Memorandum submitted by the UK Gender
& Development Network (GADN)
1. The GAD Network is a membership network
of leading practitioners, academics and consultants working on
gender and development issues in the UK. Our members have a broad
range of expertise in the area of gender and development, but
we all share a commitment to promoting gender equality and women's
rights, as outlined in the Beijing Platform for Action, to create
a more equal and just world.
2. In this submission we will focus on three
of the questions the Committee has set:
A. Gender: what are the implications of the
recently published Gender Equality Action Plan for effective mainstreaming
of gender issues across DFID's policies and programmes?
3. BACKGROUND
More than two thirds of those living in extreme
poverty are female. Women around the world are more likely to
live in poverty, simply because they are women. In every country
of the world, women are systematically denied their rights and
as a result have less power, money, land, protection from violence
and access to education and healthcare. Discrimination on the
basis of gender cross cuts all other forms of discrimination and
exclusion, creating double disadvantage for many women and girls.
It is widely accepted that action to tackle gender inequality
and promote women's rights is morally imperative. Furthermore,
without action in this area, there is little chance of achieving
the Millennium Development Goals. The MDGs that are most off-track,
for example on maternal mortality and HIV and AIDS, are the ones
that are most reliant on improving the status of women and realising
their economic, social, political and cultural rights.
4. After DFID was founded in 1997, it established
a good record on promoting gender equality through its aid programme
and was considered to be one of the leading bilateral donors in
this area. However, while the recent white paper committed to
"give greater priority to our work in support of gender equality
and women's rights", there was little analysis of the problems
or understanding of the conditions that enable women's empowerment.
5. A 2006 independent evaluation of DFID's
work on gender equality and women's empowerment[23]
found that it was not given priority, seen as an "add-on",
rather than essential, which was due to inconsistent internal
leadership and a lack of strong incentives. DFID was also criticised
for not thinking through the implications of the new aid modalities,
such as direct budget support, on work on women's rights and gender
(we look at this in more detail in the section on budget support
below). The DAC peer review of the UK aid programme came to similar
conclusions.
6. Like many organisations during this period,
DFID moved from having dedicated gender staff, to an approach
which aimed to "mainstream" gender. However, in practice
this approach has led to "doing" gender being seen as
a purely technical exercise, another box to be ticked, rather
than something that requires fundamental rethinking of everything
that the organisation does.
7. The experience of donors and NGOs alike
is that integrating gender equality requires a twin-track approach.
On the one hand, there must be commitment to mainstream gender
equality concerns across all of the organisation's work. But,
this must also be backed up with devoted capacity throughout the
organisation and stand alone programmes that address women's rights
directly. Both approaches must be backed up by high-level, long-term
support and leadership to ensure that efforts to promote gender
equality are not marginalised or are subject to policy evaporation,
whereby high level commitments are not implemented or operationalised.
8. GENDER EQUALITY
ACTION PLAN
The GAD Network welcomes DFID's new Gender Equality
Action Plan, as an effort to renew the department's work on gender
equality. On International Women's Day in March, Hilary Benn launched
the document and made a strong public commitment to provide leadership
to improve DFID's work on gender equality, "to do more to
place gender equality and women's rights at the very heart of
development".
9. The Plan predominantly focuses on mainstreaming
gender equality issues, throughout a wide range of DFID policy,
programmes and processes. As noted above, mainstreaming is one
part of the solution. While the document recognises that "more
action is needed to promote women's rights and freedoms as ends
in themselves", we are yet to see details of the stand-alone
policy and programmes on women's rights DFID plans to carry out.
10. However, our main concern is about effective
implementation of the Plan. Although responsibility for implementing
the Plan lies at very senior level, with Mark Lowcock, Director
General of Policy and International, there has been evidence recently
that his commitment is not shared across the Department as a whole.
For example, the GAD Network was recently asked to comment on
the draft International Poverty Reduction PSA Delivery Agreement,
which includes targets and indicators against which DFID's performance
will be assessed by the Treasury during the next spending round,
2008-11.
11. In this document, gender equality is
described as a theme, rather than recognising it as an explicit
goal upon which the achievement of the whole Delivery Agreement
Outcome is dependent. Even though the document and indicators
are based on the framework of the MDGs, no indicator on progress
towards gender equality was included. Instead, there was a commitment
to disaggregate the other indicators, but without any analysis
of whether this would be either possible or would provide any
indication of progress towards gender equality. For example, although
trade policy undoubtedly has a huge impact on women's livelihoods,
it is difficult to see how the proposed indicator on trade could
be sex disaggregated in any meaningful way.
12. Given the importance of this document
in setting the framework and targets for DFID's work over the
next three years, we are very concerned that, despite the commitments
made elsewhere, tackling gender inequality is hardly mentioned,
let alone presented as a priority.
13. The development of DFID's regional strategies
also gives the GAD Network cause for concern over the effective
implementation. Despite high level commitment, there is evidence
that work to tackle gender inequality is still being marginalised
and treated as an add-on, rather than a central part of achieving
DFID's goals.
