Gender Mainstreaming in VRA Lucy Wanjiru and Khamarunga

1
Gender Mainstreaming in VRALucy Wanjiru and
Khamarunga
2
Gender

• Gender is a social cultural construct
• If a social construct it can also be
  deconstructed
• If gender is mainstreamed in the CBA projects
  this also offers a chance for deconstruction
  towards a more equitable society SD outcomes

3
Gender Mainstreaming in VRA

• Gender mainstreaming is a strategy to promote
  empowerment of women, men, boys and girls
• Assist enable women to critically analyze their
  situation
• Gain skills and build confidence, move into
  decision making roles
• Aim is to make women agents of change and not
  recipients of development in transforming gender
  relations

4

• VRA
• Participatory Impact Assessment (PIA),

Capacity Cto Adapt (women/men/boys girls)
Community perception to CC Vulnerability to
CC (access to and control over resource)
5
VRA defined

• a comprehensive ME framework, including locally
  defined impact indicators and quantitative
  portfolio-level indicators.
• Taking a semi-structured and context-informed
  approach, the VRA is designed not only to measure
  the success of an individual project, but to
  aggregate (Gender tools) and compare project
  impacts across a diverse portfolio of project
  contexts, demonstrating programme-wide impact

6
VRA

• The VRA is based on
• a composite of 4 indicator questions (gender
  indicators could be factored in)
• tailored to capture locally-relevant issues that
  are at the heart of understanding local
  vulnerability to climate change (knowledge of
  both men and women).
• Questions are posed during a series of 3-4
  community meetings over the period of a CBA
  project (participation, roles responsibilities,
  access and control of resources).
• Responses to the questions take the form of a
  numerical score, provided by the respondents
  during these community meetings
  (sex-disaggregated data, life histories).
• The key quantitative output of the VRA is the
  degree of change from the baseline score between
  the pre-project baseline, and at project
  conclusion (outcome increased empowerment of
  women as access, control over resources as well
  as decision making, voice).

7
VRA defined

• change in vulnerability.
• is assessed through the degree of change in the
  VRA scores relative to baseline values
  established prior to the commencement of project
  activities.
• In the context of the UNDP Community-Based
  Adaptation programme, the aggregated VRA scores
  of all CBA projects serve as an objective-level
  indicator, measuring achievements in terms of
  improving capacity of community beneficiaries to
  adapt to climate variability and change.

8
Principles of VRA

• Equity/Equality
• Flexibility
• Context specific
• Community based
• Capacity building
• Enables aggregation of results assess
  programmatic impact
• Poverty reduction
• volunteerism

9
Gender Approaches

• Women-in-Development (WID) practical needs
• Aims at addressing peoples basic needs, material
  needs for day-to-day life) Challenges existing
  gender roles and division of labor
• Gender and development (GAD) strategic needs)
  aims for empowerment
• Approach on roles and relationships between men
  and women addresses power relations aims at
  promotion of empowerment equity/equality and
  Sustainable development
• Though in practices sometimes no fixed lines of
  demarcation and a project can address both

10
Key issues around mainstreaming

• Gender tools used upfront fitted in overall
  project/project cycle
• Gender approach is not just an activity
• Must be included in project phases
• Have a clear goal/outcome
• There a number of frameworks
• Gender assessments
• Gender Analysis Framework
• Longwe framework for empowerment

11
VRA gender entry points

• Project Design
• Targeting
• Indicators
• Outputs (how many meetings, etc)
• General outcomes

12
Key Phases in VRA

• Project design/Situational Analysis
• Stakeholder consultation
• Implementation
• Reassessment phases of SC
• (participation of women and men/ girls and boys)

13
Project design/Situational Analysis

• Motivation for project is to address a specific
  programme
• Identification of entry point
• Review dependent on various perspectives
• Questions
• What is the culture of the area?
• How have relationships defined themselves?
• What are the gendered issues in the area?
• What are the interest how do they differ women
  men/ girls boys etc?

