Contextualizing Gender Within Human Development:

1. Contextualizing Gender Within Human Development: By: Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, HD Consultant Gender Mainstreaming Training UNDP Belarus October 10-11th, 2005 Shahrbanou.tadjbakhsh@sciences-po.fr

2. What do you know? • What do you understand? • What do you agree with ? • But as a professional: • How can you analyze? • What can you convince? • What can you defend?

3. A Revolution in Two steps: • First we stormed the palace… • …Then we realized we ourselves were not “one people”, so we had to adjust…

4. Mahbub Ul Haq’s Revolution: • The obvious is often the most difficult to see: The true wealth of a Nation is its People • Economic growth is only a means of enlarging people ’s choices. • Human well-being is the purpose, the end, of development. • HD Puts people back at the center stage: Both as means and ends of development. • Human Development is the process of widening people’s choices and the level of well being • Agency and Evaluative

5. Sen’s Evolution: Ethics and Values • Development is the increasing of human freedom: • About expanding individual freedoms, such as • Freedoms to do what you want to do; • To be what you want to be. • Freedom is at the same time the main goal and the main means to achieve development. Expanding CAPABILITIES: to • Read and write • Lead long and healthy lives • Earn a decent living • Participate in decision makings that affect their lives Without these, many choices are simply not available, and many opportunities in life remain inaccessible.

6. HD is not the same as: • Economic growth • Social development • Human resource development • Basic needs approach

7. HD # Economic Growth • which is understood as the increase in a country’s per capita income and is measured by the GDP/GNP • The theory of growth has 3 assumptions: a) development is the growth of income and b) basis of income growth is capital accumulation, and c) Conventional micro economic model is based on the assumption of rational individuals who maximize their utility

8. Growth Advocates: Expanding income is an end in itself Growth does trickle down HD Advocates: income is a means; enhancing people’s capabilities the end Simultaneous expansion of choices in other dimensions – social, cultural, political - and economic not accept trickle down as automatic

9. But: • No automatic link • Some choices do not depend on income • Income’s contribution to satisfaction of needs decreases as income increases (marginal utility) • Per capital income does not take into account distribution between rich and poor, unevenly distributed • depends on national priorities for spending – guns or butter, elitist or egalitarian model

10. Economic growth without human agency is: • Jobless growth: where the overall economy grows but does not expand the opportunities for employment, nor targets employment choices for both men and women. • Ruthless growth: where the fruits of economic growth mostly benefit the rich, leaving the majority of the people struggling in ever deepening poverty. • Voiceless growth: where growth in the economy has not been accompanied by an extension of empowerment and participation. Voiceless growth is also growth that gives women a minor role to play in the management and direction of the economy.

11. HD encompasses simultaneously: • Efficiency: Efficient use of resources and increase of their availability. HD is pro-growth and productivity. • Equity: Distributive justice, especially for choices and opportunities • Freedom and Empowerment, Possibility of choosing. Sen: Freedom has a constitutive value (value by itself) and an instrumental value ( as a means to efficiency and to equity) • Sustainability not just for present generation but next ones too

12. Human Development is a Rupture (storming the palace) • a)An ethical rupture, keeping in mind the ends, the “what for”, the way in which each proposal contributes -or not - to enlarge people´s choices. • b) A theoretical rupture because HD proposes an alternative explanation of how development is achieved, of how it is produced by human beings rather than by impersonal or object-like variables. • c) A methodological rupture because the paradigm proposes a different way to achieve development in its various dimensions.

13. Always ask: Where are the people? • It is about checking quality growth over quantity growth • Not obvious: Take income generation projects: If we don’t know the situation exactly, how can we be sure that the impact is increasing the choice?

