Gender and social inclusion : All Articles

Women Leading Change: Experiences promoting women's empowerment, leadership, and gender justice

13 April 2012

Published in March 2012, this publication features, four case studies describing experiences from Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia in promoting women's political and economic empowerment and leadership. The case studies describe the context in which women live, what leadership means and how to achieve it. Attention is given to working within existing institutions and cultural norms, and also to creating new institutions. The final section summarizes common lessons and considerations for future policy and practice aiming to promote women's empowerment and leadership.

Evaluation for equitable development results

01 April 2012

This wide-ranging publication aims to contribute to the international debate on how to achieve equitable development results by conceptualizing, designing, implementing and using evaluations focused on human rights and equity. It does so by offering a number of strong contributions from 27 world-level experts and senior officers in institutions and governments dealing with development and evaluation. The authors also presented their contribution in a series of webinars that are available for download on the My M&E web portal. The book complements an earlier manual “ How to design and implement equity-focused evaluations,” published in 2011.

Guest Column: Contract farming can work

26 March 2012

Improving the bargaining power of small farmers

Recent years have seen an upsurge in large-scale land purchases by foreign investors, which can lead to peasant evictions and social upheaval. But less attention has been paid to the parallel rise in contract farming arrangements, which can also endanger the rights of smallholders and contribute to the disempowerment of farmers within the food system. However, contract farming is a market-based approach that can work – provided that it is underpinned by respect for human rights, a focus on the right to food and strong institutional supervision.

Empowering women pays

26 March 2012

The importance of women in Ghanaian cocoa

As support for agriculture climbs up the policy agenda, the spotlight is increasingly focused on smallholder farmers. But one dimension of this is still being regularly overlooked – the role of women on smallholder farms. Markets for agricultural commodities are increasingly linked to the value chains of large food manufacturers and retailers.

Policy: The price of empowerment

24 March 2012

Fair trade competes with other certification brands

Over the last couple of years, certification brands of coffee have steadily increased their volume of sales in Northern consumer markets, with an ever broader portfolio of products. On the face of it, this appears to be good news for groups of small producers who sell their coffee through these certification schemes. However, the growth figures are significantly lower for the brand that is most committed to working with farmers organisations, the Fair Trade Labelling Organizations (FLO), also known as Fairtrade International, which brings together 25 fair trade initiatives from around the world.

Policy: The woes of rural wage labour

24 March 2012

The limitations of inclusiveness

Smallholder agriculture is back on the global policy agenda. This is because of the growing demand for food and because the livelihoods of billions of people depend on small farms. However, farm wage labour remains largely ignored.

The challenge of political empowerment

24 March 2012

Economic empowerment must be complemented by political empowerment

In the struggle over ideas in the development arena, terms that are associated with more radical perspectives are often picked up by mainstream actors and organisations. And this has been the case with ‘empowerment’. But such mainstreaming can cause original meanings to be modified or become obscure. From the perspective of strategies that aim to improve the well-being of small-scale farmers, there are various risks inherent in the way the term ‘empowerment’ has been taken up by international and bilateral development agencies.

Feature: Making markets work for smallholders?

23 March 2012

Capacity and agency

The polarised debate on how markets can work for or against the interests of small-scale farmers, presents major challenges for practitioners. This article aims to rebalance our thinking about smallholders and markets.

Strengthening pastoralist voices in Tanzania

14 February 2012

This booklet, and its accompanying DVD, reports on the ‘Strengthening Voices’ project, underway in two districts in northern Tanzania. The project aims to strengthen the capacity of pastoralist communities and local governments to shape strategies for adaptive environmental management and poverty reduction in Tanzania’s drylands. At the core of the project is a training course that explains the economic and ecological processes at the heart of pastoral systems - clarifying the rationale that underpins pastoral livelihood strategies.The course is based on a similar initiative that has been field-tested and run in the Sahel region of West Africa since 2000.

Supporting improved livelihoods for pastoralists

27 January 2012

Pastoralism is often depicted as an anachronistic system that cannot cope with the demands of modern development. However, practical experience reveals that pastoralism is not only capable of changing with the times, it is often the only viable livelihood option, particularly for communities living in remote, dryland environments. This collection of case studies from SNV Netherlands Development Organisation demonstrates that external support can help to strengthen pastoralists' voice in policymaking, enhance their engagement with markets and improve service provision and natural resource management in some of the most challenging environments in Africa today. 

