Project Title: Strengthening the National Commission on the Status of Women: A consultative process
By: Aurat Foundation and Shirkat Gah, Pakistan
Overall Goal
The attainment of gender equality and good governance in Pakistan by ensuring the effective functioning of the National Commission on the Status of Women as a strong and independent statutory body with a clear mandate and enforcing authority.
Research Question
In what way does the strategy used create ownership of the mandate and powers of the Commission within civil society groups; legitimacy for NCSW; and accountability of NCSW to women's interests?
Strategies
• Experience-sharing with representatives of some similar commissions in other countries;
• Consultative process at provincial and national levels;
• Lobbying for law reform.
Activities
Main activities undertaken are as follows;
1.Two Planning Meetings (between AF and SG): 10 April 2002 and 29 May 2001 in Islamabad.
2.International Conference on National Commissions on Women – Towards Strengthening the Pakistan National Commission on the Status of Women: 28-29 July 2001, in Islamabad.
3.Four Provincial Consultations
   NWFP Consultation: in Peshawar, on 25 August 2001
   Punjab Consultation: in Lahore, on 28 August 2001
   Sindh Consultation:   in Karachi, on 30 August 2001
   Balochistan Consultation: in Quetta, on 30 August 2001
4.National Consultation on the Pakistan National Commission on the Status of Women: 18 January 2002, in Islamabad.
5.Working Group deliberations:The activity was replaced by individual meetings and continuous exchange of papers/suggestions between Aurat Foundation and Shirkat Gah for developing final recommendations
 

Project Title: Gender and Decentralized Planning
By: SAKHI, India
Goal and objectives of the action research:
The goal is to intervene in the decentralized planning process now underway in Kerala so as to make gender concerns central to the decision making regarding allocation of resources and to secure gender practical and strategic interests through planning.
The project is planned in two phases.
• In Phase I (prior to the October 2000 local government elections) the objective was to undertake a detailed analysis of whether gender was a concern and criteria in the general projects undertaken in 2 Gram panchayats; study and document how the local bodies handled the mandatory provision of 10% for women's projects; identify the key institutional actors and strategies that facilitated the design and implementation of programmes with a gender perspective.
• In Phase II of the project one objective is to intervene and work on gender sensitive decentralized planning process in two selected Panchayats with a view to influencing budgetary allocations for generating livelihoods for women, focus on women's health issues and programmes to resist violence against women. A second objective is to engage in state level consultation to develop tools and indicators for gender based planning and also advocate for gender planning through membership in state level networks.
 

Project Title: Women Accessing Power
By Gender Advocacy Programme (GAP), South Africa
Action research project
The main objective of the action research was to explore what kind of activities would ensure that working class women's concerns are given priority by elected political representatives, and what kind of activities would make an impact on parliamentary processes.
Research Questions, Strategies and Activities
The action research posed the following questions and undertook the following activities in two phases.Phase one assessed previous visits to parliament asking the following questions and undertaking the following activities:
Question 1: To what extent does taking poor women to parliament empower them to access parliamentarians and to ensure that women MPs are responsive to poor women's interests?
Question 2: What changes in strategy are required? What other strategies will ensure poor women's interests are addressed through the parliamentary process?
In order to address these questions GAP undertook a documentation study and conducted interviews with community women, women MPs and GAP staff. In these discussions GAP assessed the visits conducted up to 2001, explored the interests and concerns of community women, and explored strategies for addressing these concerns. GAP then compiled and discussed the findings with the community women and with GAP staff, and on the basis of the findings developed a new modus operandi for future visits to parliament.
Phase two involved reformulating the project, organizing a visit to parliament on the basis of this reformulated model and assessing the new form of visit. GAP was aware that the new form of visit which moved to a community approach, based on agendas set by community women and involving lobbying authorities other than parliament would pose challenges for GAP as an organization. In the light of this the following question was posed and the following activities conducted as part of phase. 2
Question 3: What will the impact be of encouraging poor women to define their own agenda on these visits to parliament on poor women, on GAP, on women MPs?
In order to address this question GAP arranged a visit to parliament by women from two communities in a way which centered on an agenda defined by these women. Together with the women from these two communities GAP assessed the new form of visit to parliament, and attempted to provide ongoing support to women.

