Transcript SII Women's Empowerment Global Final Synthesis

Women’s Empowerment:
the HEART of the challenge
Elisa Martinez, CARE USA Program Impact, Knowledge and Learning Team
CI Global Conference – November 10 2008
Session Overview: Tell the truth
(or as close as you can get)
Section 1:
Awakening to the challenge
CARE International’s SII on Women’s Empowerment
Section 2:
Deepening the challenge
Engaging the whole
Section 1: Awakening to the challenge
CARE International’s SII on Women’s Empowerment
Section 1 Overview
• The why and how of impact research in
CARE (2005-2008)
• What have we learned about CARE’s
impacts?
• What are some of the strategic
implications, and how are we pursuing
these in our work today?
Starting Points:
CARE’s Vision & Principles
We seek a world of hope, tolerance and social justice, where poverty has
been overcome and people live in dignity and security.
CARE will be a global force and a partner of choice within a worldwide
movement dedicated to ending poverty. We will be known everywhere for
our unshakable commitment to the dignity of people.
CARE International Programming Principles
1: Promote Empowerment
2: Work in partnership with others
3: Ensure Accountability and
Promote Responsibility
4: Oppose Discrimination
5: Oppose Violence
6: Seek Sustainable Results
Driving our Discourse:
Strategic Impact Inquiry at CARE
Goal
Deepen a culture of learning and critical inquiry
through:
Accountability
Offer stakeholders in
and out of CARE
evidence to assess our
work
PROGRAM
QUALITY
Empowering Analysis
Use participatory, rightsbased methods that are
empowering in
themselves
RIGHTS
BASED
APPROAC
H
Continuous Improvement
Research for
organizational action.
Aggressively share
lessons with others
ADVOCACY
The SII on Women’s Empowerment:
In a Nutshell
What contributions are CARE
programs making, if any, to the
empowerment of women and the
advancement of gender equity?
Year 1 - Launching
What internal, organizational
variables are associated with higher –
and lower – levels of impact on
women’s empowerment and
improving gender equity?
•In depth site research (5 sites); Desk analyses of evaluations, proposals, C-Pin
24 countries
35 (+1000)
•In depth site research (24 sites); Desk analysis of C-pin, Promising
Practicesprojects
Inquiry
+350 staff;
Year 3 - Probing
CI members
•In-depth comparative research (6 sites) on empowerment5and
HIV/AIDS risk
Year 2 - Broadening
Year 4- Knowledge Sharing
•Summarizing, producing program guidance, publishing and promoting externally
Defining Women’s Empowerment
We understand empowerment as the sum total of changes
needed for a woman to realize her full human rights –
the interplay of changes in:
in her own aspirations and capabilities
(agency),
in the environment that surrounds and conditions her choices
(structure),
in the power relations through which she must negotiate her path
(relations).
Any individual indicator of progress
can only be properly assessed and valued
in the context of how it advances that whole.
Agency-based
1.Self-image; self-esteem
2.Legal / rights awareness
3.Information / skills
Routines, conventions, relationships and taken-forgranted behavior
4.Educational attainment
5.Employment / control of labour
Carrying out our own analyses,
6.Mobility in public space
Institutions that establish agreed-upon significations (meanings), accepted
making our own decisions,
and
7.Decision
making
and influence in household finance & child-rearing
forms of domination (who has power over what or
whom), and
agreed
taking our own actions.
criteria for legitimizing the social order
8.Group membership / activism
9.Material assets owned
Empowerment involves poor women becoming
10.Body health / integrity
the agents of their own development
Structure
Agency
Women’s
Empowerment
Framework
23
SubRelations
Structure Dimensions
Connecting with other social
Routines,
actors, building conventions,
relationships,
relationships and
joint efforts, coalitions,
and
taken-for-granted
behavior
mutual support, in order to
Institutions
thatalter
establish agreed-upon
claim and enact
agency,
significations
(meanings),
accepted
structure,
forms ofrights
domination (who has power
and so realize
over
what
or whom), and agreed
and livelihood security
criteria for legitimizing the social order
Structural
1.Marriage/Kinship rules and roles
2.Inclusive & equitable notions of citizenship
3.Transparent information and access to services
4.Enforceability of rights, access to justice
5.Market accessibility (labour/credit/goods)
6.Political representation
7.Share of state budgets
Carrying out our
own of civil society representation
8.Density
Agency
Relations
analyses,
making
our
Array
and quality
of social
Relational
owninteraction.
decisions, and
taking our own actions.1.Consciousness of self / others
Empowerment
as interdependent
What
are the preferences, habits,
involves
poor
women
expectations that women
have of
2.Negotiation
/ accommodation habits
becoming
the agents
their relations
with other women, 3.Alliance / coalition habits
of
their
men,
andown
institutional actors?
4.Pursuit / acceptance
development
of accountability
5.New social forms
So… impacts of CARE’s work?
Phase 1 : Dodging Structures and Relations
Phase 2 : Wide-screen dreams, narrow screen tools
Phase 3: Rethinking empowerment, once more.