Empowerment: A journey not a destination

19 January 2012

The DFID-funded Pathways of Women’s Empowerment Programme launched a synthesis report based on the findings and recommendations from five years of research in London on 13th January. The report, entitled 'Empowerment: A Journey not a Destination' draws on the collective works of 60 academic-activists in 12 countries on four continents. With six companion policy papers and case studies, the publication shares the latest learning and analysis on what works to enhance women’s empowerment in different parts of the world.

World Development Report 2012: Gender equality and development

03 October 2011

Policymakers and practitioners still face gaps in knowledge both in how gender equality matters for development and how best to incorporate these links in policy design. The World Development Report 2012 aims to bridge these gaps by building upon the growing body of multidisciplinary theory, evidence, and data on these links while highlighting the knowledge gaps that remain across the world in the context of the development process. The Report argues that closing gender gaps is not only a core development objective in its own right, it is also smart economics.

Interview: Riding the green wave

13 September 2011

Elizabeth Dipuo Peters, Minister of Energy, Republic of South Africa

South Africa’s path to universal energy access

South Africa is on track to achieve near-universal access to energy by 2015, a remarkable achievement given that 15 years ago, only 30% of the population had access to electricity. Minister Elizabeth Dipuo Peters, explains how they did it.

Case study: Mainstreaming gender in local governance processes in Afghanistan

09 September 2011

To minimize gap between the Community Development Councils and Provincial Government Organizations, Afghanistan’s National Area-Based Development Programme (NABDA) started to establish District Development Assemblies (DDAs)  in 2006. This case study describes the process used to mainstream gender in these local governance processes and some of the concrete results achieved so far.
 

Local governance and ICTs in Africa: Case Studies and guidelines for implementation and evaluation

12 August 2011

E-governance has the potential to enable local governments to engage citizens in greater participation, leading to socioeconomic developments at local and national levels. But this potential remains largely unexploited. This book offers studies from nine African countries that explore how ICTs can transform service delivery, tax, financial management, land management, education, local economic development, citizen registration, and political inclusion.

Social Equity and Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM)

10 August 2011

This paper from the Global Water Partnership explores what it calls the least understood of the 3 E’s (equity, economic efficiency and environmental sustainability) in the concept of integrated water resources management. The paper sets out an overarching framework to guide decision makers in designing policies, interventions, and programmes aimed at the equitable distribution of benefits from water resources.

Women's leadership and participation

17 June 2011

Hoare, Joanna and Gell, Fiona, Practical Action Publishing, 2009

Women are often denied the right to participate in decision-making, whether as active citizens, or as leaders. In particular, women living in poverty often have little opportunity to influence decisions and policies that will have a direct impact on the welfare of themselves, their communities, and their livelihoods. This book brings together lessons and experience in building up womens involvement from Oxfam GB and its partners.

Case study: Strengthening district health systems in Karamoja

29 May 2011

Inside the district health system

In Karamoja in northern Uganda, many children do not live to see their fifth birthday. In an initiative to improve child survival, Doctors with Africa, Cuamm has formed a partnership with UNICEF to strengthen Karamoja’s district health systems.

Guest column: The forgotten link

28 May 2011

Abdul Ghaffar, Executive director of the World Health Organization Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research, Geneva

Why health systems are failing

Both 1978 and 2000 were watershed years for world health. The conference of health leaders in Alma Ata in 1978 and the United Nations Assembly in 2000, where the Millennium Declaration was adopted, stand out as the two international gatherings that threw global health into the spotlight and put it on the development agenda.

Exploring a diagonal approach

28 May 2011

Integrating antiretroviral treatment into primary health care

Programmes aimed at fighting single diseases have helped many, but they have also weakened public health systems. This does not have to be the case. Individual disease programmes can help to develop the capacity of primary health care systems.

Theories of change: A resource list

24 May 2011

Research to Action has developed a list of resources for researchers and organizations looking to develop a ‘theory of change’ for their work. The page is worth visiting for capacity development practitioners as many of the resources provide practical guidance on how to fit the different theoretical frameworks to a variety of practice contexts.

