HOW DO CURRENT

TRENDS IN DEVELOPMENT
AND VOLUNTEERING
INTERSECT WITH
GENDER?
 What will be covered today?
1. Highlighting things that are often not
seen

How many letter ‘f’s in the following

sentence…..
 Finished files are the
results of years of
scientific study combined
with the experience of
years.
 What will be covered today?
1. Highlighting things that are often not seen

2. Examining WHY gender equality is important in

development

3. Looking at current trends in development and HOW they

intersect with gender

4. Presenting a snapshot of WHAT is happening in some

FORUM organisations

5. Providing an opportunity to hear and learn from one another

 Just to clarify….

Sex and gender

Gender equality

NOT that women and men are the same

BUT that women and men have the

same rights
 Gender mainstreaming

How would you define it?

 Mainstreaming gender equality is a commitment to

ensure that women’s as well as men’s concerns and
experiences are integral to the design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all
legislation, policies and programmes

 The ultimate aim is to promote equality between

women and men
 Why is gender equality
important in development?
 Birth
In India, how many girls are
thought to be aborted every day?
7000
In 12 days the amount aborted would
equal the population of
Siem Reap
Time for school
77 million children out of school. About
57% are girls.

UNICEF 2006 states that nearly 1 out of

every 5 girls who enrol in primary school
in developing countries does not complete
a primary education.

What fraction of the 780 million illiterate

people in the world are women?
2/3 (DFID 2007)
 Getting married
If you were Southern Asian, how many of you
would be married before you were 18?

Nearly half (48%)

Child brides (under 18) are more likely to die

younger, suffer from health problems, live in
poverty and remain illiterate.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury

and death for women worldwide
 Having a baby
In the time that we take to do this discussion
paper 60 women will have died from
complications in birth or pregnancy – 99% in
developing countries.

Pregnancy-related deaths are the leading cause of

mortality for girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide.

And who cares for the baby?

 Time to earn an
income!
Women often have to balance their caring roles

Not only that… economic participation is not

equal. In UK gender equality rated as only 0.69
and lowest was Yemen with 0.25
Feminisation of poverty
The Global Gender Gap Report 2008
World Economic Forum

RED = IDEAL
BLUE = ACTUAL
Trends in development
Millennium Development Goals
(2000)
 Paris Declaration (2005)
 Increase aid effectiveness so as to reduce poverty reduction
and achieve of MDGs

 Shift from discrete donor funded projects – to harmonised

donor support for national policy frameworks – PRSPs,
SWAPs, etc BUT

 Gender-blind – no gender equality indicators

 Phase 1 evaluation mentioned gender just once

 Undermines role of civil society organisations

 MUCH more complex organisational context

Recent ODI review in 2008
suggested 3 fundamentals
need to be in place if MDGs
are to be achieved.

What do you think they are?

 The fundamentals (ODI 2008)
MDG 1
Eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger

MDG 8
Develop a global MDG 2
partnership for Achieve universal
development primary education

FUNDAMENTALS:
•Gender equality
MDG 7
Ensure MDG 3
environmental
sustainability •Peace and political Promote gender
equality and
empower women

stability
•Sustained economic
MDG 6
Combat
growth MDG 4
HIV/AIDS and Reduce child
other diseases mortality

MDG 5
Improve maternal
health
 MDG 1
Eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger

MDG 8
Develop a global MDG 2
partnership for Achieve universal
development primary education

Women’s
psychological
Women’s socio- empowerment Women’s
cultural economic
empowerment empowerment

MDG 7
Ensure Gender equality and women’s
MDG 3
environmental overall empowerment Promote gender
sustainability at household, community, market equality and
and state levels empower women

Women’s physical Women’s political

empowerment empowerment

MDG 6
Combat MDG 4
HIV/AIDS and Reduce child
other diseases mortality

MDG 5
Improve maternal
health
 Women’s
psychological
empowerment
Women’s socio- Women’s
cultural economic
empowerment empowerment

Gender equality and women’s

overall empowerment
at household, community, market
and state levels

Women’s physical Women’s political

empowerment empowerment
Models of gender mainstreaming:

 Inclusion

 Reversal

 Displacement
 Best practice includes…..
 Gender equality within the organisations as well as the programmes

 Everyone - especially top management and also benefits from a champion

 Good systems – what gets measured gets done: sex-disaggregated data,

SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-related) targets

 A budget

 Twin track approach: gender mainstreaming + specific intervention

 Where do you think the problems
lie?
 Policy commitments to gender equality “evaporate”

 Attention to gender equality is not systematic

 General lack of understanding on what gender

mainstreaming entails

 Initiatives are often too reliant on individual staff

 Lack of resources –time, money, staff

 The research
Who am I?

