What is Gender Mainstreaming? And How Do You Do It? Prepared by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, for UNDP Belarus Gender Mainstre

What is Gender Mainstreaming?And How Do You Do It?Prepared by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, for UNDP BelarusGender Mainstreaming TrainingOctober 10-11, 2005

Exercise: What is your development problem?

Very simple… • Make sure the “people” are disaggregated sufficiently to gain each from the revolution: • As Agents: Do they participate? • As beneficiaries: Do they gain? • If not, WHY NOT?

What it is not • Evaluate projects not only on the impact they have on the people/community/society/state, but also, to how best they involve people into the decision making process of the project. • In mainstreaming gender, we should not limit ourselves to looking at some indicators that measure how many women participate in the project (as numbers that participated, or beneficiaries, etc.,), or to ensure that the project did not impact negatively (discriminate) against women, but also, to what extend the project itself addressed the need, if any, to restore gender balance in that sphere.

How in Principle? • Knowing the differences from the beginning • Having different targets • If necessary, a bit of a push for the one that is left behind…. Affirmative action • Institutionalizing it by addressing discrimination that may hamper their long term partnership in the revolution

It does have requirements… • As comprehensive strategy, it addresses the environment (corporate, office) in which policies and programmes are developed and implemented. • Working environment is gender-sensitive, guaranteeing equal opportunities and treatment to both men and women. • Sufficient technical capacity and human resources there to successfully implement gender mainstreaming

Step by Step Approach

1) What is the issue? • What is the subject of your project or policy-making initiative? What is the question behind the question • Does this issue affect men and women in different ways?

2) What is the Goal? What do we want to achieve? • Does the goal pay attention to both men and women? • If men and women have different needs, then the goal should be to meet both the needs of women and the needs of men. • If men or women are disadvantaged in the given situation, then the policy goal should seek to redress this imbalance. • These goals are thus “corrective”; they are about meeting the practical needs of both men and women. • Does the goal include a broader commitment to improving gender equality? Or balancing “gender”? • Perhaps elements of the institutions, structures or underlying principles that contextualize the issue fundamentally hinder de facto equality between men and women. If so, the goal should be broadened to address these elements as well. These goals are thus “transformative”; they are about transforming institutions and structures (social, political, economic, cultural, etc.) so that full gender equality can be more readily achieved. (strategic)

3) What do we know? Gender Mapping • Sectoral or Policy Issues .Gender Questions What Do You Know? • Indicators(quantitative and qualitative) • Research Reports • Govt. Programme • Govt. Policy/LegislationNGO Projects • Donors’ activities

Gender Sensitive Statistics • Needed to: • raise consciousness, persuade policy makers, promote change • stimulate ideas for change • monitor and evaluate policies • Types of Sources of Data • Household budget surveys • Population Census • Time-Use Surveys • Official Surveys • Gender statistics are scarce for: • Male fertility • school absenteeism/drop out rates • access to credit • Informal Sector • Unpaid Work • Time use • Domestic Violence • Decision Making in the household • Resource Allocation within household • Income and income control.

Analyze data • Press for statisticians to give desegregated data, studies on time usage, and time budgeting. • Know key questions to ask about the Economy in a gender analysis, such as: • Who owns what, Who gets what?, Who does what?, How?, Who decides what? For whom? • Then analyze gender relations in key institutions: State, Household, Market, Firms. Question ownership of property.

5) Beware of Assumptions when designing • -> That participation in projects will of itself ensure that women will gain, when in reality it depends on the type of participation and the terms on which it takes place; • -> Women as an untapped pool of labour that can be drawn upon, despite their numerous other commitments; • -> The tendency to treat women as a homogeneous group, ignoring the important differences between them; • ->The simplistic assumption that women's interests, and those of men are necessarily the same.