Project Title: Enabling elected women members to participate in the Development Committees at Grassroots level
Goal of the action research project
The goal of the action research project was to enable the elected women representatives to directly participate in development planning and resource allocation at Union Parishads so as to make them effective representatives of their constituencies.
Objectives envisaged at the outset action research project
Build capacity of elected women of eleven Union Parishad representatives in one particular thana (administrative division) in planning local development programmes from a gender perspective.
Enable them to activate and direct the functioning of the Social Development Committees (a government stipulated structure within the UP) in the Union Parishads.
Enable the women representatives to mobilize resources to implement the plans.
Create a gender sensitive environment within the administrative structures and the general community, which would be supportive of planning and implementing gender development programmes.
Strategies and activities Panned at the Outset
The initial strategies and activities of the action research project were:

1. Resource Mapping: Survey, using PRA techniques

2. Activating the Social Development Committee: Consultation meeting, follow up, consultation with elected women members about the committees and rules and regulations of the government

3. Training & Capacity: Building Training workshops

4. Advocacy and lobbying with the constituency members as well as building alliances with Government of Bangladesh ministries and administrative offices to set up networks which would facilitate incorporating gender concerns in micro level planning: Meetings and workshops

5. Process documentation and dissemination. Dissemination at different institutional levels

The assumptions behind formulating the objectives and strategies and a subsequent change of plan
After the first batch of elected women representatives came to hold office, a government order was issued, stipulating that each Union Parishad Chairman has to form a SDC under his jurisdiction, with a woman member as the chair of the committee. This was to ensure the participation of the women members in development activities undertaken by the Union Parishad. Since these committees were supposed to be headed by women, PRIP had planned to develop a model, which would enable women members to operationalize these committees and take leadership roles in planning and implementing development projects as mandated through these committees. The assumption was that if women can be trained and supported to plan and implement development projects at local level, this would establish them as effective representatives of their constituencies and also enable them to bring about gender just allocation of resources through the development planning.

However, once the project was started, PRIP realized that the initial plan of activating the Social Development Committee (SDC) would have to be revised. They found that in the Union Parishads they were working in, in most cases the SDCs were not formed at all. Had the government order been properly implemented in the eleven UPs in PRIP Trust's target area thirty-four SDCs should have been formed. However, in reality only six such committees were formed in two Union Parishads.

Even in the case of committees that were formed, the local UP chairman had not followed the official procedures correctly. Meanwhile a national election was declared and the entire administrative machinery got busy in preparing for and managing the elections. Even when the elections were over, the widespread incidence of violence following the elections made it difficult for PRIP and its NGO partner in the locality to initiate formation of new social development committees. Moreover, the new government that came to power seemed to lack commitment to the idea of Social Development Committees and these Committees were not allocated any resources for implementing the development plans.

Given these circumstances PRIP Trust revisited and reformulated the research model and decided to work with the other women headed committees of the Union Parishads, along with the SCDs that had already been formed. Thus the first two objectives of the action research project were revised as follows:

• To build capacity of elected women representatives in planning of local development programmes from gender perspective at the Union Parishad level

• To enable them to activate and direct the functioning of women headed development committees in the Union Parishads

Institutional actors involved in the project

1. Elected representative: the elected women members of 11 Union Parishads of Faridpur Sadar Upazilla, chairmen, male members,

2. State agencies: Administrative functionaries of Government of Bangladesh, such as LGRD Engineer, Project Implementation Officer, UNO (Upazilla Nirbahi Officer) and the Deputy Commissioner

3. Civil society: Lead NGO in the locality – Racine in collaboration with whom PRIP Trust implemented the project; other NGOs and locally influential people

Rationale for working in Faridpur Sadar Upazilla
Since the mid-19080s a pioneering women's organization, Saptagram has been working in the area on empowering and mobilizing women. Most of the women members that this action research project worked with were members of Saptagram.

Faridpur is one of the districts of Bangladesh where development investment has been very high. Development investment on local government in Faridpur has the objectives of eliminating rural poverty and monitoring socio-economic advancement of the poor and disadvantaged, especially women.

Therefore the project could explore how far traditional community mobilisation initiatives as well as state directed development investment actually facilitate enhancing women's effective participation in formal political bodies.

Research Question
The research question of the project was to what extent did the activities to build the capacity of elected women influence and activate the women headed development committees and development plans?