14. Then we realized we were not one • It is fine and dandy to talk of the “people”, • But people are not one • So we had to putting women back into people, and people back into development

15. We had made presumptions • Don’t presume equal participation in economic life, but understand the differences between men and women’s needs, access to resources, and the diverse impact of economic growth on them. • Development aid is gender neutral, it is gender blind. It assumes that men and women have the same needs so a project that is developed for increasing their overall choices automatically will lead to an increase in their overall choices. • Development aid and planning being gender neutral, means that it is really designed to target the majority or the visible, which often means men. • BUT THAT IS NOT THE CASE, because men and women are different. • It does not trickle down

16. Gender Equality (HDR 1995) • HD if not engendered is endangered. • Gaps between women's expanding capabilities and limited opportunities. • Analysis of under-valuation and non-recognition of women in work • Inequality is not only a problem of access to the means but a problem of freedom denied or curtailed. • HD recognizes gender discrimination is present not only in income or wealth but in: • Freedom to enter contractual relations and decide on properly • Freedom to participate in public life and have political leadership • Freedom to receive training, enter and to compete in the labor market • Freedom to live. Premature girl death

17. Measuring our revolutions • HDI --------------------> GDP • GDI --------------------> HDI

18. Gender Development Index (1995) • Measures achievement in the same basic capabilities as HDI, but takes note of inequality in achievement between women and men. GDI is simply the HDI discounted, or adjusted downwards, for gender inequality. • Methodology imposes a penalty for inequality • The greater the gender disparity in basic capabilities, the lower a country’s GDI compared with its HDI. • The GDI reflects gender imbalances in basic health, education and income.

19. Gender Empowerment Index • Examines whether W and M are able to actively participate in economic and political life. • 3 dimensions: • Economic participation and decision making is measured by the % of female administrators and managers, professional and technical workers. • Political participation and decision making are measured by % of seats in parliament held by women. • Power over economic resources is measured by women's estimated earned income (PPP US$).

20. Trends (2004) • Data from 2004 GEM shows discrimination against women persists despite high national ranking on HDI . Many poor countries outperform far richer countries. In terms of participation and inclusion, women fare better in Botswana, Costa Rica and Namibia than they do in Greece, Italy and Japan • Countries with worse disparities between their GDI and HDI values are Saudi Arabia, Oman, Pakistan, Yemen and India • Countries that have the closest correspondence between HDI and GDI are Sweden,Denmark, Australia, Latvia and Bulgaria • GDI for Belarus is 53

21. Top 5 (GDI) Norway Sweden Australia Canada Netherlands Top 5 (GEM) Norway Sweden Denmark Finland Netherlands Bottom 5 (GDI) Niger Burkina Faso Mali Guinea-Bissau Burundi Bottom 5 (GEM) Yemen Saudi Arabia Bangladesh Egypt Sri Lanka GDI & GEM: Top and Bottom 5 (2004 HDR)

22. Definition of Gender • Into English language in 1972 as a result of the need to refer to the social relationship between men and women. • Came out of a need to address the unequal differences between men and women, specifically, beyond the words used to differentiate between people (class, status, race, etc.) • Before purely a grammatical meaning: Gender was he, she or it (masculine, feminine, neuter). Now, gender refers to the social difference between men and women, where sex refers to the biological one. • A working definition: Social meaning given to the biological differences between men and women and the socially constructed relations between men and women.

23. Recognizing Gender isan “art” • - Analytical tool for understanding social processes and social norms • - is a social stratifier, as class, race and ethnicity • - is at the basis of the most fundamental division of labor in society productive and reproductive activities.

24. From WID to GAD: We learned! • 1947-1970: Maternal and Child Health • 1970s: Women in Development • Criticism of WID • 1980s: Gender and Development

25. Gender Aware Planning … • … is based on the premise that traditional planning methods do not take into consideration the different needs and interests of women and men arising from their different socially ascribed roles and responsibilities in society. • Challenges that all members of the household have same interest, reflecting equal power between men and women in household decision making. • Central to this is concepts of practical and strategic gender needs, and recognition of women’s and men’s multiple roles, reproductive and productive activities.

