5. How to integrate gender analysis and planning in ToC thinking?

Additional tags: Gender analysis , Case , Examples

 

A recent DAC Note evaluating 20 years’ experience of promoting and mainstreaming gender equality concludes on the basis of twenty six thematic gender evaluations that gender is not mainstreamed in the majority of bilateral and multilateral development organisations. This picture will not be very different for the majority of civil society organisations, in the North and the South. The integration of women’s rights and gender equality perspectives into the mainstream of all policies, programmes and resource allocations of organisations demands a significant cultural change. Achieving such a change needs concerted and consistent action.

Gender inequality is the outcome of a complex web of forces, socially, culturally and historically entrenched in societies and relationships and cannot be changed by isolated interventions. Gender mainstreaming must aim for achieving political change and redistribution of power and resources. ToC thinking might be a helpful framework to include gender analysis and gender equality objectives in programme design in a more consistent way and from the very start of an intervention. In all stages of the process, such as the formulation of the desired change (for whom?), the actor and power analysis, the articulation of assumptions and the strategic thinking, gender (in)equality should be a core component of and lens for questioning and reflection.   

Here we share three examples on how ToC thinking has been applied in programmes with a clear gender perspective. We hope these will be sources of inspiration.

Case 1: UNIFEM ToC and Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB)

This case shows an example how UNIFEM seeks to contribute to building clarity on its theory of change of GRB work and identifying the implications for this theory of change in relation to programme design, implementation and results monitoring. The ToC outlines the logic behind the GRB work as an approach for addressing gaps in implementation of gender equality commitments on the part of national governments.

Case 2: Project Superwomen

The case of Superwomen is presented  on the site of ActKnowledge: (Here). Interested readers can register free of cost at this site to read material like the Project Superwomen case, which is a programme that started as a collaboration between organisations to help female abuse survivors to create long-term, livable wage employment opportunities for women who had been victims of domestic violence.

Case 3: Biogas

This Gender Mainstreaming Guide on biogas and gender has been developed by ENERGIA, the International network on Gender and Sustainable Energy. It gives an example how to design a strategy on gender equity and social inclusion for a biogas programme.

Other documents related to gender mainstreaming

In this paper by Levy it is proposed that the conditions under which gender can be institutionalised, are represented by at least thirteen elements. Each element represents a site of power. Gender relations and their intersection with other social relations, are located at a variety of different "sites of power" in any particular institutional context and its organisational landscape. A ToC addressing gender changes can be inspired on these different "sites of power".

Srilatha Batliwala from AWID (Association for Women's Rights in Development) is focussing on building a stronger M&E practice as a way to reach gender changes. This paper argues that social change like gender change is unpredictable and the pathways to it are constantly shifting because every social change intervention – especially on behalf of women – is an uneven contest between under-resourced change activists and powerfully entrenched interests. If we accept these realities, we know that the assumptions behind most M&E approaches are not based on solid fact but intelligent guesswork. She argues that the best we can do is to develop M&E systems collaboratively, with the best knowledge and experience we can bring to bear, and with clarity about expectations. As a joint learning experiment, M&E systems can actually generate some very convincing results and lasting learning for all.