| Hafsat Abiola-Costella is a Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist and founder of Kuridat Initiative for Democracy (KIND), an organization established in 1997 to build the capacity of women-led organizations and to develop and implement initiatives dedicated to the advancement of women. KIND was created to honor Hafsat’s mother, Kudirat Abiola, a leading democracy activist killed by soldiers after her husband and elected Nigerian President, Cheif Mashood Abiola, was arrested and later assisinated during the period of military rule in Nigeria. The organization’s programs focus on providing political and human rights education training and mentoring for women political leaders and young women aspiring to enter public service. Since 2002, KIND has built a women’s political leadership network of over 5,000 in Nigeria. This incredible story is featured in Vital Voices’ documentary play, SEVEN. Hafsat’s civil rights activism stretches beyond her country’s borders. She helped found the State of the World Forums Emerging Leaders Program and Global Youth Connect, was appointed a Fetzer Fellow and is a member of the Vital Voices Africa Advisory Council. Currently, Hafsat is the Special Advisor, Millennium Development Goals to the Governor at Ogun State, Nigeria. Eva Muraya is the Founder and CEO of Brand Strategy and Design (EA) Ltd. She holds over 20 years of marketing experience, having managed the regional brand development programs for companies such as FedEx, The Standard Group, Block Hotels, and Xerox. She is best known for her award winning regional branded merchandise business, Color Creations Ltd, which was the first advertising and branding business awarded ISO 9001:2000 certification in East and Central Africa. Currently the Chairperson, Eva Muraya co-founded the Kenya Association of Women Business Owners (KAWBO), a forum for leading businesswomen in Kenya to network, engage on issues affecting their businesses and acquire requisite skills for business growth. KAWBO is also the Kenya Hub for the Africa Businesswomen's Network (ABWN), a partnership between local African businesswomen's associations, Vital Voices and the ExxonMobil Foundation. Currently, Eva is the Chairperson of the Zawadi Africa Education Program, designed to provide scholarships to academically gifted African girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue higher education in the United States. Eva’s business leadership has earned her a variety of awards and prestigious appointments, including the Eve Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, MSK Warrior award, Goldman Sachs Fortune Global Leaders Award 2008, and The International Alliance for Women (TIAW) World of Difference 100 Award. Eva has also participated in many Vital Voices programs including, the 2006 Vital Voices/U.S State Department/Fortune Global Mentoring Program, Leveling the Playing Field, and was a Vital Voices/Gates Leadership and Advocacy Fund grantee for her project to engage businesswomen in economic policy advocacy. Eva is also an active member of the La Pietra Coalition. Kah Walla, entrepreneur, political leader, and activist is recognized internationally for her expertise in management, and for her commitment to Africa, its development, its women and its youth. In 2011, Kah Walla was a presidential candidate in Cameroon and is known as one of Cameroon’s foremost political leaders and an example of a new generation of leadership throughout Africa. As an entrepreneur, Kah launched her consulting firm, STRATEGIES!, which designs programs to empower professional women and to advocate for women's entrepreneurship and political participation. For over 25 years, Kah has been an activist focused on good governance, the rights of women and youth and the rule of law. She has worked with the civil society in Cameroon and throughout Africa, developing policies and projects at international, national and local levels. Kah is an integral member of Vital Voices Global Leadership Network and has been instrumental in several Vital Voices programs, including Leveling the Playing Field, the Africa Businesswomen’s Network, and the Sandaga Market Women’s Project, where 900 women advocated together to improve conditions, eliminate double taxation and to level the playing field for women in the marketplace. Kah Walla is also the Co-Chair of the Labor Policy and Practice working group of the La Pietra Coalition and received the 2011 Vital Voices Global Leadership in Public Life Award. |
Posted On: 05/09/2012 at 8:00 PM
Gender sensitive programming is, generally, a mandatory requirement of most international development activities, including peacebuilding. For example, USAID’s office of Conflict Management and Mitigation requires all projects demonstrate a unique gender element. More than a donor-mandated exercise in project equity, the increasing emphasis on gender is forcing peacebuilders to critically reflect on how our projects interact with local actors and context on a micro-level, and is challenging our assumptions on what it means to ‘do good peace work’.
But what does it mean to build gender into the design, monitoring and evaluation of peacebuilding projects?
Hot Resource! Gender Mainstreaming Strategies in Decent Work Promotion: Programming Tools: GEMS Toolkit by the International Labour Organization
Design
Gender can easily be incorporated into the initial assessments and analyses of project design, such as the context and conflict assessments. A common donor suggestion is to examine the distinct ways in which the conflict and environment affects men and women differently.
Hot Tip! The International Labour Organization defines gender analysis as a systematic approach to examining factors related to gender. It involves a deliberate effort to identify and understand the different roles, relationships, situations, resources, benefits, constraints, needs and interests of men and women in a given socio-cultural context.1
Hot Resource! Gender Analysis Tools by the Canadian International Development Agency
Practically speaking, this could mean do women participate to the same extent as men in local decision making processes? Are women appropriately represented in the ongoing peace process? In what ways, if any, has the conflict increased or decreased the security of men and women?
Hot Tip! The focus of the project or program will guide you towards the right gender analysis questions.
Or, at a more basic level, how has the relationship between the sexes changed as a result of the conflict? “Has the scope of action of women and of men—in the home, community, region, at the national level—diminished or increased?”2
There are a range of tools available for such an exercise. You might adapt a traditional analytical model to specifically examine gender and there are also tools developed specific to gender analysis.
Answering these questions will help you better understand how your project might affect men and women in different and distinct ways, and allows you to plan for greater gender equity in the project cycle.
Gender Indicators in Peacebuilding
Hot Resource! Guide to Gender Sensitive Indicators by the Canadian International Development Agency
Gender sensitive indicators track gender-related changes in society over time. “Their usefulness lies in their ability to point to changes in the status and roles of women and men over time, and therefore to measure whether gender equity is being achieved.”3 It is important, as in any other project, that your indicators be multi-dimensional and focused on the clearly developed objectives and goal.
Hot Tip! Indicators may not tell you everything, particularly if you have not developed a robust system of indicators that utilize both qualitative and quantitative measures and at the strategic levels of society in the project seeks to affect.
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) was kind enough to develop a wholeguide to gender sensitive indicators, and many of these can be adapted to your peacebuilding projects if not immediately relevant.
Hot Resource! Check out Presentation 4 in this American Evaluation Association Conference 2010 presentation by CARE on indicators for women’s empowerment disaggregated by type of human agency.
But, of course, we cannot forget good principles of indicator design. First and foremost, indicators must pass tests of reliability, feasibility and utility in decision making. And second, the indicators must be measurable!
Hot Resource! Designing for Results: Integrating Monitoring & Evaluation in Conflict Transformation Activities, Chapter 4, by Cheyanne Church and Mark Rogers
Gender in Evaluation
The role of gender in evaluation is a more difficult category to address. Not every project will explicitly seek to address gender or women’s dynamics—simply disaggregating certain data sets by gender is gender sensitivity, but does not necessarily mean that the project sought to address the unique ways in which women experience conflict (or whatever the ‘problem’ at hand is) differently.
If your project is specifically seeking to address the unique ways in which women experience a situation differently from men, then obviously the evaluation will examine the extent to which you were successful against the stated goal and objectives.