Assessing the validity of the claim that donor agencies expect other institutions to develop gender sensitivity or implement gender policies than they are themselves prepared to do. (SIKULANI PHIKELELE)

Gender sensitivity or gender policies are implemented in development projects mainly through gender mainstreaming which is defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (1997:2) as “The process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programs, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality”. Gender mainstreaming is part of a twin-track approach that combines mainstreaming and the promotion of women’s empowerment through specific women-targeted activities. These strategies are recognised as being separate yet interlinked, thus the aim of gender mainstreaming is not to cancel out the need for projects that focus on women but to complement them. It is an essential strategy in the challenge to influence critical policies, strategies, plans, and activities in all areas of development – political, economic, social, cultural and environmental (Hannan 2004). The essay seeks to assess whether donor agencies develop gender sensitivity or implement gender policies in the same manner they expect other institutions to do.

The concept of gender mainstreaming was instigated in the 1970’s. Since then it has endured fashioning and manipulation within and between various countries, advocacy groups, gender experts, and policy makers. It has been the topic of discussion at numerous development forums and is subject to persistent debate on its conceptual definition and semantic ambiguity. Eventually it has emerged, in one guise or another, on international, state, Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) and local government development policy documents all around the world.

According to Moser and Moser (2005), gender equality policies have gained greatest acceptance among international donor organisations and agencies implementing development projects, but their adoption has been imperfect. Despite the visible existence of gender mainstreaming in gender equality programmes, policies, plans and strategies in international development institutions for over a decade, there is little evidence to suggest that the mainstreaming of gender concerns has been implemented in development projects. This rhetorical commitment to gender mainstreaming appears to evaporate at the planning and implementation levels (Moser & Moser 2005) and several organisational evaluations have found that the gender mainstreaming approach has not been implemented systematically and effectively (United Nations 2006), or that the degree to which gender mainstreaming has been integrated is varied and inconsistent (AusAID 2002; Zuckerman 2002).

According to UNISDR, UNDP and IUCN (2009), some regional inter-governmental level policies and strategies focusing on disaster management and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) have also come into place over the last five years or so but  commitment to gender issues is rarely stated explicitly; rather, it can only be assumed to be an implicit part of larger commitments to the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. At the programme or operational level, implementation is ad hoc and inconsistent, and progress is largely due to the dedicated work of a handful of organizations, particularly NGOs. Support by international donors for the gender and DRR theme remains far from adequate. Most support received is only project-based, which is a barrier to sustainability.

An increasing number of governments are recognizing the importance of gender issues in their national DRR reporting to UNISDR, although meaningful progress is far from adequate. Progress in the last five years started from a very low baseline. In 2004 only 19 out of 118 countries mentioned gender or women’s issues in their national reports for the World Conference on Disaster Reduction. By 2009, 51 of 62 national reports to UNISDR

acknowledged gender as important to DRR, but there was still very little concrete mainstreaming in policies and programmes. Ultimately, although there are numerous policy documents clearly stating political commitment to mainstream gender issues into DRR, no tangible or sustainable progress has resulted, with the exception of some ad hoc activities. Furthermore, there has not been much substantial progress made in mobilizing resources for mainstreaming gender perspectives into disaster risk reduction process.

Many international NGOs and development organizations with regional level operations related to disaster management make no explicit commitment to gender in their strategy documents. On the other hand, there are some efforts to address gender issues at the operational level. These efforts typically manifest through programmes that target women; however, no evidence exists that these efforts are consistently being followed through or if they address gender relations overall in DRR. This indicates gaps in the understanding of gender issues at the organizational planning and implementation levels.

Major disasters that have occurred over the past decade, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Kashmir Earthquake, have highlighted the gendered aspects of disaster risk and vulnerability. For example, response and recovery programmes encountered heavy criticism for gender insensitive practices that often made the situation for women worse. As a result, the issue now receives greater attention from researchers, academics, and relief and recovery agencies.

Patrick Kilby and Joanne Crawford acknowledge that while some progress has been made in the fields of education and health, overall, the history of gender integration and implementation has been one marked by inaction or at best partial action and limited follow up, despite virtually universal commitment at the level of goal and strategy. According to van Reisen and Ussar (2005), a 2005 review of gender equality strategies among nine OECD bilateral donors found very significant ‘policy evaporation’ in the progression from commitment to implementation and resourcing.

