Evaluating the EU Rural Development Programme

2. Evaluating the EU Rural Development Programme Professor Sally Shortall, School of Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland. s.shortall@qub.ac.uk Roisin Kelly, Researcher Knowledge Exchange Seminar Series, Parliament Buildings September 12th, 2013 Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council ES/JO1031/1, with some DARD funding, and conducted by Roisin Kelly and Sally Shortall

3. Outline of Presentation • Overview of Rural Development Programme (RDP) • Rationale for the research: gender mainstreaming the rural development programme • What we did and how we did it (methodology) • Key findings, focusing here on a few • Posing the question: what does putting ‘rural’ in front of ‘women’ tell us? • Monitoring the RDP • Local Action Groups • Moving forward

4. Overview of the RDP in Northern Ireland • 2007-2013: value approximately £540 million • Managed by our Department of Agriculture and Rural Development • Four key themes: • Improving the competitiveness of agriculture and forestry (Axis 1) • Improving the environment and countryside by supporting land management (Axis 2) • Improving the quality of life in rural areas and encouraging diversification of economic activity (Axis 3) • LEADER approach ( Axis 4)

5. The EU and Gender Mainstreaming the RDP • Both the European Commission and Parliament have expressed concern regarding the differential gender impact of the rural development programmes across Europe • Gender mainstreaming written into the Rural Development Regulation • COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 1698/2005 it states that Member States and the Commission shall promote equality between men and women...this includes the stages of design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation

6. Gender Mainstreaming the RDP in NI: the apparatus and context • Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act is the gender mainstreaming mechanism in Northern Ireland • Equality mainstreaming approach, therefore sex is one of 9 equality groups • Places Statutory Duty on the designated public bodies, including the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture • However, completion of monitoring forms by NI RDP beneficiaries is voluntary. • Strengths of Section 75, as an approach to equality mainstreaming, may be hindering gender mainstreaming in the RDP

7. Gender mainstreaming: the practice in Northern Ireland • However, there are examples of gender awareness and good practice. • In addition to gender mainstreaming, the Department funds special gender equality measures separate to the RDP (albeit short-term) • Rural childcare programme • Rural Women’s Network • Transportation initiative • Rural women’s attendance at international gender conferences

8. Why we did this research and how we did it • Follow on research funded by the ESRC ES/JO1031/1: with some additional funding from DARD: Gender mainstreaming the rural development programme • Prompted because lobby groups and government still quoting research that was twelve years old • Regional mid-term evaluation and European documents identified lack of engagement with women as a problem • 36 interviews, 25 taped. • 7 focus groups with men on farms, women on farms, women in rural areas, men in rural areas • Difficulties setting up focus groups

9. Key findings: • No evidence that the RDP discriminates against, or does not sufficiently engage with women. • DARD is exemplary in Europe in terms of its commitment to trying to ensure gender equality. These mostly happen outside the RDP. • There are inbuilt gender inequalities in how land is transferred between the generations. However this is not an issue that DARD or the RDP can address. • In our research,the main gender concern raised in focus groups by women and men on farms was isolation of men

10. Key findings: • Farm accidents, some of them quite severe, are accepted as an occupational hazard and part of the job • Accepted wisdom about the needs of rural women has become embedded in the RDP and no longer represents the reality of women’s lives in rural areas. This is true for other issues as well as women. • A ‘pre-modern’ idea of rural life prevails amongst some rural lobby groups and organisations • The baseline information about the equality impact of the current RDP is extremely poor.

11. Key findings: • The Monitoring Committee needs training and support to effectively monitor the programme. • There is scope to include members who have a knowledge of agriculture and rural development who are not beneficiaries of the programme either as an individual or the organisation they represent. • The Local Action Groups (LAGs) have worked very well. The challenge is how to maintain expertise AND introduce new blood and fresh perspectives. • The capacity of the LAGs needs some consideration.

12. Key findings: • The LAG principles of inclusion and bottom-up governance have a particularly useful purpose in a post-conflict society. • The farming and environmental axes (1 and 2) are seen to be the most effective. For the farming industry and managed directly by DARD in consultation with the industry • Sometimes tensions between the farming and rural lobbies is seen as a ‘failure’ of the programme. The tensions are endemic to the programme and cannot be resolved at the regional level. • One of the positive features for rural NI going forward are the strong urban-rural inter-linkages and the possibilities to exploit these in the new programme.