27. It is recognizing and addressing the strategic needs of a society • Addressing practical gender needs facilitate existing gender roles by: • * enabling women to do existing work better • * reducing work burdens within their multiple roles • * overcoming practical problems in all roles (health, food, tools, income etc) • Addressing strategic gender needs change existing gender role by: • * achieving greater equality for women and men • * raising women’s status, power and choice • * closing access gap ( e.g. equal wages, legal rights, asset ownership, non-traditional jobs, control of fertility, income, life style) • * harder to achieve due to different time scale and planning needed.

28. MESSAGE: Both practical and strategic gender needs must be addressed for programmes to be gender sensitive. Specific activities may focus on needs or strategies, both overall programmes require some degree of both. Strategic gender needs are easy to ignore, they are more abstract and difficult to monitor. Needs must be mentioned in program goals.

29. Yet… • Development programmes should focus on both categories, but often do not take them together. Much attention is paid to the practical needs of women mostly, without considering long term affects on strategic needs. • Credit programmes for example should also work with banking institutions in order to have long term effects. Micro credits schemes, if they are not planned thoroughly with sustainability as a goal (i.e., to involve institutions such as banks, NGOs, etc) cannot answer the strategic needs of women. • One important point of discussion is who decides on the strategic needs of women?: Is it the UN, the society or the women themselves? Can we apply the same standards of an international setting to a rural village? • It is also necessary to conduct surveys and studies to find out what are the practical and strategic needs of a community in order to design programmes that would address them adequately. The participants discussed the importance of carrying out methodological research and gathering objective information.

31. The word ECONOMICS can be written across both categories. It is not possible to do productive work in society without reproductive work. They are interlinked. Yet, GNP does not take into account the unpaid reproductive work, where women feature, and to which women often move when there are structural changes resulting in 1) unemployment (Movement from PP to RU) 2) Sectorial shrinkage (where the state sector (PR) shrinks, there is movement into UR). • When women lost their jobs, they usually move to the unpaid reproductive sector, back at home. When men loose their jobs, they try to find another productive paid work, or productive unpaid work, or move out of the labor market altogether. Men move to the unpaid productive sphere so as not to lose their skills. Many, both men and women, go to the informal sector. It is mostly the state sector that provides paid reproductive work, when the state shrinks, workers usually move to reproductive unpaid work.

32. Message: • Invisibility of bulk of women’s work • Economically profound • Structural adjustments must take into account effects on reproductive work • The Unpaid Reproductive sector of the economy, which is not rewarded, usually absorbs from other sectors during restructuring.

33. The principles: Added Value • The 4 principles apply, as do others • Justice and Equality • Efficiency and Sustainability (the “macro” dimension) • Credibility and Accountability • Quality of Life (the “micro” dimension) • Alliances • Chain Reaction.

34. Equity, Justice • From the Human Rights point of view, the eradication of all forms of discrimination, be they economic, social, political and cultural, is a indispensable for the protection of human rights, a commitment that all governments have endorsed. • It is a matter of Justice, “FAIRNESS”, equal representation • When the efficiency argument is hard to prove, given that it is difficult to prove the role of women within national income, there is renewed emphasis on equity, because it is harder to ignore the inequality of women’s positions. • Conventions: Most states party to a variety of normative documents (CEDAW, Beijing, Cairo, etc) Basic principles in own constitutions Not enough to convince for resources, but useful to provide reference to specific mandates and international commitments. Remind governments of shared values • Reiterated by Human Development’s focus on “enlarging people’s choices” and “on their access to resources” and “personal self respect” as vital components of development. • HD means enlarging what people can actually do, their capabilities, become the purpose of economic growth. • Gender inequities clearly reduce women’s capabilities.

