cooperative Alliance’s West Africa Regional Office, a study on the role of women in rice production/marketing cooperatives in Bolivia, and a study on the role of women in rural trade unions in Latin America. C. Gender-responsive policy support and advice to member countries 34. Gender-responsive policy support and advice cover a wide range of activities including improving the database for policy decisions, directly influencing policy formulation, and strengthening women in development machineries. 1. Improving statistics 35. Based on the efforts of the Division on Women and People’s Participation in Development and the Statistics Division in 1991-1992, and on the results of the Statistics Division, the Subregional Office for Southern/East Africa and the Regional Office for the Near East case-studies completed in 1993 on disaggregating agricultural census data by gender in seven Near Eastern countries, the Statistics Division is preparing a manual to be released during the next biennium entitled "Programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000". The manual’s supplemental guidelines are intended to improve gender disaggregated data on human resources through agricultural censuses. At the Asia and Pacific Commission for Agricultural Statistics’ Regional Meeting at Manila in 1994, the Statistics Division staff shared the information they have gained through presentation of a paper on statistics on women obtained through national agricultural censuses and surveys. 36. The Statistics Division also shared its methodological findings on gender and time use at the fifteenth reunion of the International Association for Time Use Research, as well as at the Time Use Project Meeting of INSTRAW. 37. At the regional level, with the assistance of the Division on Women and People’s Participation in Development, the Regional Office for Europe initiated a two-year project to furnish gender-responsive agricultural databases and country profiles for policy and programme formulators in the Commonwealth of Independent States countries. The Subregional Office for Southern/East Africa has also embarked on a programme to compile statistical databases on women’s work and working conditions in agriculture for all African countries, for use by national policy makers and planners. The Subregional Office for Southern/East Africa is also collaborating with the national statistical departments of Togo and Benin to improve existing agricultural statistical data collection systems /...