Activities and outcomes
1. Resource Identification Survey and Participatory Resource mapping to help the women members identify resources as well as problems so that they can begin to address the problems from a gender perspective

• Through participatory resource mapping women members could collect more representative information about the available resources in the area, than was possible from the formal questionnaire survey and consultation with governments departments

• Through the exercise, women members learnt the tools of resource mapping as well as built their capacity to analyze, which helped in building their confidence and also gave them the experience of working together as a group

• The exercise also created an interface between the women members and other stakeholders such as the Chairpersons of the UPs and the government officials

2. Situation analysis
Identified how the ways in which the UPs functioned excluded the women members:

• The entire system of inclusion of women in the UPs is both structurally biased against women and non-transparent

• The UPs in general are often quite disempowered as there is no clarity regarding devolution or decentralization of power and governance

• Most committees of the UPs were non-functional as the committee members, especially women, were ignorant of the complexities of government procedural rules about the committees and were also unskilled in budgeting, planning, resource allocation and resource mobilization.

• Most male membership of UPs were reluctant to include the women members as heads of the development committees despite the government rule in this regard. The Chairman, secretary and male members routinely kept women members in dark about the government guidelines stipulating inclusion of women members in all committees, as heads in some and as members in the male headed ones.

• The development committees in general have no autonomy but are controlled by the Chairmen of the UPs who delegate the women members to the less important committees and in any case take arbitrary decisions without consulting them

• Whether a woman member's name will be included in a committee depends on the Chairman's patronage and whim, with complete disregard to government circulars.

• A number of case studies on women elected members were prepared depicting and analyzing the situation on the ground as part of the situation analysis

3. Meetings and workshop for Capacity Building and Advocacy
a) A central workshop with 33 women members

• Status and positions of the woman UP members were identified

• Constraints for the participation in the development committees were explored

• Capacity building needs were assessed

• An action plan was developed

b) Development planning workshops at Union level with Chairman, women members and other members

• Built wider acceptance and ownership of the action plan prepared by the women members

• Engaged the UP members and Chairmen in the development planning process

c) Follow-up workshops at the community (constituency) level

• Initiated the process of participation of the community people in the development planning

• Created a broader support base for women members

4. Review workshop and opinion sharing meeting at Upazilla level

• Dissemination of findings of the action research project and collecting feedback from different stakeholders

• Opinion of some section of the stakeholders was mobilized supporting the need for urgent attention to the issue of enhancing women's political participation

Specific findings and general conclusions
The most significant finding from this action research was that there is a fundamental structural flaw in the way the seats have been reserved for women in local government in Bangladesh. As a result, women who have been elected under the quota system in local government have to operate with unequal resources and authority as compared to their male colleagues elected from the general seats.

Each Union Parishads has nine wards. Each ward has one elected member. When seats were reserved for direct election of women members to the Union Parishad, instead of reserving a third of the total number of existing UP seats, for every three wards one extra seat was created which was then reserved women candidates. Therefore, each UP has three women members elected from seats reserved for women and nine general elected members, that is twelve members in all, apart from the UP Chairman who is elected directly by the members.

Women members experience two structural handicaps as a result of this system. First, they have to look after three wards with the same resources as the general members who are in charge of only one ward. Therefore, right from the start they have to compete with their male colleagues with unequal resources. Second, as the general members are often extremely territorial about their own wards, the women members have to push really hard to get anything done in the three wards that are under her. Thus the women have no real authority or jurisdiction over the wards that they are supposed to serve. This anomaly has resulted because the government made the constitutional reform dealing with women's quota in local government, as a concession to the women's movements' persistent demand without the necessary political will to devise an effective structure.
The second significant finding of this research was that this lack of real constitutional authority is not restricted to the women members elected under the quota system, but plagues the entire local government system. In fact, the research found that the process of decentralisation of governance, and devolution of political power is incomplete in Bangladesh. The authority of members of the national Parliament and that of locally elected representatives at Union Parishads or Pouroshabha levels are not clearly demarcated. As things stand now, the members of the national Parliament have much more power, backed as they are by powerful political party machinery, and holding much larger development budgets. Consequently, local representatives have no constitutional authority to exercise power and rather than protecting the interests of the local constituencies that elect them, they are often found to be held accountable by the Members of Parliaments for their own political agenda.
This confusion over demarcation of power and responsibility spills over to the administration and management of development programmes at the local level. The research found that locally no one in the governance institutions had any clear idea about who is in charge of governance, that is policy and decision making regarding resource allocation, distribution, and management, - whether the national MPs, bureaucrats of different government departments or the local elected members.