The SII Bottom Line
•a portfolio on the rise, the payoff from 10 years of investment
•Important empowerment gains – strongly focused at the level of women’s individual
capabilities for more that 20 million men, women, and children over the past decade or
more.
•Some substantive and wider changes in structural aspects of women’s marginalization
and in the social relations through which lasting changes in women’s empowerment will be
achieved.
Yet…
•Deep confusion about what women’s empowerment should mean for CARE, with little
space/support for staff to clarify own beliefs and biases in the midst of competing visions
among diverse women, men, and opinion leaders (donors, academics, other NGOs..).
•Tension over competing theories of change, and their implications for how CARE should
invest to achieve both best-in-class impacts on key dimensions of poverty/injustice AND
lasting impacts on gender power relations
a portfolio riddled with missed opportunities to achieve deeper, faster, and
more lasting changes in poverty and social justice.
Portfolio Sketch – 2005/2006 – some gaps
13% of projects in one sample (of
evaluations) conducted gender
analysis
2% of CPIN projects did gender
analysis as part of project design;
12% had an explicit gender
strategy; 1% did gender training
for partner organizations; 1%
raised awareness about violence
against women; 9% raised
awareness on women’s rights.
Of 32 project proposals in 2005,
only about 10% articulated
empowerment goals with a clear,
context specific strategy and
measures backing them up.
15%
60%
25%
promise of deep impact
agency level impact
not so good
2006: How Many CPIN Projects state they deploy…
Empowerment approaches
57%
Empowerment
+ GED approaches
37%
Empowerment + GED
+ Policy Advocacy
17%
Emp. + GED + PA
+rights-based approaches
15%
Emp+GED+PA+RBA
+focus on marginalization
11%
Emp+GED+PA+RBA+Marg
+citizen participation
10%
How to interpret?
CARE Bangladesh - RMP
A good
project,
But
what
might
have
been?
CARE Bangladesh
Rural Maintenance Project
• Technical focus on road maintenance, project coverage noted in terms of
population served by roads. Major change noted in SII is the acceptability
now of women working outside their homes, but associated challenges not
addressed.
• 166,750 women employed over 23 years in RMAs, show increase in
incomes through savings investment, and some improvement in social
status. Yet use of solidarity groups since mid-1990s could have increased
numbers 3-5 fold, and resulted in more widespread social and political
gains for women
• Women staff known for being first on motor bikes in Bangladesh – but
used only to supervise and monitor activities, not to reflect on
methodology. When engaged, staff involved in SII produce a set of
recommendations with far reaching implications – as project is closing
• Capacities built of Union Parishads across Bangladesh, but no ongoing
engagement on gender issues. Leverage potential used randomly by other
CARE projects to gain acceptance by UP officials because of legitimacy
provided by RMP
CARE Guatemala - FODEMH
A good project. But what harms?
CARE Guatemala - FODEMH
• Technical Diversion: Plan to support the position and voice of a nascent
Mayan women’s citizenship rights organization, converted to more
“classic” organizational strengthening and (literacy) service delivery
project.
• Accountability Conflict: Donor-required creation of a new development
organization (ADIMH) from an existing women’s movement (FODEMH).
Growing pains, internal conflicts, and deep staff-partner tensions arising
from results management.
• Spectacular Results: ADIMH grows from 10 to 110 members, and reaches
8,000 women with cascading rights training, and 1,350 with literacy
training (70% literacy achievement among enrollees).
• Weak Politicial Voice: Platform and capacity for policy advocacy on wider
women’s issues not developed: advocacy alliances hostage to interorganizational rivalries.
• Mission Shift?: ADIMH seen as solid development partner (GTZ, CEFA),
but not financially sustainable at project’s end, and in competition rather
than coalition with wider women’s and Mayan political movements.
What Good Projects Do Well, Their Impacts,
Their Opportunity Costs and Harms
Good women’s empowerment projects typically…
…Deliver tangible,
technical, gender
disaggregated
outputs under
contractual
obligations
…Focus on women’s
capabilities, skills,
knowledge without
trying to influence
gender norms
…Begin and frequently
ends with a donor
contract (a “project”)
…that lead to impacts that are…
…strongly individual,
psychological,
asset/service
focused
…able to mitigate the
effects of poverty and
social injustice, not
eradicate/eliminate them
…”seedlings” for
such sustainable
impact on
underlying causes
of poverty
…and create harms such as…
…reversible
gains; longer
term irrelevance
of output and
effects
…increased
workloads and
violence against
women and girls
…Male
abdication and
feelings of
worthlessness
…Weak
sustained
learning
between
projects
So what’s it gonna take?
Understanding context (and questioning our assumptions about it)
• Equipping staff to face internalized and entrenched gender norms
• Building community with others –movements, NGOs, donors
• Challenging and strengthening a collective understanding of underlying causes of
gender inequity in a given context, analyzing policies north & south
• Working to truly understand the specific population groups we seek to serve
Program Design (planning a coherent system of actions over time, for impact)
• Articulating a transformational goal
• Proposing a theory of social change (broadly), and hypotheses of what
CARE/partners can do to shape impact across all TOC components
• Building dynamic learning system to track progress: method & indicators
• Design projects and non-project activities as a reinforcing system of entry points
for change – linking concrete gains to relational work building solidarity groups
and engaging men and elites, and advocacy to shift structures.
