From Data to Doing Things Differently

1. From Data to Doing Things Differently Findings and Implications from CARE International’s Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s Empowerment PRL Discussion November 2005

2. Strategic Impact Inquiry Goal: Deepening a culture of learning and critical inquiry through: Learning & Improvement Empowering Analysis Accountability Offer stakeholders in and out of CARE evidence – good, bad, and ambiguous – to assess our work Use participatory, rights-based methods that are empowering in themselves Reseed findings into new program approaches and policies. Aggressively share CARE successes and challenges with the wider profession

3. Strategic Impact Inquiry On Women’s Empowerment Two Guiding Questions What contributions are CARE programs making, if any, to the empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equity? What internal, organizational variables are associated with higher – and lower – levels of impact on women’s empowerment and improving gender equity?

4. In depth research in four COs (Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Yemen) • Meta-analysis of 31 evaluations from all regions • Analysis of qualitative data from 404 CARE projects • Analysis of 32 proposals from all regions • Mapping and promising practice review in Asia Region • Secondary literature reviews (at multiple levels) SII approach and methods • A multi-year joint CARE International effort • A collaboration with external institutions

5. Women’s Empowerment Framework Agency Carrying out our own analyses, making our own decisions, and taking our own actions. Agency relates to the internal capabilities women have for choice, judgment, and action. Working at the level of agency focuses on enhancing women’s capabilities to make practical and strategic choices and take action EMPOWERMENT Structure Relations Routines, conventions, norms and taken-for-granted behavior Connecting with other social actors, building relationships, joint efforts, coalitions, and mutual support, in order to claim and enact agency, alter structure, and so realize rights and livelihood security Structure includes accepted ideas and institutions that shape the world around us, define power relations and establish the ‘rules of the game’, what is ‘normal’

6. Structural • Marriage/Kinship • rules and roles • Inclusive & • equitable notions • of citizenship • Transparent • info • & • access to services • Enforceability of rights, access to justice • Market accessibility (labour/credit/goods) • Political representation • Share of state budgets • Density of civil society representation Sub-Dimensions • Self-image; self-esteem • Legal / rights awareness • Information / skills • Educational attainment • Employment / control of labour • Mobility in public space • Decision making and influence in • household finance & child-rearing • Group membership / activism • Material assets owned • Body health / integrity Agency Relational • Consciousness of • self / others as • interdependent • Negotiation / • accommodation • habits EMPOWERMENT Relations Structure • Alliance / coalition habits • Pursuit / acceptance of accountability • New social forms

7. Agency You can do this Without these Structure Relations Negotiation and Accomodation Skills Vis-à-vis powerful/duty bearers Or this Without these Goal: Equitable Access to Basic Human Services for Women Some Simple Examples of the Model In Action Train women’s groups in rights and in organizational skills But it can’t be sustained Alter Local Gov. Budgets

8. Some Simple Examples of the Model In Action Agency You can do this Without these Structure Relations -Dialogues: men, women, customary leaders, religious leaders, elderly, youths -Collective/Solidarity movements Changes in Marriage and Inheritance Norms/Customs Goal: Improve gender equity in the home and community Increase Participation in HH Decision Making But it can’t be sustained

9. Some Simple Examples of the Model In Action Agency Raise women’s awareness Public education of health risk Without these Ensure adequate health care You can do this Structure Relations -Dialogue with religious leaders -Discussions with customary leaders -Vertical/horizontal support networks Enact a national law Goal: End FGM But it can’t be sustained

10. Key Finding #1 Important Impacts on Agency Most important impacts in dimensions of: Self-esteem/ confidence, skills/knowledge, participation in groups, household decision-making, income generation. (Meta-evaluation) Most common practices for gender work: training, capacity building, participation, and awareness raising (C-Pin) Agency EMPOWERMENT Structure Relations CARE’s global portfolio tends to shy away from: • Marriage & Kinship Rules, Norms, Processes • Laws and Practices of Citizenship • Access to justice (enforceability of rights) • Political Representation • State Budgets Consciousness of Self and Others as Interdependent Negotiation & Accommodation Habits Alliance & Coalition Habits Pursuit & Acceptance of Accountability Important Gaps: Structures & Relations