Given this overlapping roles and responsibilities public accountability is bound to fail unless this structure is changed. The MPs have power without local accountability and local members instead of safeguarding the interests of people from the locality, whom they represent, have to accede to the demands of the MPs. In effect, power remains centralized and largely undemocratic. One dramatic example of this lack of public accountability in local governance was that no local government representative protested against the recent spate of atrocities against women, following the last national elections.

As the local representatives, particularly women, fail to show results or advance local interests, many women candidates feel insecure about seeking re-election, fearing that they will fail to get elected, or if elected will fail to deliver. Consequently, women's political representation does not get institutionalized.

In a wider context this action research establishes that unless the formal political institutions, to which women seek to get elected, are truly democratized, reservation of seats alone cannot guarantee enhancement of women's political participation.

The Gender, Citizenship and Governance (GCG) Programme is a framework to facilitate innovative gender and governance initiatives in South Asia and Southern Africa.

This website enables you to find the people, issues, resources and strategies needed for women's social action.

The Gender, Citizenship and Governance programme is initiated by KIT Gender of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the Netherlands and sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Dutch Foreign Ministry. http://www.kit.nl/gcg/default.asp

Project Title: Engendering Eden: assessing the linkages between gender & ICDPs

Project Brief
Engendering Eden is a two year research programme funded by DFID's ESCOR fund. It aims to achieve a better understanding of the linkages between gender issues and ICDPs (Integrated Conservation and Development Projects) and indicate ways forward to achieve a more equitable and 'successful' conservation and development process. Launched in October, 2000, the programme is being led by The International Famine Centre, Cork (headed by Fiona Flintan), in collaboration with conservation and development NGOs and institutions, including WWF; IUCN; CARE; Rhodes University, Grahamstown; TNC and IIED.

Rationale for the research programme:

• Increasing emphasis on the linkage of conservation and development;

• Realization by NGOs and donor agencies that to achieve this, social issues such as gender equity and the marginalization of women need to be addressed; and Inexperience and lack of knowledge in dealing with such issues, particularly within conservation organizations.

Objectives:
To provide an assessment of the role of gender for enhancing the social and environmental sustainability of ICDPs and to develop a more empirical understanding of how gender shapes the ways local people participate, invest in and benefit from them.

The programme will focus on six sets of key questions:

1. What gender differences/inequities exist in local communities involved in ICDPs? What other social divisions are important in relation to natural resource use and its conservation?

2. How do these differences/inequities affect the way men and women participate in, contribute to, and benefit from ICDPs?

3. To what extent and how are these gender differences being addressed and accounted for in the planning, implementation and evaluation of ICDPs?

4. Where gender issues/inequities have been addressed, what has worked and/or not worked? To what degree are other social divisions important? What lessons can be learnt?

5. Where gender issues/inequities have not been addressed, what are the implications for project 'success'? What lessons can be learnt?

6. How successful is the ICDP model in addressing gender inequities in relation to poverty alleviation, and biodiversity conservation? Do changes/adjustments need to be made to achieve more successful links between conservation and a more equitable development of local communities? How can the ICDP process be better guided and achieved?

Outputs of the project:

1. Two published regional studies based on experience in Africa and Asia/South East Asia. They will encompass a comprehensive literature review; shared experiences from NGOs and development agencies; and at least three detailed case-study analyses in each study.

2. An overview document summarizing and discussing the regional studies, plus input from experiences in other parts of the world. This will include a study/comparison with two CBNRM projects where women have been specifically targeted.

3. Training of NGO staff in gender and natural resource management and assessment of individual projects.

4. The development of a network of people/organizations with knowledge and experience on gender issues in relation to ICDPs to allow a better sharing and dissemination of information.

5. It is hoped that additional funding will be obtained to produce a training manual providing resources for practitioners and trainers to address and accommodate gender issues at the project level. It will be a practical guide of 'better practice' and guidelines, illustrated by 'real life' examples, for use in the field.