• Testing / revision of the TOC – through staff reflection and external challenge
Knowledge Exchange (protecting gains from the black hole of project closure)
• Regular uptake of knowledge produced by others (development and social actors)
• Staff gather & contribute their knowledge regularly to a wider knowledge base
CARE’s THEORY OF CHANGE: HOW WE WILL ADDRESS
POVERTY
CARE helps
communities
achieve
long-term
reductions
in poverty
by…
• Using a series of projects and
related activities that
demonstrate a long-term
commitment to the community
• Addressing all three
components of the Unifying
Framework
• Leveraging our areas of
expertise, informed by our
deep understanding of the
needs of the community
Developing
human
capabilities &
providing
economic
opportunity
Addressing basic
human conditions
through sectoral
interventions
And
addressing
social
injustice
& inequity
Addressing power
imbalances resulting
from
 Poor governance
 Gender inequities
 Discrimination
 Social and
economic exclusion
With a focus
on
marginalized
women &
girls
• Women and girls are the
most vulnerable
• They have a differential
impact on community wellbeing
• We acknowledge that
working with men and boys
will be crucial to our ongoing
work
8 Characteristics of a Program
1.A clearly defined goal for impact on the lives of a specific group, realized at
broad scale.
2.A thorough analysis of underlying causes of poverty and social injustice at
multiple levels with multiple stakeholders.
3.An explicit theory of change that is rigorously tested and adapted to reflect
ongoing learning.
4.A coherent set of initiatives that enable CARE and our partners to contribute
significantly to the transformation articulated in the theory of change.
5.Ability to promote organizational and social learning, to generate knowledge
and evidence of impact.
6.Contribution to broad movements for social change through our work with and
strengthening of partners, networks and alliances.
7.A strategy to leverage and influence the use and allocation of financial and
other resources within society for maximizing change at a broader scale.
8.Accountability systems to internal and external stakeholders.
The SII Bottom Line – Take 2
•Undeniable and valuable contributions to well-being and self-esteem of
millions
•Tendency to focus on agency, and at best to sow seedlings of change in
agency and structures
•Among our levers for change, two stand out:
•Articulating clear a theory of change for women’s empowerment, in context
•Building programs for impact, organizing project/non-project work in an
agenda for long-term social change
Issues we must now confront:
•Technical challenge: how to align resources, relationships, and
accountabilities in a complicated organizational change like this?
•Adaptive challenge: how to get at the underlying worldviews and
power dynamics that define us as aid workers and as an industry, and
that are major obstacles to doing what we know needs doing.
Session Overview
Section 1:
Awakening to the challenge
CARE International’s SII on Women’s Empowerment
Section 2:
Deepening the challenge
Engaging the whole
Section 2:
Deepening the challenge
Engaging the whole
Section 2:
Deepening the challenge
Engaging the whole
Go back to your wisdom.
If your child, your neighbor, a stranger
is behaving in ways you dislike?
How do you intervene?
Section 2:
Deepening the challenge
Engaging the whole
Bring forth your wisdom.
If I ask you
how do we tend to intervene as aid workers
what do you say?
How might this reflect
the heart of the challenge?
A Provocative Premise:
We struggle to promote women’s empowerment in
more enduring ways because doing so challenges
the comfort zone of our projects, our industry, our
societies and ourselves (the technical challenge is
really just the tip of the program-shift iceberg).
Perhaps, going to the heart of the challenge means
dealing with women as they are, being genuinely
open to inconvenient truths and dirty little secrets
about ourselves and those we serve – without
giving up the principles and goals that define us as
a rights-based organization, and bind us in
solidarity to pursue a better future.
Experiment with this idea
That we each know more about empowerment than we
are acting upon, and that we have much to learn…
that we know more about how our intervening must
change than we are acting upon.
In groups of 5, read and discuss SII research quotes.
Confront two key questions:
(a) how do these passages relate to our own lived
realities and known (if secret) truths?
(b) What would CARE have to do, to relate better to the
realities these passages, and your discussions, reflect?
How shall we assess your
empowerment if…
…you define power/strength in ways other than independence and autonomy?
…you are powerful in one facet of your life, but not in others?
…you accept cultural/social rules that grant you power, even as they harm you?
…you don’t use condoms in your love relationship, even knowing your HIV risk?
…you’re doing more, smarter, better… but nothing else seems to give?
…you’re not sure this “empowered woman” thing is much of an improvement
…you’re opportunistic in using strategies of confrontation and collusion to
achieve your goals?
…sometimes, you play the “power over” game, taking advantage of others, or
competing in ways that put collective interests at risk?
Take Away Insights
a.Women are more complicated than we allow
them to be
b. Women’s empowerment = societal change
c. Women’s empowerment lies beyond the scope of
any one organization, let alone one time- and
resource-bound project.