13. Women in Northern Ireland: An Overview • Change over the last 40 years: • Lifting of the marriage ban • Women’s paid employment and financial independence • Occupying more spaces; public space, economic space, political space

14. Overview • Of course it is a process of change, and barriers and obstacles persist • Gendered labour market • Fewer women in senior roles • More part-time employment • Culture matters. Variation across Europe, Nordic societies more representative than Mediterranean countries

15. Overview • In this general overview, what does putting ‘rural’ in front of ‘women’ tell us? • The question developed from our research, and the blank faces we met • Conflict between reality and rhetoric • Are we part of the problem? Set out to research a uniform group of ‘rural women’?

16. Some literature • Place, space and location matter and shape our gendered identities • But the rural – urban binary is no longer seen as helpful • We may reside in one place and work in the other • There are many more space flows between areas now – they are not hermetically sealed, culturally, socially or economically • Champion and Hugo (2004) note that many countries can no longer provide urban/ rural data because they do not gather it (because it is not a useful method of analysis)

17. Some literature • Place is not an explanatory variable • Yet putting ‘rural’ in front of ‘women’ often seems to connotate a double negative: women are disadvantaged, and rural women are more so • See European Parliament commissioned reports 2010 • Not always clear who are the binary opposite of rural women; is it rural men or is it urban women? • In the literature both are used.

18. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • Struggling with conflicting interpretations of the position of rural women. On the one hand there is a tendency to hold onto accepted wisdom about the traditional barriers to rural women, based on place (rural) that inhibit their ability to occupy various public spaces; childcare, transport, resources. On the other hand, there is recognition that women are more visible in public spaces.

19. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • One of the women’s organisation • Childcare and transportation would be the two biggest barriers...if there’s only one car in the household and you’re in a rural area that means you’re effectively stuck in that area until your car becomes available, and that’s presuming you can drive. The other thing that is a major issue is timings of meetings and things like that so, you know, if there’s a meeting from 2-4 of their Local Action Group, they maybe have to organise somebody to collect their children, look after their children, you know, there’s a lot of issues to just even getting to a two hour meeting.

20. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • This suggests that rural women are based at home full-time caring for their children and this prevents them occupying the public space of the Local Action Groups • Yet elsewhere in the same interview, it is noted that women have increased representation on Local Action Groups;

21. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • In an ideal world it would be that women have 50% representation on the governance of it... I think the Local Action Groups and the fact that that stipulation came from Europe. If that hadn’t have come from Europe we would still be...everybody would still be going ‘ah but women are just not interested in sitting on committees’, sure that’s....we were told that all the time, yet, there they are, they have it, as best...I know its not all totally perfect 50/50 but it’s pretty good and I think, you know, that’s bound to be making an impact, particularly in scoring projects and when people are saying what works, I think it’s bound to help (emphasis added).

22. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • In this last quote, it is recognised that women are well represented on the Local Action Groups (37% of LAGs are women). This is at odds with the earlier statement that childcare, transport and timing of meetings prevents women’s participation. The reality is that women are occupying public space, but assumptions about rural women are that place prevents women’s participation in public activity.

23. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • A member of one rural development organisation who sits on the Monitoring Committee and is very involved with the Local Action Groups said; • There are very few women on the Monitoring Committee, very very few. This is replicated again though the Local Action Groups. • Similarly a member of a different rural development organisation, who also sits on the Monitoring Committee said;

24. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • The monitoring committee, yeah, oh no I’ve been at most of them are there isn’t a lot of women at it, you know, and I know theyhave taken proactive steps...but the organisations that are nominated to the Monitoring Committee have a tendency to send maybe their Chief Executive...and in the majority of cases that’s a man. But apart from Karen (from the Department of Agriculture) and myself and Nora and maybe one other woman, the rest would all be men.

25. Findings: current life versus pre-modern presumptions • These quotes are very hard to interpret. The reality is that there are nineteen people on the Monitoring Committee and nine are women – 47% of the committee members are women. We asked the secretariat if women were less likely to attend Monitoring Committee meetings and they said this was not the case. Is it that we do not ‘see’ womenin a public space where they are not expected? Are normative assumptions shaping how we interpret reality?

26. Keeping rural women on the agenda • One interesting feature of the interviews is the struggle between a temporal social view of women that is at odds with current social interactions. The Mid-Term Evaluation (NISRA, 2010) stated repeatedly that The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development needs to target women in the current Rural Development Programme ‘who have historically had low representation in related activities’ (p.86). The evidence on which this claim is made is not clear

27. Keeping rural women on the agenda • Clear example of lobbying to keep women on the agenda: …for the Mid Term Evaluation, and trying to ensure that women stayed (laughs)and stayed on that report as a target group • Lobbying was not peculiar to the women’s sector

28. Keeping rural women on the agenda • One member of a rural development organisation, really struggled with the questions around gender equality; • in terms of what’s based on, I mean, I’m wondering to what extent the Mid Term Evaluation....what data they had. So just wondering.....you know....whether there was enough data to be able to make that judgement, you know around women’s participation or not.... I don’t have the figures right in my head, but I would have thought that there was an increase in terms of women’s participation on LAGs. From the previous programme

29. Keeping rural women on the agenda • I mean, it’s a difficult one to say because if you, if you don’t identify any... that there are no barriers to people’s participation (laughs) then your target, you know, if there’s nothing to prevent them from applying... you know it’s, it’s... you can set targets...

