Gender Equality

It is a fact that a person is more likely to be economically poor if she is a woman rather than a man. Beyond this economic difference, women throughout the world face many forms of social exclusion despite having equal rights with men, as human beings, under international law. In some countries, gender differences are acute and extend to widespread gender-based violence and denial of basic rights.

SDC upholds gender equality in all its actions, taking this as a transversal theme. Gender refers to the socially constructed definition of roles, behaviours and power relations between women and men, and not to the biological characteristics of women and men (sex). This often entails changed power relations within households, working places, communities and society at large. Interventions that support women in building their innate capacities (from improving their health to education and training), improving their access to economic assets (through income generating activities, dignified employment, etc.) and raising their voice (through active participation in decision-making fora) are all part of this empowerment process.However, gender equality does not always mean striving for equal numbers of men and women in all activities, or treating men and women in the same way. Men and women often have different needs and priorities, face different constraints, have different aspirations and contribute to development in different ways. It is important to recognise, respect and work with both feminine and masculine perceptions in striving for gender equality.

For more information visit: www.sdc-gender-development.net

Further Information

The South Asia Women's Resilience Index

By Eveline Studer, Advisor HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation

All over the world statistics and experience indicate that women are more adversely affected by disaster events than men. The South Asia women’s resilience index (WRI) published in late 2014 aims at measuring the capacities to withstand and recover from disasters in a gender sensitive manner. The WRI report, which was produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit and commissioned by Actionaid, focuses on eight countries in South Asia, including Japan as a reference. Read more »

Learning about Women's Empowerment in the Context of Development Projects: Do the Figures Tell Us Enough?

Jane Carter, Sarah Byrne, Kai Schrader, Humayun Kabir, Zenebe Bashaw Uraguchi, Bhanu Pandit, Badri Manandhar, Merita Barileva, Norbert Pijls and Pascal Fendrich, July 2014

In this article, published in the journal Gender & Development, we consider three projects implemented by Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation: a project in Nepal focusing on capacity building (vocational skills training); a project in Bangladesh focusing on income generation; and a project in Kosovo working on agency – enhancing the voice of citizens in local governance. The article examines how donor requirements for demonstrating evidence-based results challenge project management in different ways, how facts and figures are generated, how experience is translated into reports, and how qualitative methods are used for evaluations. This is compared against a stakeholder (participant) perspective of their degree of satisfaction with project performance, obtained through case studies or focus group discussions. We take the four dimensions of empowerment, notably ‘power-over’, ‘power-to’, ‘power-within’, and ‘power-with’, and consider the degree to which these are captured through qualitative and quantitative monitoring and evaluation systems. The main finding is that quantitative methods stress aspects of ‘power-to’, whilst qualitative methods have potential to provide insights into a broader range of outcomes and impacts. Download the article here »

Read Duncan Green's blog post on this article here: http://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/whats-the-best-way-to-measure-empowerment/

Accounting for Women’s Use of Time: Considerations on the Use of a Time Poverty Approach

Sarah Byrne, May 2014

One of the most important developments in engendering analyses of poverty and wellbeing in recent years has been the application of the lens of time (and more specifically time use) to poverty. This has two key aspects. Firstly, time poverty can be understood as the fact that some individuals do not have enough time for rest and leisure after the time they spend working, whether in the labour marker, or in the home, or for other time consuming activities such as fetching water, and collecting fuel wood and fodder. Secondly, time use analysis has been used to measure thus far unaccounted activities such as subsistence agriculture, care work, activities in the ‘informal sector’ etc. that are important to livelihoods – and that underpin the ‘formal economy’ – but are not remunerated and are thus ‘hidden’ from national accounting systems. Both of these aspects have significant implications for how women’s time use in particular is measured, implications which have been addressed in the literature on topics such as the care economy. Read more »