Building Reflexive Processes Into Program and Policy Development and Evaluation: A Resource for Resp

1
Building Reflexive Processes Into Program and
Policy Development and Evaluation A Resource for
Responding to Violence Against Girls and Women in
Rural Area
2
Building Reflexive Processes Enables Programs to

• Increase our understanding of violence against
  rural girls and women.
• Reflect on organizational policies and practices.
  
• Plan, implement, evaluate, and revise violence
  prevention programs and services to meet the
  needs of rural girls and women.
• Advocate for programs and services.
• Achieve violence prevention goals.

3
A Reflexive Process Involves

• An awareness of how we come to understand certain
  things and effect our own and others' actions.
• An awareness of how we express ourselves and give
  meaning to our understandings and actions.
• Being prepared to adjust our practices to reflect
  what we learn both from the communities with
  which we work and from our own reflections.
• A way of collaborating.

4
(No Transcript)
5
Metaphor of the PRISM

• Whenever we examine a topic, we do so through a
  lens that focuses our attention in particular
  ways. By filtering or ordering what we look at, a
  lens enables us to see some things in greater
  detail or more accurately or in better relation
  to certain other things. (Peterson Runyan, 1999)

6
Medicine Wheel
Roseanne Sark
7
Medicine Wheel

• The Medicine Wheel is a circle with no beginning
  and no end point, so that when one has travelled
  through the wheel they are ready to begin once
  again. It represents the four realms of human
  existence and the Four Directions the physical
  realm (North), the realm of knowledge
  enlightenment (East), the spiritual realm
  (South), and the realm of introspective thought
  (West). It also encompasses the Four Elements
  earth, fire, air, water and the four races of
  people in the human family black, white, red
  and yellow. (Fern Paul, 2004)

8
(No Transcript)
9
Defining Violence and Abuse Involves Looking at
Self In Relation to the Four Basic Needs of Life
10
Naming and Defining Abuse

• Validates girls and womens experiences.
• Naming abuse, as girls and women experience it,
  validates them and their lives.
• Validation can be a catalyst to taking action.

11
Naming and Defining Abuse

• Challenges communities to recognize abusive and
  violent behaviour and to act.
• Recognizes the commitment of local authorities to
  ending violence in the lives of girls and women.
  If women and girls are taken seriously they will
  know they have support when they make changes
  toward ending the violence. If local authorities
  do not take violence against women seriously,
  womens and girls vulnerability to violence is
  increased.

12
Naming and Defining Abuse

• Connects personal experiences to systemic factors
  and barriers.
• Naming violence in all of its forms e.g racism,
  classism, ableism, colonization, homophobia and
  heterosexism, is key to changing the conditions
  that prohibit women and girls from ending the
  violence in their lives.

13
Naming and Defining Abuse

• Gets the message across.
• Socialization can be a harmful process for
  everyone. Men need to challenge themselves to
  take on the responsibility to address male
  violence. Balancing women's collective
  responsibility with men's responsibility is key.

14
Informing Action on Naming

• How does our definition of violence resonate with
  girls/womens experiences?
• Does it consider what makes it difficult to talk
  about violence against women/girls?
• Does the definition consider how violence is
  minimized? Normalized? Mutualized?
• Does it consider the various ways in which women
  and girls are blamed? Does it address these?
• How does the definition focus on systemic issues?
  

15
Womens Experiences Are Shaped by the Context of
Their Lives
16
(No Transcript)
17
Gender and Diversity Situating the Lives of
Girls and Women

• Social inequality shapes womens and girls
  experience of abuse and violence.
• Violence against women and girls is an expression
  of inequality and a perpetuation of it. Framing
  the problem of violence, whether it be "family
  violence", "childhood sexual abuse", "domestic
  violence" in gender-specific terms, identifies
  the gender dynamics and effects of it.

18
Gender and Diversity Situating the Lives of
Girls and Women

• Rural communities are not homogenous they
  comprise girls and women from different cultural
  and economic backgrounds.
• Situating girls' and women's experiences of
  violence and abuse within the contexts of their
  lives means that we recognize and work from the
  knowledge that people live and act from and
  within different perspectives, realities, and
  worlds, bringing a variety and uniqueness of
  perspectives to programs and services.