6) Design true human development interventions • Integrate that knowledge into: • Design • Implementation • Monitoring • Impact Assessment

Sectors

Questions for Mainstreaming • What is the Issue? how and why these trends and issues are in fact “gender issues.” • What is the Goal? While goals exist at many levels, attention here is focused on the policy goal: i.e. what policy makers should be striving to achieve. • Why Bother? Arguing gender as a case of equity, efficiency, etc… • Measuring Progress: indicators that could be used to measure progress towards your policy goals. • Possible Interventions and Entry Points: Every situation is unique but s suggestions are meant to stimulate your own ideas. Identify Interventions by the Govenrment, NGOs, donors, other stakeholders.

Poverty • Concepts: • Studying Poverty • Who is poor? • Why are the poor poor? (Structural issues, shocks, etc) • How poverty affects men and women differently • How coping mechanisms are different • Developing indicators

Economic Opportunities: Vulnerability and Opportunity: • Is there equity in access to resources? Land ownership, income (wages), access to credit? • Who dominates in the participation in the shadow economy? • Who controls the informal market (production? Trade? Global/regional trade?) • How equitable has the process of privatization been by policy/law? • How, in practice, have men and women participated differently in the process of privatization? • What has been the gender question in the impact of privatization? • In general, can we say who is the most affected by unemployment? • Is there a differentiated wage system? Practice? • Is the Occupation Market segregated? • Is there a gender issue in the restructuring of these fields? • Who has been most affected by migration? What is the impact of migration?

Interventions • What should be a good disaggregated, targeted policy to alleviate poverty? • Macro-Economic • Poverty Eradication strategies: PRSPs • Social fund • Micro credits • Income Generation: Objective should be not to create more income, but allow for participation, equity, productivity, empowerment, sustainability, etc. For that, other enabling environments become key, such as linkages to networks, legislation, tax policies, kindergartens, etc.

Poverty • Women face a higher risk of poverty than men. Discrimination against women in social practices and law result in their over-representation among the poor. As a result of their subordinate position, women also face greater difficulties than men in surviving and overcoming poverty. In addition, responsibilities assigned to women for care of children and other family members mean that the experience of poverty is different for women than men. This means that: • Poverty reduction strategies must take account of differences between women and men in resources and opportunities, and include measures to address the factors that particularly constrain women. Poverty reduction initiatives that do not pay specific attention to the situation of women will not necessarily reach or benefit women. • Longer-term strategies for women’s empowerment (including removal of the factors that particularly constrain women) are essential for poverty elimination. • The eradication of poverty cannot be achieved through anti-poverty programmes alone but will require democratic participation and changes in economic structures in order to ensure access for all women to resources, opportunities and public services. The need for gender perspectives in formulating policies on macroeconomic stability, structural adjustment, external debt, taxation, employment and labour markets – all these affect the conditions under which women and men work, and all must be examined to ensure that they have an equitable impact on women and men.

Poverty Reduction: • Women are frequently more severely affected by extreme poverty as they must allocate increasing amounts of time to ensuring household survival while continuing to be involved in economically productive activities. • There is also increasing awareness that conventional survey methods do not adequately capture the gender dimensions of poverty and that they must be combined with participatory evaluation methods • Dramatic progress has been made in increasing the access of women entrepreneurs and women's community organizations to finance and technical support services. Credit has proved one of the most effective ways to increase women's economic productivity and empowerment, and the repayment and loan utilization rate for women is frequently much higher than for men. • There are still major challenges to ensure the sustainability of these programs and to improve the performance of public sector micro-credit programs

Macro-Economic • What issues: • Privatization • Liberalization • Fiscal Policies • Investments • Inflation • Trade • Land reforms • New Technologies • Banking sectors • Safety nets • ALL HAVE GENDER DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT: HOW IT IMPACTS MEN AND WOMEN, AND HOW IT IMPACTS THEIR RELATIONSHIP

Macro-Economics • Is there a gender issue in macro-Economic planning? • Shouldn’t the overall goal of structural adjustment policies and practices be to eradicate social inequalities, particularly but not exclusively those based on gender? • Is the budget segregated to account for the gender differences both in numbers and in needs? • Should it be? • Do you think unpaid labor (reproductive labor) has a direct impact on the productive labor in Armenia? • Do you think the unpaid labor should be accounted for in the GNP? • Will there be an impact in the overall economic indicators of the country?