30. Keeping rural women on the agenda • But when this person was specifically asked if there were actually barriers to women’s participation in rural development, they reverted to giving the ‘expected’ answer, one that relies on normative assumptions; • There maybe are, I mean, there could be barriers certainly in terms of personal circumstance and childcare and transport and stuff like that, you know, I mean I’m not saying there’s no barriers to... that sort of... people’s thought process of participating

31. Differences between rural women’s focus groups • Rural women’s focus groups attached to the RDP repeated the traditional barriers to women’s participation in employment, LAGs and social activities • This was so even when they were successful business people • But women in the focus group not attached to the RDP did not do this • They did not see any particular issues for rural women that would not also be relevant to urban women • Did not see ‘rural’ providing any particular barriers to women

32. Monitoring the RDP • Baseline information on the RDP and equality is poor • This is not unusual across the EU – i.e. meta-analysis of mid-term evaluations • It is however an on-going problem • Makes monitoring the programme extremely difficult • Problem is Section 75 form used – voluntary • Scope to revisit how data is gathered • Scope to consider membership of the committee and training needs of the committee

33. Monitoring the RDP • (from a member of the monitoring committee) It’s not really a ‘management’ committee as such – it’s more where people come to lobby and keep particular interests on the agenda • (From another member) We need to get the Monitoring Committee to realise they are partners and not just interest groups

34. Monitoring the RDP • is it a historical issue that was there and you have lobby groups there that keep it in the public domain and without proving one way or the other whether it’s an issue or not and that’s difficult so until we find out for sure it is an issue I would say like any lobby group will keep any aspect of the programme as an issue but you won’t necessarily have the facts behind that, I mean it’s not just women, it’s disability, the environmentalist, the NGOs would be the same, any of them have their own interests within the programme and their lobbying will keep it as an interest unless something can prove that it’s not actually an issue

35. The Local Action Groups • Considerable expertise in the LAGs • Some people involved for almost 25 years • While this is positive, it also presents some challenges: accepted wisdom on the ‘problems’ of rural areas • What it means to be a rural place in Northern Ireland has changed enormously • Sometimes a pre-modern, pre-industrial view of rural is put forward • There are flows of people, goods and services between urban and rural that makes separate rural policies difficult

36. The Local Action Groups • I am waiting for a rural development programme that actually recognises what rural is now. Rather than what rural was fifty, sixty, seventy years ago • The Rural White Paper Action Plan acknowledges the need for DARD to work with other Departments to advance policies for rural areas • OECD and European Commission pushing policies on urban-rural interlinkages

37. The Local Action Groups • Real scope for the LAGs to participate in Community Led Locally Development including members beyond rural areas • Will bring a fresh perspective • Real potential in the new programme for urban-rural inter-linkages • Very positive opportunity for a region the size of Northern Ireland with strong urban-rural inter-linkages

38. Farming and Environment Axis 1 and 2 • Seen to run most smoothly. • Funding targeted at the farming industry with heavy input from the industry on management and delivery • The Countryside Agri-Rural Partnership (CARP) gathered some of their own data and quite comprehensive • Main issue discussed in the farming focus groups (men’s groups and women’s groups) were: • Isolation of men while women work off farm • Inability to support farm family on farm income alone • Farming accidents accepted as part of the ‘norm’

39. Moving Forward • Need to reflect on what putting ‘rural’ in front of women or poverty or deprivation is telling us • One programme or one Department cannot address rural issues. This is acknowledged in the Rural White Paper Action Plan. The new programme offers exciting possibilities to work in partnership with other Departments and advance the actions identified in the Rural White Paper Action Plan. • How the programme is monitored needs consideration

40. Moving Forward • How the LAGs operate and their responsibilities needs reflection (forthcoming review) • Health and safety on farms needs attention • Need more information on isolation of men on farms and health and well-being • Need to consider if there are groups attached to the RDP who perpetuate a world view, a ‘mantra’, a ‘project class’ (Kovach and Kucerova, 2006) • Critical reflection needed to ensure we are not contributing to a social understanding that is no longer accurate