11. Illustrative Evidence: Sites • Clearest, most enduring impact in self-confidence, and dimension of self-worth. “Now we look at people, we are not afraid to speak up. We know we are making a valuable contribution to the city.” • Increased mobility “This new-found freedom was very special to women... enabled them to access institutions they never imagined they would see.” • Mobility: “Her work with the association has empowered her more than her teaching job. Because she had to deal and talk with men, had to go to different places and establish relationships with many people in different functions.” • Poor women’s impressive agency v-a-v middle/upper class women undermined by structural and relational forces that undermine overall empowerment (Eg, Shaymoli). • Harms: Most marginalized communities get excluded (target-driven); loans create added workload and strain, and are often used for harmful social practices (dowry shortfalls, fetal screening); leaders may be consolidating power and keeping all members from benefiting equally • No change in awareness or appropriation of legal, civil, or tribal rights. Limited material impact of generally unprofitable associations, which demoralizes women. No significant impact on family labor or renegotiating gender roles/divisions of labor. • “We did not work sufficiently at the policy level, and with the general public... We did not realize how important it was to work with groups beyond the women, and the failure to work at that level is eroding the success. All our focus was on the issue of self-esteem. That was important, but not sufficient.” • Women prefer to pursue their interests via relational approaches over independent ones. Assert agency indirectly, through negotiation, and aspire to jointness rather than autonomy. • Negotiation habits shifting, women becoming more willing to express needs (typically, would break pots, beat animals, make chldren cry, fake illness.)

12. Illustrative Evidence: Desk Reviews CPIN Analysis

13. Key Finding #2 InternalBarriers Gender as an add-on No serious accountability Inadequate learning/ reflection time Pressure to meet quotas and contractual ‘results’ Internal gender hierarchy Internal Driversof Impact • Supportive project manager • Gender training • Transparency in CARE • Ability of female staff to debate project with men in office • Willingness to help female staff learn/grow

14. Internal Support Challenge: Significant evidence that CARE senior staff in COs not deeply committed to gender, equity, and diversity inside the organization. “CARE staff are not just professionals or technicians of any kind that we try to train and educate to be more gender sensitive. They are people from the very social systems – with the attendant gender norms, assumptions and biases – that our gender programs are trying to alter…. being seen to attack or disrupt existing power structures not only puts staff and their families in an awkward position but probably seems pointless as it changes the way “things have always been”. It undermines the very structure which gives the staff respectability in communities or which determines their position in relation to members of the opposite sex within their family. ”

15. Key Finding #3 Program Quality:Cause for Hope • C-Pin (of 404 projects reporting in FY04) • 58% of projects reported gender equity and diversity focus • 75% of projects reported empowerment as an important goal • A handful of projects appear to be sites of true innovation Program Quality: Homework • 44% of the projects declared an empowerment/gender equity focus without any gender analysis, power analysis, or explicit strategies/approaches in the proposal. • In 23% of the evaluations, positive empowerment outcomes blocked due to lack of deep enough understanding of gender, power, structural, and relational realities, clear definitions/ operationalizations, and logical strategies (Meta-evaluation)

16. Some More Homework Details: • “evaluators found the conceptualization and operationalization of crucial phenomenon – power, gender, empowerment, inequity – singularly lacking in the 31 projects included in this convenience sample... In the majority of cases, projects seem to be content with letting such impacts remain unspecified, acting more as a form of programmatic vision for some uncertain future.” • “Because of the lack of a strong gender strategic action plan with consistent goals and success indicators, the staff did not know how to make its development program gender sensitive other than to target female beneficiaries.” • “We find even in the high-end proposals a discrepancy between intended outcomes (agency, structure, relations) and measurement of those outcomes” – especially loose proxy measures in S/R. • And the future holds more of the same... Of 32 randomly sampled project designs, 44% declared an empowerment/gender equity focus without any gender analysis, power analysis, or explicit strategies/approaches in the proposal. 21.9% showed alignment of gender/power analysis with strategies... The existence of an analysis tended to lead to focus on relations and structures and diminished attention to agency. However, we’ve been able to identify a handful of promising, perhaps ‘positively deviant’ projects