What to do? • What to do: • Studies on impact • Social safety nets • Emphasis on human cost of macro-economic changes for UNDP: • In linkage with HD mandate • Sets different role than IFIs • Render much needed advise

Does Decentralization increase women’s Representation and Participation? • Governance Process is not gender-neutral • Fallacies of Decentralization and Gender (That it increases grassroots (and women’s) representation. • that centers of local power automatically allow for the participation of marginalized groups, or ensure their representation. • That women’s interest, needs, perspectives and demands are in fact equal to that of men within the community • That the process by which governance decisions and actions are taken at the local level automatically represent women’s interest without taking into account the basis of the male-biased concept of the process of governance. • Bad practices of practice of patronage, • rather than open opportunity, as basis of nomination for candidates, for example can leads to discrimination. • Informal contribution of women • Local elite groups more hostile to marginalized groups • Cost of specific policies versus national decrees • Such types of “top down” or “outside-in” pressure is felt in fact, more genuinely than bottom up pressure, • local government officials were more likely to be linked to clan politics

Issue of Gender is an issue of participation • Instead, the conditions that challenge unequal access to participation or ensure representation must be examined. These conditions depend on: • the structures of participation in place and new ones created • available resources and competition over them • control over means of participation • the nature of local power structures • The degree of organization and political visibility of women locally • education and functional literacy • access to information and IT • decision making within the household • Stereotypes promoted through the education system, the media, etc. • traditions of mobilization • 1) The Cost-Cutting theory • 2) The corruption Theory • 3) The Social Issues Theory

What is governance? • governance refers not only to formal public decision-making structures and processes (i.e. national and local government), but includes decision-making within the family, community and private sector as well. • Mainstreaming: addressing the ways in which both genders participate in and are affected by various systems of governance, as well as the interaction between these various systems.

Issue and Goal • A gendered analysis of governance immediately highlights the issue of participation and representation. • Participation for Equal Ops to develop their capabilities • Representation: because not necessarily “Common Interest” • Goal is therefore twofold: • to ensure balanced participation between men and women in national governance, which includes removal of structural and systemic barriers to women’s participation; • to ensure that gender issues are integrated into decision-making, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of national governance initiatives.

Why Participation and Representation? • Justice • Credibility and Accountability • Efficiency: men elected to executive and legislative not familiar. Brain drain. • Chain Reaction: Role models

How to restore balance • Critical mass: a presence of not less than 30% is necessary. • Capacity Building: training and capacity-building are essential – for both women and men • National Machinery • But not dealt with LAWS, DECREES, QUOTAS • Have to deal with systemic barriers that prevent.

Participation • Participation is one area where the gender segregation is widening. Political parties and the Parliament are mostly men, NGOs and associations have outnumbering representation of women. All the answers show a variety of methods to ensure a more balanced access to the decision making process, and most stress the evolutionary one, not through quotas etc. • Public awareness and education of three target groups could be part of the “Democracy and Good Governance” Project. These are: 1) voters in general, about the merits of voting for a more balanced representation, 2) women candidates for good presentation, advocacy, mass media, etc, and 3) men and women political leaders on elaboration and implementation of gender policy for an equitable and efficient society.

Water Supply and Sanitation • Women and Men different roles and responsibilities in rural areas • Who does cash generating activities, irrigation, cattle • Who collects, uses and manages water in the household? • Who plays role in disposing of household waste? • Who educates about hygiene • Tailoring project design to recognize such considerations helps ensure that project facilities will be used by both sexes and that women's contribution to agricultural production and household income can be maximized.

Health, Nutrition and Population • Gender issue is clearer, however • Planning and budget allocations often give priority to expensive, modern urban based hospitals and health services which are less accessible to women (particularly rural women) than to men. • Lack of capacity for training for women medical professionals • Cultural factors continue to maintain inequities in access to and use of services and also contribute to inequitable allocation of food within the household. • Gender based violence also has important health, as well as economic and political, implications.