The report presents similar stories across donors agencies about key challenges such as the lack of appreciation that all activities have a gender dimension and what makes a difference (for example the involvement of gender expertise in planning and design) and specific responsibilities for gender (AusAID 2002; DFID 2006; ADB 2010). The conclusion reached in most reports is that ‘…most development assistance organisations, whether governmental or non-governmental, have not yet institutionalised approaches for addressing gender issues in their work’ (DFID 2006: 4)

The 2006 OECD DAC peer review of the Netherlands identified the inclusion of gender equality in strategic plans and in embassies’ annual planning and reporting processes, as one of the factors that has avoided the problems with mainstreaming experienced by other donors (OECD 2006). Embedding responsibility across organisations at all levels via mandatory requirements, incentive-based approaches and good management practices has been identified as a priority,  yet little progress has been made (AusAID 2002).

According to Kilby and Olivieri (2008), the bilateral donors are not alone as most development assistance organisations, whether governmental or non-governmental, have not yet institutionalised approaches for addressing gender issues in their work. They assert that the situation in Australia is consistent with this general picture. AusAID and NGOs have struggled to develop and implement workable gender policies which redress gender injustices.  AusAID and ADAB have conducted a number of reviews of Australian NGO effectiveness and similar studies on gender, including a study for the 1975 Mexico Women’s Conference, the 1995 NGO Effectiveness Review, and the 2010 draft review of the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP), all of which have pointed out that while NGOs are generally effective, they are weak on gender and NGOs themselves perceive this as a problem.

Berg (2010) argue that this assessment is supported by anecdotal evidence through the ACFID Gender Equity Working Group and from NGO accreditations, which point to limited gender policy development or poor gender policy implementation as an on-going issue for Australian NGOs. He further asserts that where agencies report a focus on gender equality in key public communication documents such as annual reports, the language used suggests ‘gender’ is more often associated with specific women-focused initiatives than integration of gender equality considerations into all activities. However, the sector does not have a detailed picture of how NGOs are approaching gender and development, where the specific challenges lie, what is working and what the associated enabling factors are.

Kilby and Olivieri 2008 assert that since the landmark agreements and then the 1995 Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, bilateral, multilateral, and non-governmental organisations have all agreed to develop gender policies, which address inequalities in access to development resources between men and women but despite these developments and associated momentum, while some progress has been made in education and health, overall, gender integration in development continues to be weak. Despite virtually universal commitment at the level of goal and strategy, the implementation of gender equality policies has proved challenging.

The findings of a 2005 evaluation of the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) policy over the period 1997–2005 are typical of the challenges identified. Norwegian development cooperation has placed strong emphasis on women and gender equality (W&GE) for many decades. The administration has been receptive to gender mainstreaming in policy goals [but] … much less receptive to institutionalising this concern (NIURR 2005).

The conclusions and recommendations from the UK Department for International Development’s (DFID’s) evaluation of its gender policy present a similar picture that DFID has made important contributions to gender achievements at policy and practice level but contribution and impact is uneven and the internal environment has not sufficiently supported the pursuit of gender equality thereby pausing a danger that gender equality goals fall by the wayside (DFID 2006: 1).

According to Macdonald (2003), the assessment on DFID’s gender implementation and mainstreaming policy found that DFID’s rights-based approach to development is one of its greatest strengths. Most of the policy and strategy documents recognize gender equality as a prerequisite for poverty elimination but the analysis of how gender equality intersects with poverty and rights is not always consistent. DFID’s policy/strategy documents are said to vacillate between a rights-based approach to gender equality and one based on efficiency, depending on the sector, with the result that it is not clear if DFID has a common gender analysis or shared understanding of gender mainstreaming. The disaggregation of data is a key problem in the development of a coherent gender analysis. Most of the policy or strategy documents do not disaggregate the category of ‘the poor’, either by sex or by other variables.