Who did I ask?

Who responded?

Total: 6 CEOs, 34 staff, 59 volunteers, 3 online

volunteers = 102 people
71.6% female, 28.4% male
 Research questions

1. Internal practices

2. Programmes

3. Volunteers
 1. Internal practices
To what extent are volunteering organisations ‘walking
the talk’ regarding their internal practices of gender
mainstreaming?
1. Gender policy
CCI best practice:

 Short
 Part of identity – not an add on
 Part of organisation AND programmes
 Practical and identifies processes eg monitoring and evaluation,
training, partnership agreements
 Dynamic
 It passed my acid test!!

An action plan was planned to ensure implementation of the policy

2. Gender training
What % staff said they had never received any
gender training at their current organisation?

 64.7%

What % of staff said that they thought that they

were very confident about gender issues?

 8.8%

How did 97.1% of staff learn about gender

issues?

 Informally through other colleagues.

3. Staff positions
 Almost all organisations allowed part-time
staff to hold management posts and had
terms and conditions like flexi-time that
help caring-roles to be fulfilled.

 No clear pattern concerning gender

balance.
 Over to you…
1. What is the point of a gender policy? How can it be kept
alive and not in a file once devised? What sort of time –
related targets could be used?

2. What factors are at work keeping women out of

management besides issues of child-care?

3. How can staff keep up-to-date with developments in gender

issues? Should it be part of individual CPD or whole
organisational learning days?

4. Which four posts in your organisation hold the most

weight? What is the gender balance of those?
 2. Programmes
a) What percentage of programmes have
women’s empowerment as a definite
focus?

b) Is there a gender analysis at the design

stage so that possible impacts on men
and women are differentiated?

c) Are gender-sensitive indicators being

used to monitor and evaluate
programmes?
 a) Women’s empowerment
What % of the programmes across the organisations have women’s
empowerment as a primary focus?
 Some statistics not available but average is 34% of the rest

 What % of the programmes have women’s empowerment as a

secondary focus?
 Some statistics not available, average 50% of the rest

b) Gender analysis
What % of organisations stated that they always did a gender
analysis at the design stage of the programmes
 50%

 Sometimes?
 33.3%

 Rarely?
 16.7%
c) Gender-sensitive indicators

3 organisations suggested a variety of indicators;

2 of the organisations did not give details but said
indicators were used;
1 declined to answer.

AVI:
Economic participation; economic opportunity;
political empowerment, educational attainment; and
health and well-being (inc focus on safety and
freedom from violence). Specific targets relevant to
beneficiary community would be identified for each
of these headings.
 Over to you…
 Given the centrality of women’s empowerment in
achieving the MDGs, why does it not seem to have a
higher priority? What are the barriers to this being more
central?

 What prevents gender analyses always being completed

at the design stage of programmes?

 What indicators could be used effectively for the five

areas of empowerment: physical, socio-cultural,
economic, psychological and political? Would it be
helpful or constraining if standardised ones were used
throughout development? Give examples of successful
indicators.
 Volunteers (44 women 15 men)
How are the current trends in volunteering intersecting
with gender?
1. Work
Broad distribution of work: women
HIV

Communications

Arts Broad distribution of work: men

Education
5% 9% IT 7% 13%
7% 7% HIV
Social work Communications
7% 7%
7% Arts
14%
Health
7% Education
2%
Engineering IT
0% 20% Social work
Agriculture
Health
14% 9% Organisational Engineering
32%
Development
Library
2%
2% Human Rights
5%
5%
0%
2% Fundraising
17%
Capacity Building