17. Broad Implications • Lessons about the dangers of the language of women’s empowerment and impact w/o changing practice. • Tighten and broaden our definition and operationalization of empowerment and how long-term social change actually happens: nonlinear, stop-and-start, progression/regression • Need to return to foundations of good, solid, ‘basic’, DM&E…but these are in some ways “new foundations”: an approach to DM&E that takes process (social process) seriously and as an arena of impact; that takes qualitative indicators more seriously, and one that “returns” to the idea of DM&E as the heart of an ongoing cycle of reflection and critical inquiry • Accelerate investment in programmatic approaches, via contract alignment and engagement in alliances, to overcome constraints to solidarity and sustained support. • We need to develop empowerment strategies around women’s aspirations for deeply relational solutions. They seek equitable, joint solutions, not individual, independent ones: need to help them engage and shift relations with power-brokers in their lives.

18. Broad Implications (Cont.) • Need new strategies of engagement to address the serious constraint that resources/incentives represent. Until donors, and through donors, managers, give priority to the extra work needed to target empowerment effectively, success will remain small, and ephemeral. • Given the design and measurement challenges – they go far beyond CARE – we need to expand safe spaces for continuous questioning of who we are and what we are doing, for dissent/challenges/questions, and more consistent and organized action-learning around what constitutes good empowerment work • We need far more support of staff to help them go into their communities as gender change agents • Develop training/staff outreach materials around the reality that sustainable impact on women’s empowerment requires progress in all three dimensions – agency, structural, relational – and embed these ideas in new guidelines/advice for program design and evaluation.

19. Concrete, Short Term Actions to Consolidate and Leverage SII Potential:Approved by CARE USA’s Executive Team Principles/Criteria for Decision: a) Concrete and achievable in short(er) term b) Easily defined and communicated c) Low and/or no extra cost d) Dovetail with already existing plans/initiatives Global learning process Focus planned Program Division learning and knowledge management pilot on a global conversation about achieving sustainable gender equity and women’s and girls empowerment. Accelerate, through this, search for good practices from in and out of CARE Pragmatic program guidance Synthesize a practical/pragmatic “Empowerment Impact Guide” that covers a) participatory gender/power analysis, b) operationalizing empowerment, and c) participatory monitoring approaches for continuous local learning Internal management practices Make global gender policy’s operationalization more explicit and craft a longer term gender/power learning program for CO senior manager

20. CARE International and the CI Program Working Group: Implications • Continue to support the strategic impact inquiry as an important CI function

21. LAC RMU: Focus on planned evaluations and proposals ARMU: Focus on Bangladesh and region-wide mapping exercise SWARMU: Focus on Niger and MMD-type community based microfinance MEERMU: Egypt (internal reviews); Bosnia (Trafficking) ECARMU: Region-wide approach combining different kinds of impact assessment methods and a planned learning process The Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’sEmpowerment FY06 Plans REGIONS Sectors • Economic Development: Five-country, comparative study on intersection of community based microfinance and women’s empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa • HIV/AIDS: Intersection of livelihoods, HIV/AIDS, and women’s empowerment • Basic and Girls Education: Patsy Collins Trust Fund sites External Partnerships • Institute for Development Studies/Sussex: 5-year research project • University of Wisconsin: HIV/AIDS, Livelihoods, Empowerment • Emory University: Expert Exchange around Women’s Empowerment w/ CARE as case material • International Council for Research on Women: Under construction • Just Associates: LARMU Evaluation/Proposal work • Poverty Action Lab: Under construction