19
Gender and Diversity Situating the Lives of
Girls and Women

• Social and economic exclusion affects womens and
  girls choices.
• Women need social supports that recognize and see
  them through the difficult time of making change
  poverty limits women's and girls' opportunities
  to leave violent relationships and cultural
  stereotypes affects womens and girls choices.

20
Gender and Diversity Situating the Lives of
Girls and Women

• Building relationships builds strength.
• Coalitions facilitate knowledge about difference
  and responses to violence that recognize
  underlying systemic issues while refusing to
  place responsibility on the shoulders of
  vulnerable girls and women. It brings together
  communities that have traditionally been divided,
  and provides possibilities for working with women
  and men, and girls and boys.

21
Informing Action on Gender and Diversity

• How does policy define inclusion? How is it
  practiced?
• How does policy reflect and address the diverse
  needs of women and girls?
• How does policy deal with the specific needs of
  groups of women and girls?
• How is accessibility addressed?
• Whose language is reflected?
• How does policy address social equality? Are
  constraints addressed?
• How are women and girls involved in development
  and evaluation?

22
(No Transcript)
23
A Rural Community is Composed of Complex
Structures
24
Living in a Rural, Remote, and Socially-Isolated
Community

• Rural women and girls have specific needs.
• All who are abused live in isolation, but rural
  womens and girls rural isolation is exacerbated
  by geography and the patterns of rural life
  women are far from shelters and services police
  jurisdictions are large in rural areas affecting
  response time farm women have a unique
  connection to rural communities and,
  marginalized women and girls must balance the
  need for confidentiality and services that are
  sensitive to their unique circumstances.

25
Living in a Rural, Remote, and Socially-Isolated
Community

• A political economy perspective links geography
  to barriers and problems.
• Focusing on the unique needs of rural women and
  girls, the resources available to those who are
  experiencing violence, and their access to them,
  allows us to understand how a lack of resources
  and infrastructure in rural areas constrains
  women's and girls' self-determination.

26
Living in a Rural, Remote, and Socially-Isolated
Community

• Rural programs address particular rural- based
  social issues.
• Rural communities have the capacity to create
  solutions for change women's connection to one
  another is an important factor in women and
  girls' ability to end violence and abuse and
  informal support networks foster interventions to
  help women and girls leave violent relationships.

27
Living in a Rural, Remote, and Socially-Isolated
Community

• Womens working lives shape their ability to make
  change.
• The nature of girls' and women's working lives,
  unwaged work, and family obligations shape their
  participation in programs. Seasonal employment is
  high in rural areas and many rural communities
  subsist on seasonal work. Women, as well as men,
  rely on seasonal work, part-time, and shift work,
  and these experiences need to be considered in
  implementing better practices.

28
Informing Rural Action

• How does policy
• address values, attitudes, relations and
  practices?
• work to support women and girls?
• make it difficult for women and girls to seek
  support?
• How does policy address the ways in which
  financial resources affect access?
• women's and girls' working lives? (E.g. fishing,
  farming)
• How does policy address social stigma,
  visibility, conflict of interest, privacy?
• support women's connection to others?
• social isolation?

29
Coordinating Services Support Women and Girls Who
are Dealing With Abuse
30
(No Transcript)
31
Womens and Girls Personal and Community Safety

• Safety at home issues.
• Womens choices may lead to further violence.
  Pressure from family may silence womens actions.
  When women are forced to live in dilapidated and
  unsafe housing it jeopardizes their safety and
  the safety of their children.
• Some children try to intervene to protect their
  mother from abuse. This action puts them at risk
  because they may anger the abusive parent.

32
Womens and Girls Personal and Community Safety

• Safety in community issues.
• Increased levels of social scrutiny in smaller
  communities make women who are experiencing
  violence wary about attending programs.
• Racism and colonization affect womens and girls'
  access to services.
• Community institutions may perpetuate male
  dominance over women, discouraging women and
  girls from ending the abuse.

33
Womens and Girls Personal and Community Safety

• Safety at school issues.
• Although girls may realize that violence and
  abuse are wrong, they may not report it because
  they fear being labelled a "rat" and consequently
  isolated from their peer group.
• The normalization of violence in school
  activities, such as sports, does not provide a
  safe environment for boys to address violence.