Human Resources

Not enough detail

 2. Age - 81.8% of women were 40 and under; 80% of men
were over 40. Why do you think volunteers chose the time
they did? Sex-disaggregate please.
 A lack of family commitments - 53.3% of women 16.7% of
the men
 Challenge and adventure - 66.7% of men and none of the
women
 Making a contribution - 33.3% of the women and 16.7% of
the men

3. What percentages of men and women are in management

roles?
 60% of men; 13.6% of women

4. Accountability
High (5 or 6)?
 47.7% of women, 25.7% of the men
Low (2 or less)?
 Over 50% of men, 2.3% of women
 5. How many women and men said there were gender-
sensitive challenges at work?
 59.1% of women and 26.7% of men

An elder male colleague in the same position as me is treated

very differently from me and men in the organisation often
(unintentionally I believe) refer to me using terminology that I
find to be a bit sexist (female, aged 22-30).

Even by my female boss, I am often not seen as valuable as

male colleagues. I have troubles moving around on my own,
need protection and am seen as vulnerable (female, aged 31-
40).

Dealing with inappropriate sexist comments made by males

towards women (male, aged 41-50).

The issue is how not to exploit the power and authority that
comes with being an older foreign male (male, aged 51-60).
 6. 52.3% of the women and 26.7% of the men
experienced gender-specific challenges in the host
community.
Being myself, with my own way of being male- like not being
interested in football, cars, drinking etc. is sometimes
challenging here (male, aged 41-50).

I cannot socialise with men on my own - there always has to be

other women, therefore I have to always think about who I am
with and where we are going to meet. On the other hand,
integrating into the female social network is easy and
welcoming (female, aged 41-50).

Women are also expected to prepare tea and food for any
guests. As this is not part of my cultural background, I have
found it difficult, for example, when my or my partner's students
expect me to prepare tea/food for them while I am working
(female, aged 22-30).
 7. Power structures
What % of volunteers perceived that positions of authority were
held by men in the community?
 83.1%
At work?
 57.6%
 22% by women and 20.3% an equal balance

8. Ways volunteers increase their knowledge of gender

issues:
Gender specialists
Informally through colleagues
Through written publications

Through staff training

Through links with other organisations
9. Role of the internet
One organisation runs an online volunteering programme
but were not able to participate in the survey. However, I did
ascertain:

 40% of the volunteers were from southern countries and all

were working to support projects in developing countries.

 In 2007 there was a total of 2753 volunteers (62% women).

 Each of the online programmes is linked to MDGs and

currently 2% are linked to MDG 3.

 I managed to contact 3 volunteers (2 women and 1 man)

who identified FLEXIBILITY, BREADTH OF
PROGRAMMES, SKILLS-MATCH as being attractive and
important features.

 Potentially able to break through barriers of all sorts.

 Over to you…

 Why do women feel more accountable?

 What are the barriers to male and female volunteers

challenging sexist behaviour? Is it harder for men?

 “It’s one thing to assert women’s equality but another to

challenge notions of masculinity”. Do you agree?

 How can partner organisations help volunteers with

gender-specific challenges /keep abreast of gender
issues? What positive examples do you have of this?
 Post-script
It would be great to have discussions about gender
equality involved in the volunteer positions at the
initial stages as well as throughout the assignment.

It is good to be taught about the ideals of gender

mainstreaming, reaching the Millennium Goals….

…it would extremely valuable to be able to identify a

range of strategies which could work in the workplace
and community….. (female volunteer under 40)
 My conclusion
 Few people remain neutral about the subject because it is not just
about policies but identities.

 Gender equality is fundamental to achievement of MDGs.

 Gender mainstreaming needs to be thoroughly incorporated

through systems and processes so as not to be reliant on
individuals.

 The Paris Declaration is making the situation more complex.

 Volunteers and staff need to be better prepared, equipped and

motivated.

 Women and men are needed to achieve gender equality.

 What’s yours?
Any feedback most welcome:
Jane.russellsmith@gmail.com

Any more questions?

Write them down with your email address and I will
get back to you as soon as I can

Thank you