CARE’s Women’s Empowerment SII:

Process, Lessons and Applications in the Program Approach

Michael Drinkwater and Diana WuProgram Approaches

March 04, 2010

PART I: The Women’s Empowerment Strategic Impact

Inquiry

Process and Lessons

We seek a world of hope, tolerance and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security.

CARE will be a global force and a partner of choice within a worldwide movement dedicated to ending poverty. We will be known everywhere for

our unshakable commitment to the dignity of people.

CARE International Programming Principles

1: Promote Empowerment2: Work in partnership with others3: Ensure Accountability and

Promote Responsibility4: Oppose Discrimination5: Oppose Violence6: Seek Sustainable Results

Starting Points:CARE’s Vision & Principles

Driving our Discourse: Strategic Impact Inquiry at CARE

GoalDeepen a culture of learning and critical inquiry through:

Accountability Offer stakeholders in

and out of CARE evidence to assess

our work

Continuous Improvement Empowering Analysis Use participatory,

rights-based methods that are empowering in

themselves

Research for organizational action.

Aggressively share lessons with others

ADVOCACYPROGRAMQUALITY

RIGHTS BASED

APPROACH

The SII on Women’s Empowerment: In a Nutshell

What contributions are CARE programs making, if any, to the

empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equity?

What internal, organizational variables are associated with higher –

and lower – levels of impact on women’s empowerment and improving gender equity? Year 1 - Launching

•In depth site research (5 sites); Desk analyses of evaluations, proposals, C-Pin

Year 2 - Broadening•In depth site research (24 sites); Desk analysis of C-pin, Promising Practices Inquiry

Year 3 - Probing•In-depth comparative research (6 sites) on empowerment and HIV/AIDS risk

Year 4- Knowledge Sharing•Summarizing, producing program guidance, publishing and promoting externally

24 countries35 (+1000) projects+350 staff; 5 CI members

Defining Women’s EmpowermentWe understand empowerment as the sum total of changes needed for a woman to realize her full human rights – the interplay of changes in:

in her own aspirations and capabilities (agency),

in the environment that surrounds and conditions her choices

(structure),

in the power relations through which she must negotiate her path

(relations).

Any individual indicator of progress can only be properly assessed and valued

in the context of how it advances that whole.

Good women’s empowerment projects typically…

…Deliver tangible, technical, gender

disaggregated outputs under

contractual obligations

…Focus on women’s capabilities, skills, knowledge without trying to influence

gender norms

…Begin and frequently ends with a donor

contract (a “project”)

…that lead to impacts that are…

…strongly individual, psychological, asset/service

focused

…able to mitigate the effects of poverty and

social injustice, not eradicate/eliminate them

…”seedlings” for such sustainable

impact on underlying causes

of poverty

…and create harms such as…

…reversible gains; longer

term irrelevance of output and

effects

…increased workloads and

violence against women and girls

…Male abdication and

feelings of worthlessness

…Weak sustained learning between projects

What Good Projects Do:impacts, opportunity costs and

harms

So what’s it gonna take?Understanding context (and questioning our

assumptions about it)

• Equipping staff to face internalized and entrenched gender norms

• Building community with others –movements, NGOs, donors

• Challenging and strengthening a collective understanding of underlying causes of gender inequity in a given context, analyzing policies north & south

• Working to truly understand the specific population groups we seek to serve

So what’s it gonna take?Program Design (planning a coherent system of

actions over time, for impact), and

• Articulate a transformational goal making empowerment explicit

• Proposing a theory of social change (broadly), and hypotheses of what CARE/partners can do to shape impact across all TOC components

• Building dynamic learning system to track progress: method & indicators

• Testing / revision of the TOC – through staff reflection and external challenge

• Ground global indicators of key change domains in local realities, including indicators for agency/structure/relations-related aspects.

So what’s it gonna take?Project Design and Activities (as a reinforcing

system of entry points for change )

• Seek entry points to maximize chances of engaging/learning about local communities, building relations of trust and interdependence, and bringing opposing interests together.

• Solidarity groups can provide women with empowering space and support, but we must recognize that our work with groups is often a woman’s first step into collective identity/action.

• Use group strategies to link to wider movements for social change.

• Engage men/elites to explore their interests, beliefs, and fears – expanding the potential alliance for affirming, just gender-power relations, and reducing backlash against women.

So what’s it gonna take?Organizational alignment

• Support advocacy led by women’s own movements, and ground our own advocacy efforts in their broader vision and theories of change.

• Promote knowledge exchange for the regular uptake of knowledge produced by others and for staff to contribute their knowledge regularly to a wider knowledge base

• Align contracts and build long-term alliances with partners and donors to work across shared analysis, hypothesis generation/testing, critical reflection, and strategy shift.

• Support staff through training, accountability and organizational structures that emphasize gender equity and expand space to question who we are and what we are doing – ensuring consistent action-learning on what constitutes good empowerment work

PART II: The Women’s Empowerment Strategic Impact

Inquiry

Encapsulating Lessons

• Key documents– Global syntheses, regional briefs and SII reports – Research frameworks and Methods– Thematic Briefs highlighting lessons around key

strategies for women’s empowerment• Women’s empowerment overview• Group strategies and organizing• Engaging men• VSLA• Violence• Emergencies

• Key Platform – SII Library Site:

http://pqdl.care.org/sii

Encapsulating Lessons from the SII

PART III: The New Generation of Women’s Empowerment

Programs

SII Lessons Applied

• Analysis and Learning

• Program Design and Impact Measurement

• Organizational structure and orientation

SII Lessons Applied:Situational Analysis

Example: CARE Burundi• Shift toward more reflective practice and rights based

approaches• Women’s Empowerment SIIs: local definitions of

empowerment, HIV and empowerment• Further studies to deepen understanding of local context:

marriage, engaging men, coffee harvest• Broader historical perspective in situational analysis:

Patrilineal systems research

SII Lessons Applied: Program Design

Example CARE Nepal• Design discusses:

– Links to movements and enhancing women’s capacity to negotiate their rights;

– Challenging patriarchal systems; and – Promoting women’s inclusion in policy-making for gender equity

• Looks across projects and other key stakeholders in context to enable greater collaboration for a coherent program

• Learning and reflection as a key strategy

SII Lessons Applied: Aligning Structures and

PartnershipExample: CARE Mali

• Developed a program and strategic support structure to align with the program approach

• Aligning our work more with partners and contributing to broader social movements

SII Lessons Applied: Linking to Broader Rights

MovementsExample CARE’s Latin America Region

• Approach from the lens that gender equity is political, and necessarily involves transformation of power relations and oppression

• From the outset, linking to social movements to inform situational analysis and CARE’s role in promoting women’s rights

PART IV: Supporting the New Generation of CARE’s Women’s

Empowerment Programs

Key Areas for Further Guidance on Women’s Empowerment

• Gender analysis and Learning

• Organizational forms to support women’s empowerment programming

• Ensuring women’s empowerment effectively and explicitly in program design and impact measurement

• Women and governance• Engaging men and the powerful

• Gender based violence and sexuality