The research further asserts that the UK is committed to international agreements such as CEDAW and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), yet DFID is not going far enough to fulfil its commitments. Different parts of DFID appear to employ different interpretations of the MDGs and International Development Targets, some using them to promote gender equality widely, with others having a narrow focus on education and health.

Reviews of Country Strategy Papers, Country Assistance Plans, Director’s Delivery Plans, Public Service Agreements, and Service Delivery Agreements show that these documents’ commitment to gender equality is often patchy or narrowly focused on health and education. There appears to be significant policy evaporation in policy/planning documents. There are, however, examples of innovative practices which could be institutionalised.

Statistics on British international development assistance show that gender equality work represents a declining proportion of the aid budget. This suggests a steadily declining resource commitment to gender equality. An increasing proportion of DFID’s expenditure is on non-project assistance in various forms of direct support to national governments, often connected to Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). Budgetary support processes offer constraints and opportunities for gender mainstreaming:

GADN research participants found that DFID’s policy commitments on gender equality have been put into practice unevenly. DFID’s gender policy is under resourced, better in some regions and sectors than others and dependent on committed individuals. Gender mainstreaming in practice across DFID’s programmes is uneven and evaporation is frequent in the move from policy to practice. Lack of institutionalisation, reflected in the lack of specific systems and structures to ensure mainstreaming, is a key challenge to mainstreaming gender equality in DFID.

The research also found out that DFID has no centralized gender unit and all staff were supposed to implement DFID’s gender policy, but in practice, Social Development Advisors substituted as a gender unit. This diffused responsibility often results in gender equality being invisible or dependent on committed individuals. Beyond Social Development Advisors, adequate gender competence is not guaranteed. Even among SDAs, it is very variable and is not prioritised to the same degree by all SDAs.

Furthermore, the research found that the number of women in senior management was increasing, although DFID was still far from meeting the 30% target for women in Senior Civil Servant posts. Rapid staff turnover breaks the continuity in management commitment to gender equality. The research further asserts that diversity was receiving attention in DFID but the mainstreaming of diversity issues seemed to suffer similar constraints, and it was unclear whether DFID has analysed gender in relation to other aspects of diversity.

Statistics on British international assistance show that work related to gender equality has accounted for a declining proportion of the overall aid budget in recent years, falling from 39.2% in FY 1998/9 to 16.2% in 2001/2.4 This would seem to suggest a steadily declining commitment to gender equality as reflected in the commitment of resources to it. However, the system for measuring expenditure on gender-related work may not accurately represent the spend, particularly on mainstreaming.

According to GADN research participants, DFID’s generally good vision and policy commitments on gender equality have been put into practice unevenly. Respondents saw the implementation of DFID’s gender policy as under-resourced, better in some regions and sectors than others, and dependent on individuals (usually SDAs) committed to gender equality and mainstreaming.

Many participants in this review have identified lack of institutionalisation as the main challenge to gender mainstreaming in DFID. DFID has no programme or time bound plan of action on gender equality and mainstreaming. There is little evidence that the 10 gender objectives in the TSP on women’s empowerment are used regularly as a project design or planning tool. All staff are supposed to contribute to the implementation of DFID’s commitments to gender equality but this diffused responsibility too often results in gender equality being not mainstreamed but invisible. Gender mainstreaming is perceived as being dependent on committed individuals.

The survey of GADN member agencies revealed significant gaps in their own gender knowledge and practice; key findings are summarised below:

·  Only those GADN member organisations specifically dedicated to gender or women mentioned gender equality in their summary mission statements.

·  At least two members did not complete the questionnaire because their organisations had little or no interaction with DFID on gender issues. One said gender was ‘not one of our strengths vis-à-vis DFID’ and ‘not a legitimate area of our influence on DFID’; another said that ‘gender mainstreaming in its own right is not a specific focus for [the agency’s] external advocacy with DFID at present.’ ·  4/11 respondents were unable to comment on DFID’s progress as regards gender because they were not up to date on DFID gender policy developments.

However part Global progress

Gender issues have slowly become visible on the global DRR agenda after decades of marginalization in inter-governmental processes. This is largely due to consistent global advocacy, awareness-raising and technical support from the UNDP and UNISDR in cooperation with other UN agencies, such as UNIFEM, United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, regional organizations and civil society organizations.