Rural Development • Women farmers currently under-perform due to a lack of access to credit, information, extension services and markets and because household duties and child-care limit the time they have available. • Removing these constraints can significantly increase agricultural productivity - particularly in regions where women play an increasingly important part in farm management and production.

Transport, Energy and Infrastructure • Route planning frequently constrains women's economic productivity by not responding to their needs to combine work related travel with travel relating to their household responsibilities in the fields of education, health and marketing. • The failure to consider the gender dimensions of transport demand imposes high monetary, physical and temporal costs on female users. It also results in sub-optimal economic and time-allocation decisions by the household and particularly women. • Women's access to transportation also determines their utilization of existing health, education and other services. • Women's insights can also mitigate negative impacts of project design in areas such as the impacts on child safety, access to markets, women's time-burden etc. • Finally, increasing women's ownership of projects can significantly contribute to maintenance and sustainability.

Environment • How are women and men impacted differently by the environment? • How do men and women participate differently in environment protection practices? • How are men and women consulted separately on environment policies? • By nature of the different jobs and duties (in society, in household) that men and women do, the impact of the environment is different on them, and men and women, if consulted separately, would have different solutions to environment problems seen from their angles. This is more felt at the community/household level, and to a lesser degree at the national level. Projects that work on environment policies might want to consider that and those that work with communities might want to study/monitor this question. • Here, as in elsewhere, the different gender impact and gender participation has implications for planning efficiently (both in order not to aggravate the situation for one or the other gender by mistake, and to use the opportunities presented by the different approaches for a more realistic and holistic approach.

Both women and men have productive roles in relation to natural resources, and the (usually different) roles of each must be taken into account for effective programme design in initiatives for environmental sustainability • Unequal access to assets and resources results in insecurity of access to land by women, with consequences for their ability to adopt environmentally sustainable practices, which has implications for policy on land tenure and programmes related to agriculture • women and men are often differently affected by environmental degradation because of different work patterns and tasks of women and men in both the workforce and the household • Degradation of the environment has specific implications for women – negative effects on income possibilities, health and quality of life. • Women remain largely absent from formal policy formulation and decision-making, even though they have taken a leadership role in promoting an environmental ethic.

Education • Is there a discrepancy in equal opportunity to education? • Is there a difference in access to education, higher, lower, urban, rural? • What is the education occupation segregation? Who does what? • Is the drop-out rate a gender issue? • What is the impact of the drop-out trends on gender relations in the future? • Is the enrollment rate at higher education differentiated? • Is there an impact on enrollment rates in higher education on gender relations in the future?

Studies have shown that the economic rate of return of investing in girls education is at least as high, and usually higher than the return on investing in boys education. • Social returns on girls education (improved health and education levels of children, lower population growth rates etc.)

The introduction of paid education, conscription into the army, the involvement of girls/boys into family agriculture, etc., would probably mean that some families might have to make choices between the future education of their boys or their girls. • When women don’t have job possibilities, they continue higher education, which might explain the higher numbers of educated women than men • However, the spheres of education is also gender specific. This means that some professions, in the future, will be the domain of men or women and that may not be good for efficiency, and the different “wealth” (assets and incomes of men and women), etc.

HEALTH • Is there a difference in the access to paid services? • Is there a difference in the impact of paid health services? • What is the health occupation segregation? Who does what? • The health sector, especially in terms of participation, is a segregated field • Women seem to be more generalists (low pay, low mobility) and men more high tech (more pay, more decisions). • Low pay jobs are more vulnerable to restructuring. High tech jobs are more rare in a “de-professionalized” environment. • In addition, of course, the entire family care policy and practice of the government has also implications for the growth of healthy generations, etc.

What is Gender Mainstreaming? And How Do You Do It? Prepared by Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, for UNDP Belarus Gender Mainstre