SII Women's Empowerment Global Phase 2 Presentation to CARE USA Board 2006

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Strategic Impact Inquiry on Womens
Empowerment Phase 2 Report A Portfolio on the
Cusp
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The Bottom Line of Phase 2

• a portfolio on the rise, the payoff from five
  years of investment
• Important empowerment gains strongly focused at
  the level of womens individual capabilities as
  we first reported last year for more that 20
  million men, women, and children over the past
  decade or more.
• More substantive and wider changes in structural
  aspects of womens marginalization and in the
  social relations through which lasting changes in
  womens empowerment will be achieved.

• Yet
• a portfolio riddled with missed opportunities to
  achieve deeper, faster, and more long lasting
  changes in poverty and social justice.

• Two broad changes will go far
• Deeper understanding of womens own preferred
  pathways and strategies, and mens resistance,
  while not being timid about questioning these
  through consciousness raising approaches.
• Become an ambidextrous organization, one that
  deploys more robust long-term program strategies
  and more effective knowledge sharing and learning
  to achieve both significant short-term
  improvements and the lasting impacts on poverty
  and social injustice our Vision demands.

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Phase 2 Womens Empowerment Impact Research By
the Numbers
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What Good Projects Do Well, Their Impacts, Their
Opportunity Costs and Harms
Good womens empowerment projects
that lead to impacts that are
and create harms such as
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CARE Bangladesh - RMP
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CARE Bangladesh Rural Maintenance Project

• Technical focus on road maintenance, project
  coverage noted in terms of population served by
  roads. Major change noted in SII is the
  acceptability now of women working outside their
  homes, but associated challenges not addressed.
• 166,750 women employed over 23 years in RMAs,
  show increase in incomes through savings
  investment, and some improvement in social
  status. Yet use of solidarity groups since
  mid-1990s could have increased numbers 3-5 fold,
  and resulted in more widespread social and
  political gains for women
• Women staff known for being first on motor bikes
  in Bangladesh but used only to supervise and
  monitor activities, not to reflect on
  methodology. Staff involved in SII action
  research produce as their learning from this,
  however, a set of recommendations with far
  reaching implications as project is closing
• Capacities built of Union Parishads across
  Bangladesh, but no ongoing engagement on gender
  issues. Leverage potential used randomly by other
  CARE projects to gain acceptance by UP officials
  because of legitimacy provided by RMP

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CARE Guatemala - FODEMH
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CARE Guatemala - FODEMH

• Technical Diversion Plan to support the position
  and voice of a nascent Mayan womens citizenship
  rights organization, converted to more classic
  organizational strengthening and (literacy)
  service delivery project.
• Accountability Conflict Donor-required creation
  of a new development organization (ADIMH) from an
  existing womens movement (FODEMH). Growing
  pains, internal conflicts, and deep staff-partner
  tensions arising from results management.
• Spectacular Results ADIMH grows from 10 to 110
  members, and reaches 8,000 women with cascading
  rights training, and 1,350 with literacy training
  (70 literacy achievement among enrollees).
• Weak Politicial Voice Platform and capacity for
  policy advocacy on wider womens issues not
  developed advocacy alliances hostage to
  inter-organizational rivalries.
• Mission Shift? ADIMH seen as solid development
  partner (GTZ, CEFA), but not financially
  sustainable at projects end, and in competition
  rather than coalition with wider womens and
  mayan political movements.

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How Broad and Deep is the Performance Gap?
13 of projects in one sample (of evaluations)
conducted gender analysis
2 of CPIN projects did gender analysis as part
of project design 12 had an explicit gender
strategy 1 did gender training for partner
organizations 1 raised awareness about violence
against women 9 raised awareness on womens
rights.
Of 32 project proposals Only about 10
articulated empowerment goals with a clear,
context specific strategy and measures backing
them up.
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• Underlying causes of gender inequity identified
  and change pathways explicitly stated
• Programs increase in coherence over time they
  are cumulative of analytical and experiential
  learning. Projects are deployed within this
  framework to complement each other
• Accountability to key local constituencies
  women, partners, government for impact (not
  project deliverables) is paramount, and local
  reputation is crucial
• Women organize and connect horizontally and
  vertically to achieve social and political
  influence
• Explicit strategies bring women to engage with
  men in the home, community and external
  institutions
• Risk taking is critical to success, and the
  continuing action-reflection cycle and management
  of this knowledge results in short and longer
  term impact and brands CARE as a knowledge
  organization.

Small changes, if they add up to anything
coherently, it is just luck. We can be more
strategic than that. - Andrea, Bangladesh
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Village Savings and Loans, Poverty, and Social
Justice
strongly individual, psychological,
asset/service Learning of MFI -
reversible -Workload and violence -Gender roles
unchanged/exacerbated
strongly ind., psych., asset/service
focused household roles start shifting
Seedlings of deeper change -Reversible -worklo
ad/violence -sustained learning between
projects -Little risk taking
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From Good to Great in Action
As underlying causes of poverty and gender
inequity are identified, strategies selected
reflect an explicit change pathway Bangladesh
Social Development Unit and Community power
mapping and institutional analysis (Nijera,
etc) Burundi Dialogues Valorisants
Projects are positioned in broader and
longer-term learning programs for impact on
gender inequality and UCPs . Shift accountability
from vertical (to donors) to local (to
communities and to women) CARE Asia Women and
Girls strategy supporting COs in re-thinking
their work as programs Niger gender equity
program, with MMD as a key hook.
Programs help women to organize in connections of
solidarity, around agendas of strategic
change India CASHE connecting women beyond
self-help through Solidarity Group
methodology Sudan Womens Rights and Leadership
Promotion building a womens agenda for peace
(next years SII)
Explicit plans and strategies for women to
engage, collaborate with, and challenge men and
other powerful actors/institutions Peru Civil
Society Strengthening (proposal) positioning
women and womens organizations in municipal
policy Bangladesh Nijera/VAW Ethiopia FGC
Eradication project
Managaement shares in and and rewards responsible
risk taking and institutional learning India,
Vietnam Inner Spaces, Outer Faces
Initiative Reflective Practices Exercises/SII
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What Staff are Saying
This is very empowering of local level staff and
partners. It requires us to value front line
staff much more if we do this learning
systematically.
The SII offered an opportunity to build a culture
of critical inquiryto take back the thinking
role we hadlet slide.
I think it is great, I would like to see more of
this type of approach as a normal part of our
program cycle.  I think that evaluations could be
of a much higher quality and really designed for
our learning (rather than for donor reporting). 
I think the process brings new challenges to
teams, new quality of discussions
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Qualitative Assessment of CARE VSL impacts
on Womens Empowerment and Poverty Eradication
Agency, structure, relations
NIG
CASHE
Empowerment
TANZ
Agency level
Mali
Lifted out of poverty
No apparent Or very minimal gains
Poverty
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Forms of Empowerment
Political Social Economic
structure
relations
agency