SII Women's Empowerment Global Presentation to Donors on Assessing the Quality and Impact of our Work 2006

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• Principles/Policies
• Standard Systems
• Special Studies

From Results-Based Management to Knowledge For
Impact
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Whos Missing????
Accountability
For Results
To Whom?
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CI Programming Principles
 1. Promote empowerment 2. Work with partners 3.
Ensure accountability and promote
responsibility 4. Address discrimination 5.
Promote non-violent conflict resolution 6. Seek
sustainable results
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Program Quality Digital Library and Steering
Committee
Sector Good Practices Design, Monitoring, and
Evaluation practices
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Fat
Big
Deal
So CARE has lots of Policies Standard
procedures Knowledge harvesting, storage, and
sharing systems Process tools Advice on good
practice
How do we know anything about our projects
outputs and longer-term impacts on underlying
causes of poverty and social exclusion, such as
gender inequality?
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Strategic Impact Inquiry on Womens
Empowerment Phase 2 The Courage to Change
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Strategic Impact Inquiry as a Core Business
Function
Goal Deepen a culture of learning and critical
inquiry through
Accountability
Continuous Improvement
Empowering Analysis
Offer stakeholders in and out of CARE evidence to
assess our work
Use participatory, rights-based methods that are
empowering in themselves
Research for organizational action. Aggressively
share lessons with others
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The SII on Womens Empowerment
A Multi-Year Commitment (Phases I, II, III)
Investment of Organizations Own Resources (About
1 million over three years)
Potent Mix of Methods, Indicators, and Approaches

• In depth field research (20 countries)
• Self-Assessment Desk Reviews
• Participatory Impact Dialogues
• Promising Practices Review
• Meta-analysis of 31 evaluations from all regions
• Analysis of qualitative data from more than 400
  CARE projects
• Analysis of 31 proposals
• Gender practices review in Asia Region
• Secondary literature reviews (at multiple levels)

Strong Emphasis on Local Definitions of
Empowerment
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Defining Womens Empowerment
We understand empowerment as the sum total of
changes needed for a woman to realize her full
human rights the interplay of changes in
her own aspirations and capabilities (agency)
Specific Indicators Or Important Changes
the environment that surrounds and conditions her
choices (structure)
the power relations through which she must
negotiate her path (relations)
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Empowerment should be more than a woman doing
more it should reflect the responsibility of
other actors and institutions to make it possible
for her to exercise her rights. - East Africa
Team
Evidence From SII Why Gains Are Only Sustainable
If They Occur in all Three Dimensions
This SIIs survey of our impacts on womens
empowerment points to a clear line and a
qualitative difference between the many
interventions that we successfully deploy to help
women to get along in a mans world,
versusmaking that world more fundamentally
equal. - SII Synthesis Report, Phase 2

• Increase Womens
• Incomes By
• Organizing savings and
• loan groups
• Microlending
• Training

Lasting Impact on Womens Empowerment and
Gender Inequality Income gains will be
sustained and grow.
Women who are not allowed to join groups in first
place?
Women whose profits are taken by husbands?
Women abused for being uppity?
Family/Kin Norms

• Holding the powerful to account
• Mens support groups
• Facilitating new dialogue between women and men

Womens Rights Laws
Gender Norms/Attitudes
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Village Savings and Loans, Poverty, and Social
Justice
strongly individual, psychological gains, short
term asset/service gains - Reversible -Workload
and violence -Gender roles unchanged/exacerbated
Strongly ind., psych., asset/service
focused Household roles start shifting
Seedlings of deeper change -Reversible -Workloa
d/violence -Sustained learning between
projects -Little risk taking
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CARE VSL Portfolio Relation of Womens
Empowerment and Economic Impacts
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The Bottom Line of Phase 2 Research

• a portfolio on the rise, the payoff from five
  years of investment
• Important empowerment gains strongly focused at
  the level of womens individual capabilities
  for more that 20 million men, women, and children
  over the past decade or more increases in
  self-esteem, health, income, group organization,
  knowledge, education
• In a small subset of our gender programs about
  15 -- we are having deep and important impacts
  not just on the individual level but also at the
  level of structure and relations.

And the 15 vanguard now allows us to
understand What it takes the good practices and
approaches that all our programs need to adopt
to have lasting impact on gender inequality
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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.

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Results-Based Management, Yes.
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Thank You!