14. Members of the GAD Network took part
in a consultation with DFID's South Asia team recently on their
new departmental strategy. Although work on gender equality was
included in the strategy as a means to achieving one of their
Departmental Strategic Objectives on poverty and social exclusion,
tackling gender inequality was omitted from other key areas of
the strategy, including the section on conflict. Although work
to "strengthen our understanding of conflict dynamics and
the causes of crime, political violence, radicalisation and terrorism"
was proposed, no mention was made of gender-based violence, even
though in Asia it is estimated that 60 million women are "missing",
mainly due to sex-selective abortions, infanticide and neglect.
15. Similarly, DFID's recent paper, "Final
Consultation on Latin America Regional Assistance Plan 2008-11"
made only one reference to gender, stating that DFID will "take
a proactive approach to addressing gender and social exclusion
throughout all its work". Yet there was no further analysis
of the problem, nor an explanation of how DFID intends to deliver
this commitment or monitor progress.
16. The GAD Network recommends that DFID
does more to clarify its priorities and objectives at the country
and regional level to ensure it meets its gender equality targets
and monitors progress in this area. More broadly, we would like
to see DFID focus more on how to translate high level policy statements
into commitment across the whole organisation.
B. Budget support: what impact does budget
support have on recipient countries and on DFID's effectiveness
and structure?
17. The GAD Network has recently started
research on "Gender equality, the new aid environment and
civil society organisations". As part of the first stage,
it has prepared a literature review and designed a questionnaire
that went to its members' partners in the Global South. 30 organisations
responded, broken down as follows:
(a) 13 from Africa (3 Ethiopia, 3 Ghana,
3 Mozambique, 1 Uganda, 3 Zambia).
(b) 12 from Asia (7 Bangladesh, 2 India,
3 Nepal).
(c) 5 from Latin America (3 Bolivia, 2 Nicaragua).
18. Some striking findings emerge from the
first stage of the research about the impact of new aid modalities,
including budget support on the work of women's rights civil society
organisations.
KEY FINDINGS
19. Differences among regions and differences
within regions and countries—Responses from organisations
in different regions varied greatly, but so did responses from
organisations in the same region and even within a country. It
was clear that much depended on the size of the organisation,
their focus and the aid context.
20. If you are the right size in the right
place at the right time, it is easier to get funds, otherwise
it is not—Most of our African respondents have seen an increase
in funding for women's rights work. This finding startled us and
made us think and look at who was responding very closely. We
then saw that most of our African respondents were large national
NGOs engaged in policy work. And any organisations that were unable
to respond to the shift in funding towards advocacy had reported
a decrease in funding or had said that it was more difficult to
access funding for their work.
21. Shift away from core funding for CSOs
towards short-term, activity based funding.
22. Large NGOs more able to access funding—Some
of the changes in funding due to new aid modalities are having
a particularly harsh impact on smaller organisations who are doing
important grass roots work.
23. Increased competition in a narrow economist
framework—Respondents observed that as a result of decentralisation
of aid, there has been an increase in the competition of North
and South NGOs, with the North capturing funding in-country. In
addition it emerges that with a focus on results based management
and narrow economist criteria, women's rights and empowerment
work is being squeezed out.
24. Clear concern about the negative impact
of neo-liberal macro economic policy.
25. Clear lack of government will and/or
capacity to implement gender equality and women's rights commitments—Respondents
were unanimous in saying that policy evaporation and lack of implementation
is a critical concern.
26. Little evidence that organisations feel
able to influence donor policy on gender equality and women's
rights.
27. Concern that donors are becoming increasingly
removed from the realities of poor women and men's lives.
28. The capacity of many women's organisations
to engage in national policy debates and budget processes is often
limited—Respondents also observed that it is questionable
to expect women's organisations to hold governments to account
in countries where democracy is fledging and governments are focused
on donor agendas.
29. The GADN is committed to continuing
to explore the effect that new aid modalities have on women and
women's organisations. So far it is concerned that the international
community's attention to the Paris Declaration has tended to focus
too much on the way aid is delivered and its quantity and less
on the quality of aid and the research seems to suggest that this
has been at the expense of poor women and their communities.
C. Governance: what changes has DFID made
in its programmes, funding and staffing to reflect this increased
priority?
30. DFID's stronger focus on governance
is welcome, but greater emphasis needs to be placed on measures
to strengthen gender equality and ensure women's full participation
in development processes as part of governance procedures.
31. Effective and democratic decision-making
processes require adequate representation of women and their needs
and interests. Yet women remain chronically under-represented
at all levels of decision-making and are routinely excluded from
development decisions.
32. Violence against women is a huge obstacle
to women's participation. It deters them from standing or retaining
elected or official positions, influencing decision-making and
holding government and elected bodies to account.
33. We welcome DFID's proposal to include
gender indicators in its new Country Governance Assessment tool,
but we are deeply concerned that there is no mandatory gender
indicator to measure a reduction in gender-based violence. The
GAD Network recommends that the indicators be expanded to include
violence against women. In addition, it is essential that DFID
consults local women's organisations at the country level as part
of the process to determine country governance indicators.
23 http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/performance/files/ev669.pdf Back
| 