Theory of Change: A thinking and action approach to navigate in the complexity of social change processes

22 May 2011

Jointly published by Hivos and UNDP, this guide synthesizes the core of the methodological contents and steps that are developed in a Theory of Change design workshop. It is aimed at the rich constellation of actors linked to processes of social development and change: bilateral donors, community leaders, political and social leaders, NGO’s representatives, community-base organizations, social movements, public decision makers, and other actors related to social change processes.

The role of ICTs in empowering rural Indian women

05 April 2011

This paper reviews a range of initiatives to bridge the digital gap in India, exploring in particular the role of ICTs in empowering Indian rural women. The paper concludes that, while most of the ICT initiatives are disseminating useful new information and knowledge, many women are not able to
make use of it due to lack of access to complementary sources of support and services.

South African municipality scores for learning-based approach on water and sanitation

22 March 2011

The eThekwini Municipality in Durban, South Africa, is one of the two global recipients of the 2011 UN "Water for Life" Best Practices Award. The local authority was commended for its innovative approach to communication and awareness raising and its outstanding contribution to addressing key challenges related to water and sanitation in an urban area. 

People-centred M&E: Aligning Incentives So Agriculture Does More to Reduce Hunger (Special Issue, November 2010)

14 December 2010

After more than two decades of hiatus agriculture is back on the agenda of donors and governments. Issues of harmonisation, results orientation, mutual accountability and payments for performance have become mantras in development assistance. Placing intended beneficiaries at the centre stage is the new motto. But the articles in this seminal IDS Bulletin provide systematic evidence to lay open the widely shared secret among development practitioners that the cupboard of agricultural monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is bare. Agricultural M&E has been weak at best. Where it exists it has concentrated on tools and methods, a narrow focus on project performance ratings and 'rates of return' with accountability upwards to donors rather than downwards to the intended beneficiaries of programmes.

From token inclusion to transformative engagement

09 December 2010

Urban planning in India

Although labelled ‘participatory’, many urban planning processes in India involve only select elite groups. This article explains what is required to achieve genuine participation involving all stakeholders, including the poor and the marginalised.

A matter of political will

11 November 2010

As the level of government closest to citizens, local authorities can play a vital role in addressing gender inequality and in building the capacities of women by involving them in local decision making, planning and management. The importance of that role was recognised by the International Union of Local Authorities and in the 1998 Worldwide Declaration on Women in Local Government. Earlier, increasing the participation of women in politics and decision making was a central theme of the Beijing Platform for Action (1995). This was reaffirmed in 2000 in the third Millennium Development Goal, to ‘promote gender equality and empower women’.

A Magic Bullet For Gender Equality?

11 November 2010

Successful decentralisation should make government more accessible, accountable and responsive to women. But does it? Have decentralisation processes increased women’s decision-making power at the local level?

Capacity for effective participation

11 November 2010

Affirmative action measures aimed at enhancing women’s participation as political representatives in decentralised government bodies is a growing field of research and development practice. Several issues need to be addressed first, however, to realise these goals.

Legitimacy enhances capacity

11 November 2010

Do affirmative action and training of women politicians lead to effective voice and change on issues that are relevant for women?

Preserve status quo or promote gender equality?

11 November 2010

Women’s rights activists and gender and development practitioners have high hopes for local government as an arena for promoting gender equality and respecting women’s human rights. However, gender equality can only be achieved through radical structural change.

Can social networking give a leg-up to the poor?

10 November 2010

Can “Web 2.0 tools” directly influence the poor themselves? Would those interested in eradicating poverty do better to start with the “situation” rather than the “technology”?

Linking technical capacity building to women’s empowerment: The Feminist Tech Exchange

08 November 2010

The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) Forum is the largest recurring event of its kind in the women’s movement, bringing together women’s rights leaders and activists from around the world every three years to strategize and learn.

The Huairou Commission

08 November 2010

Isis-Women’s International Cross-Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE) exists to promote justice and empowerment of women globally through documenting violations of women’s rights and facilitating the exchange of information and skills to strengthen women’s capacities, potential and visibility.
 

To Know is to be empowered

11 October 2010

If you want to effectively tackle gender inequality, you need to be able to measure it and identify its underlying causes. Putting local governments in the know is half the battle.