On this International Women’s Day, we celebrate the amazing potential that lies within every woman to be a catalyst for change in her community. The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has long capitalized on this tremendous potential but also knows that a successful program is about much more than just giving women a seat at the table. It is about looking at the whole table, the entire community, and making sure that the women around the table are empowered to actually share in the banquet.
An excellent tool for ensuring that women are empowered by
humanitarian and development projects is called “gender analysis.” Gender is
about both men and women and analysis is about collecting all the facts. Therefore,
gender analysis is about collecting all the facts about the differences between
men and women and how their different roles, rights, resources and
responsibilities might affect a proposed project.
Let’s look at an example of how gender differences can
affect the success of a program:
A new program is hoping to improve child nutrition by providing
training to women. They decide to advertise these trainings in the market
between Villages A and B. In Village A, women traditionally go to the market to
buy food, but in Village B, men traditionally have this responsibility. Therefore, only
women from Village A learn about and attend the training.
After the training a woman from Village A wants to improve the nutrition of her children but knows that traditionally her husband gets to eat first and often only leaves small amounts of the less nutritious food for the children. She doesn’t feel she has the authority to ask him to leave more food for
the children and is therefore unable to make a difference.
Conducting a gender analysis would have revealed these different
responsibilities around purchasing food and the different roles around
consuming food. Educating both men and women and advertising in more accessible locations would have more likely resulted in changed behavior and improved
child nutrition.
Here are some real world examples of how analyzing gender differences help improved a project:
- In Bangladesh, a project was set up to encourage women to open small shops in the marketplace. They soon realized, however, that traditionally women were not allowed in the marketplace. The project created a space for a “women’s only” market and now more than 4,000 women are running small shops there.
- A clinic for pregnant women in India had very low attendance and wanted to reach more women. After an analysis they realized that men were not well educated about the importance of health care during pregnancy. The clinic hired male outreach workers to educate men in the community. Now, women whose husbands are trained are 6-7 times more likely to regularly attend the clinic.
- An agricultural education program in Nigeria assumed that men made most farm management decisions and provided training only to men. The program realized that the trainings were not increasing agricultural production. Analysis revealed that women had a larger role in production than they first thought. They hired female trainers and began providing training specifically to women. It resulted in increased production as well as an increased standard of living for female farmers.
These examples illustrate how important it is to look at gender differences when planning projects. Conducting gender analysis can ensure that both men and women have an equal place at the table and that they both have the opportunity to be positive forces for change in their community.
Learn more about WFP’s gender policy.-Katie Campbell
Public Policy Assistant
Friends of WFP
Recent Comments