35. Efficiency argument: externalities • Equal inclusion of men and women in all aspects of development and society pays off for the country as a whole. Nations cannot afford to ignore the contributions and economic and social capacities of both men and women in all spheres. The development of any country that does will ultimately suffer in the medium and long term. This is an argument that addresses “macro” aspects of development – i.e. the welfare and prosperity of a nation as a whole. • These arguments are particularly effective because they address the bottom line: money. They prove that investment in gender equality will pay off for the country as a whole in the future. • Given share of contribution to economy, not taking into account impacts negative overall growth

36. Lack of participation of women would mean that a major part of the skilled and well educated human resources available would be wasted. • Inequality between the sexes can breath social discord and instability in the both in the family and, inevitably, in society. • It is a fact that without the significant contribution of the reproductive labor, often generated by women, the productive sphere cannot function. • The empowerment of women benefits children and families. Investment in female empowerment and education increases women’s productivity while decreasing fertility and infant mortality. “development multipliers.” “No other single factor has so much impact on so many diverse outcomes” • Discrimination in labor market brings inefficiency • Segregation of labor and wage discrimination market brings quality and value of the sector down • Falling birth rates are often caused or exasperated by failure of society to support women’s capacity/choice to combine their reproductive and productive rights and responsibilities. • How women deal with shocks (Coping mechanisms) are assets that have to be used in planning social policies, poverty strategies etc. • Studies show that economic transition leads to decline in family income in general, but structural adjustment programmes specifically reduce social support (i.e. the level of resources available to women in their non-producer roles) without redressing their disadvantages in their role as producers. • Overwork, which is a distortion of allocation of resources, limits response to economic transition • Lack of women in decision making power means reduced development impact of expenditures

37. Sustainability • Closely linked to efficiency arguments are sustainability arguments. Because gender mainstreaming adopts a “human development” perspective, which has the long-term objective of creating a socially just and sustainable society, gender mainstreaming is inextricably about ensuring sustainability as well. Furthermore, because gender mainstreaming demands a holistic approach to policy making where coordination and cooperation (both vertical and horizontal) are key, interventions are more likely to be sustainable

38. The tricky trade-off • Women’s issues: are they human rights issue or efficiency issue? In other words, do you see women as vulnerable, that have special rights to be protected, or do you see them as opportunities, that because of their strength on some issues, promoting them would mean more overall growth in society. (examples not only as mothers, but economic actors, human rights activists etc., in disaggregated occupations, in civil society, etc) • For the Government of Belarus, are women vulnerable groups or opportunities?

39. Credibility and Accountability Arguments • Asks decision makers to “do the math”: because women and men each make up half of the population, any data, policy or recommendation that does not recognize and address both genders equally will be ultimately flawed, and will thus have no credibility. • If large segments of the population are not adequately reflected in new laws and institutions, and are not given the opportunity to participate in public life, the legitimacy of the new political systems would be questioned. A true democracy cannot allow for the silencing of at least 50 % of the population. • Accountability arguments in particular are useful for reminding governments of their responsibility to ensure social justice and sustainable human development. • In democratic states, governments must be accountable to the population and must further the interests of all its members – both men and women. A failure to address social justice or gender equality issues is also a failure of governments to be accountable to all citizens. • Furthermore, many gender-sensitive interventions are not just gender exercises for their own sake – they are about holding governments accountable for their use of public funds and for the fulfilment of their political promises. • Gender mainstreaming can offer concrete mechanisms for introducing a greater degree of accountability into governance.

40. Quality of Life Arguments: • Increased attention to gender equality issues will improve the lives of individual men and women. • While it is commonly recognized that women stand to benefit from increased attention to gender equality, quality of life arguments also point out the benefits to be gained by men and families as well. They stress the importance of social relationships and interdependence of social actors, claiming, for example, that if women are empowered, those closest to them stand to gain as well. • On the flip-side, inequality or hardship for one gender will negatively affect other social actors as well. For example, the negative effects of depression in men or poor employment opportunities for women affect families, children and spouses as well. • Quality of life arguments are useful for promoting a gender dimension in programmes aimed at curbing social “pathologies”. For example, issues such as suicide, alcoholism, addictions and chronic stress are strongly linked to changing gender roles and relations in society and the inability of individuals to cope and adapt. The argument here therefore underlines how a gender perspective can limit these pathologies and improve the quality of life of members of society.