34
Womens and Girls Personal and Community Safety

• Safety at work.
• Rural women who work in violence prevention may
  feel threatened and vulnerable to violence.
• Programs that are not obligated to respond upon
  disclosure, discourage women and increase the
  risk of violence.
• Perceived as not being as important as other
  programs and services, in a climate of
  downsizing, resources may not be distributed to
  workplace violence prevention.

35
Informing Action on Safety

• How does policy address the safety needs of
  women/girls at home/ work/ school/ community?
• What safety issues do marginalized girls and
  women face in programs and how does policy
  address them?
• How does policy address privacy and
  confidentiality?
• How does policy provide for information
  dissemination?
• How does the program/service/agency work with
  local girls and womens organizations?

36
(No Transcript)
37
Local Options and Choices Effect Positive and
Long-term Change
38
Intervention Making a Difference in the Lives of
Women and Girls

• Getting the word out.
• Information that is prepared in plain language
  reflects sensitivity. It ensures that
  information does not discriminate against age
  but, instead, reflects differences between girls'
  and women's experiences.

39
Intervention Making a Difference in the Lives of
Women and Girls

• Guiding the voice of experience.
• There may be significant differences between a
  programs or services analysis of violence and
  abuse and that of the women and girls who have
  experienced it. Girls' experiences of violence
  are also different than women's because they are
  legally dependent on the family and, therefore,
  it is important to maintain a distinction between
  the barriers that women and girls face.

40
Intervention Making a Difference in the Lives of
Women and Girls

• Supporting girls and women throughout their
  lives.
• Everyone needs a place to tell her story. The
  needs of rural girls, women, and seniors presents
  possibilities for good connections.
• Programs and services delivered outside of rural
  areas discourage women and girls accessibility by
  forcing them to leave their family, friends, and
  community if they want to end the abuse and
  violence.

41
Intervention Making a Difference in the Lives of
Women and Girls

• Prevention through education and community
  building.
• Education is key for ending violence and abuse.
• Everyone is part of the solution to ending
  violence and abuse, from getting the word out,
  to raising awareness, and transforming the
  conditions that prohibit girls and women from
  making choices.

42
Informing Action on Intervention

• How are women and girls made aware of programs
  and services?
• How are appropriate methods of creating
  awareness determined?
• How is feedback incorporated? How does feedback
  effect change?
• How does policy address issues of local control
  and responsibility for program development,
  implementation, and evaluation?
• How does policy coordinate multi-levelled
  approaches that address individual,
  institutional, and social change?

43
Ending Violence Involves Connecting Individual
and Social Change
44
(No Transcript)
45
Feminist Social Action Supporting Individual and
Social Change

• Supporting womens and girls empowerment and
  independence requires building supportive
  environments.
• Women and girls need supportive environments for
  doing the painful and difficult work of
  understanding how social norms, messages, and
  practices shape how they feel about themselves
  and how they take up oppressive definitions.

46
Feminist Social Action Supporting Individual and
Social Change

• Making the connection between the personal and
  the social involves exploring the concepts of
  equality, privilege, and resistance.
• Addressing resistance is a key challenge in the
  process of raising awareness and promoting
  individual and social change. Feminism may not
  fit within everyones perspective. On the other
  hand, girls and women may support the notion that
  feminism is irrelevant and that they are free to
  do whatever they choose. Boys and men may also
  want to hold on to this view but from a
  perspective of not wanting to acknowledge their
  male privilege.

47
Feminist Social Action Supporting Individual and
Social Change

• Connecting the individual to the social is
  critical to understanding the work that must be
  done to transform girls and womens lives.
• Supporting women's and girls' empowerment entails
  education about violence against women, changing
  societal attitudes about gender and the family,
  and providing options for women and girls that
  allow them to connect personal experiences of
  violence to social change and action.

48
Feminist Social Action Supporting Individual and
Social Change

• Change takes time the sustainability of violence
  prevention programs and services requires
  sufficient resources.
• Many programs do not have sustainable, multi-
  year funding. This interrupts the provision of
  services to the detriment of girls and women
  seeking support.
• Insufficient funding negatively affects
  possibilities of transformation.

49
Informing Feminist Social Action

• How does policy support women and girls to
  recognize other social issues that might help
  them to deal with the abuse and violence their
  lives?
• education?
• housing?
• How does policy address social constraints?
• How does policy promote individual and social
  change?
• How does policy address social action?
• How does policy address coalition building?
• How does policy address sustainability?
• How does policy support institutional
  transformation?