14
Gender Analysis Matrix
15
Gender analysis Matrix (GAM)

• Analysis is used at planning stage to determine
  whether the potential gender impacts of the
  projects are desirable and consistence with the
  project purpose and goal. The impact will be
  examined in terms of
• Tasks and skills (changes in tasks, level of
  skills required
• Workload changes in amount and time
• Resources/ benefits changes in access to
  resources and benefits
• Socio-cultural changes in social aspects of
  participants and community lives as a result of
  the project

16
Gender Analysis

• Who does what work?
• How does it differ between men and women?
• Who has access and control over resources?
• Who participates in decision making?
• Whos needs are being meet?
• Where possible use sex-disaggregated data

17
Other Issues GAM would help reveal

• Access/control
• It is also important to differentiate between
  access (such as being able to farm on someone
  elses land) and control (owning that land, being
  able to decide how that land is used).
• Having women control the means of production or
  the decision making process is key to bringing
  about change.

18
Stakeholder consultation

• Who are the different stakeholders
• Opportunity for participation (voice and space)
• What are their interests?
• How do this different between the different
  genders?
• How will men and women be affected by proposed
  project?
• What is the capacity for women and men to
  participate in the project?

19
Implementation

• VRA is both a quantitative and qualitative
  assessment tool
• Sex-disaggregated data (show participation of
  women, access and control of resource)
• Focus groups of women to have an in-depth
  understanding of their issues around their
  perceptions and capabilities in terms of CC
• Documentation of life histories

20
Other Key tools

• Sex desegregation
• In gender analysis, data should be separated out
  by sex so that it is in a form that enables the
  impacts on women to be identified separately from
  impacts on men.
• Social construction
• The social origins of the historical
  subordination of women are also important to
  understand. These are usually manifestations of
  sexual domination, language and myths. For
  example, the concepts of defining how we
  construct manhood and womanhood have been
  changing throughout history and continue to be
  changed by society.

21
Example
22
Example

• Niger government addresses gender gap afrol News,
  23 June, 2009
• Women in Niger are still far away from achieving
  equal rights and opportunities as their male
  counterparts the gender gap in Niger is in fact
  one of the world's largest. The Nigerien
  government has however approved a larger
  programme to reduce this gender gap and today was
  awarded international financing of its efforts.
• The African Development Fund (ADF) today
  announced that it had approved of financing parts
  of Niger's so-called Gender Equity Reinforcement
  Project, which is designed to "reduce the gender
  gap" in the country. The ADF US 4.41 million
  grant is to contribute to enhancing the
  capacities for design, planning and management of
  gender activities and to create a social
  environment that is more conducive to gender
  equity. In Niger, poverty particularly affects
  women, who represent over 50 percent of the
  population. The imbalance noted between women and
  men in Niger - mainly regarding legal status,
  access to resources, responsibilities,
  participation in decision-making and access to
  education, health, information and communication
  and to legal and judicial services - has hindered
  poverty reduction efforts. According to ADF,
  the new project "constitutes a major contribution
  to the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy
  (PRS) with regard to gender promotion in Niger."
  Through the various outputs projected, it is to
  build the capacities of state agencies and
  private sector organisations for the "promotion
  of gender dimensions."

23
(No Transcript)
24
VRA H form
25
Monitoring and Evaluation

• Gender lens
• Does the project include specific, measurable
  actions and deliverables related to gender
  mainstreaming, gender equality and womens
  empowerment?
• Has the project/programme assessed potential for
  contributing to gender equality and womens
  empowerment through planned activities?
• Has sex-disaggregated baseline data been
  collected?
• Has the project/programme assessed the potential
  for contributing to gender equality and womens
  empowerment through planned activities?
• Have gender specialists or representatives from
  women's stakeholders groups participated in all
  steps of the programme or project cycle?
• Have all possible steps been taken to ensure
  gender equity in the recruitment of project staff
  and consultants?

26
Participatory approaches

• Women and men's vision constitute the foundation
  of participatory local development,
• Community as an organization
• Recognizing the functional characteristics of the
  community and its importance
• Acknowledging women and local leaders
• Identifying local institutions and organizations
  to work with
• Women and mens Experimentation
• Creative use of available resources
• Trying new ideas and different options
• Selecting and sharing options that work
• Valuating local experiences
• Learning from experience
• Drawing lessons from experiences
• Local knowledge management
• Action learning
• Linkages and cooperation with external partners
• Sharing amongst farmers
• Linkages with service providers and other
  stakeholders
• Exposure visits to see new techniques in practice

27
(No Transcript)
28
Thanks