41. Alliance Arguments: • Alliance arguments highlight gender equality as a prerequisite for forging formal alliances or partnerships with other nations. In the context of Eastern and Central Europe, accession to the European Union is a very salient example: EU countries are mandated to implement various instruments for the promotion of gender equality, including the adoption of gender mainstreaming practices. • However, while this argument is currently very effective for calling governments to task, it is ultimately unsustainable unless coupled with concrete substantive reasons (such as efficiency and quality of life) as to why issues of gender equality need to be addressed. Without these solid substantive arguments, alliance arguments can backfire.

42. Chain Reaction Arguments: • Lastly, all of the above arguments are strengthened when the links between them are highlighted. Gender equality can in fact produce a “chain reaction” of benefits, just as the effects of gender inequality can be passed on from individuals to families and communities. The “chain reaction” argument highlights how sound the investment in gender equality actually is: it will bring not only short-term, localized benefits, but medium and long-term benefits that will ripple through society strengthening the nation as a whole. • At the same time, mainstreaming should also remain aware of “chain reactions” that might produce negative gender equality effects if not anticipated and dealt with in an integrated manner. For example, a “top down” mandate for family-friendly workplaces might bring backlash and even greater exposure to harassment against women in their place of work. Similarly, advancement of women may lead to greater depression and pathological behaviour among men. These risks highlight the crucial need to create complex strategies for gender mainstreaming, whereby a number of initiatives are mutually reinforcing. Thus a negative chain reaction argument can be used to convince decision-makers that mainstreaming must proceed in a strategic and holistic manner.

43. Long term goals • Gender is seen as society (men involved in debate) • Policies and programmes are designed directly with Gender, not an added cause • Macro- Economic polices are not designed first, and then social issues “added to them” but designed by incorporating the interests of men and women into them, both as a subject (agents of change) and an object (impact) • No need for special commissions, etc because of everyone taking the cause • No need for these trainings because everyone realizes that Women are People Too………..

44. Quiz 1: MDG Goals and Targets: Where is the gender?

45. Quiz 2: • What are your development issues and how are they gendered?

46. Quiz 3: conducting a Gender Analysis of Sectors • 1) Gender Roles: What are the Gender roles in this sector (socially constructed), both within the household and at the community level? • 2) Gender Division of Labor: Analyzed by differentiating between productive and reproductive tasks. Who does what? Value of labor? Are there jobs done by people depending on age or sex? What are sources of household income? How do women earn money? Who decides how the money is to be spent? Who decides how land is to be used? • - Consider that women’s involvement in both productive reproductive makes them work longer hours per day than men, their considerable workload is to be taken into account when designing and implementing programmes. • - Women’s work is often excluded from national employment and income statistics, because labor is unpaid, or takes place in the informal sector not covered by labor legislation. Results in serious under-estimation of women’s contribution to development and society. Identify the validity and reliability of existing statistical data and to collect more precise information on women’s work.

47. 3) Differential Access: Who has access to and control over resources and benefits? Who participates? How? Who benefits? Who has information? Who makes decision? Who is a member of community or household decision making? How much influence do women have over decisions that affect them? • - by law or by tradition, sometimes women not allowed to on capital assets such as land, buildings and equipment, or not able to enter into legally binding contracts (opening a bank account, starting a business, obtaining credit) without permission of their husbands or another male family member. • 4) Power Relations: inequalities emerging from division of labor and unequal access, achieve power to “negotiate on equal terms”. Capacity of changing decision making processes that establish and reinforce existing socio political and economic systems norms. • - Often have access to resources needed to work, but no control over the income earned through their labor. • Who controls resources in household. • 5) Gender needs arising from unequal power relations, different roles, etc.Practical and Strategic needs. Ask women themselves.

48. 6) Constraints and Opportunities which exist within the larger socio-economic environment and which may affect the programme under consideration. • Economic conditions, demographic conditions, prevalent norms and values, political events, legislation and regulation, training and educational levels, institutional arrangements. Watch out for direct or indirect discrimination for either men or women. • 7) What is the capacity of your organization and other partner organizations to overcome gender gaps. • - Type of organization, major areas of interventions, capacity to plan and implement. • - Gender policies, activities and experiences • - Organization structure to deal with gender issues • - Perception of gender among staff.