curriculum feb 8

Promoting Gender Equality through Global Development

A curriculum to facilitate inclusive planning and

gender sensitivity in international aid work

Table of Contents Section 1: Explanation of curriculum and general guidelines Part One: Section 2: Discussing Development Failures Section 3: Focusing on Gender Equality in Development – Why It Matters Section 4: Planning for Gender Barriers – Scenario Discussion Part Two: Section 5: Where are you working? Statistics scavenger hunt Section 6: Rate your organization – Gender Sensitivy score card Section 7: Creating a Girl-Centered Plan of Action Part Three: Section 8: Recommended Resources

Section 1: Explanation of curriculum and general guidelines This curriculum is designed to facilitate discussion on gender issues and inequality, particularly in developing countries. We hope that international aid organizations will find this curriculum helpful in increasing gender sensitivity and foreign aid effectiveness. Faciliutators may need to conduct their own research before presenting this curriclum in order to answer questions that may arise. We recommend reviewing sources for all activities and consulting the recommended reading in section eight. However, this curriculum is primarily designed to be dialogue promoting. As such, there is no right or wrong answer in discussion portions. Guidelines: To introduce the curriculum and give participators a general overview of the curriculums topic, we recommend you show this short video, produced by Nike Foundation, which simply and quickly demonstrates what is known as “The Girl Effect.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg&feature=related Section 2: Discussing Development Failures Divide participators into five to nine groups. Give each group a card describing a failed development project. Guide them in answering the discussion questions. Allow each group to present their conclusions to the rest of the participators. Section 3: Focusing on Gender Equality in Development – Why It Matters Use this presentation to introduce major topics related to gender equality in developing countries. Section 4: Planning for Gender Barriers – Scenario Discussion Divide participators into six groups. Give each group a scenario card. Ask them to discuss how they would proceed with project planning in the described situation, and ensure they address the guiding questions that come with each scenario. Have each group share their conclusions with the rest of the participators.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e8xgF0JtVg&feature=related

“In Zimbabwe, in the Chemombe irriga on scheme supported by the Department for Interna onal Development of the United Kingdom and in the Chinyamatumwa irriga on scheme supported by the Japan Interna onal Coopera on Agency, diesel pumps were introduced for water extrac on. While women accounted for the majority of water users, only men were made responsible for the opera on and maintenance of the pumps. The men therefore received the training, and the reliability of water availability for women thus became dependent on the presence of the trained pump operators. If pumps break down, women could not use water, and this o en placed an addi onal burden on them because they had to carry water to ensure that crop requirements were met (Berejena, Ellis‐Jones and Hasnip 1999).” Source: h p://www.ifad.org/gender/thema c/water/gender_water.pdf

What were the primary mistakes in this development plan?

Would including women in the project planning have improved this

project? If yes, how? If no, why not?

While the World Bank verbally recognizes the fundamental fact that gender equality is a cross‐cu ng, fluid issue, its strategy in 2002 to promote gender equality in Bangladesh focused primarily on areas that are tradi onally viewed to be relevant to women, such as health and educa on. Meanwhile the blue print macroeconomic policies of the Bank promoted priva za on of state‐owned enterprises and the closure of many public u li es. These economic policies have led to large scale unemployment of both men and women.The result of such inconsistent, sectarian gender and economic strategies is any progress made in the tradi onally gendered areas (health and educa on) was undermined by the nega ve effects of the Bank's macroeconomic policies. One clear example of this is the fact that violence against women actually increased as a result of unemployment because of the increased importance of dowries as capital and the inability of many women and households to provide a dowry.

Source: h p://www.globalhood.org/ar cles/briefingnotes/Development_Projects_That_Didnt_Work.pdf




“Next to a schoolhouse in a dusty South African village, children squeal happily as they spin around on a playground merry‐go‐round. Their laughter rings through the air along with another happy sound: that of clear, healthy drinking water cascading from a pump into the village women’s buckets. What’s more, the two sounds are linked: as the children spin the wheel joyfully, the energy of the rota ons is captured and used to pump water from a borehole to an elevated storage tank. It is a case of two birds, one stone: with the water con nually being pumped up and stored, the village women no longer have to walk far and work hard to get water, and their children are overjoyed with their new toy.” This was the theory behind PlayPumps. Children would play on the PlayPump, freeing women and girls from the burden of fetching water and providing clean water all at the same me. However, when there were no children around, the village women would be opera ng the merry‐go‐round manually, working ahrd to pump water that would have surfaced more easily with a tradi onal hand pump. Perhaps these women would not have chosen an expensive PlayPump to serve their village borehole, if they were consulted on the ma er. But in fact, there was a lack of local ownership, or involvement of the local community. The villagers also had no say over the type of adver sing displayed, and no idea what exactly happened to the adver sing revenues. Moreover, many had trouble with the pumps’ maintenance. Villagers in Zambia would have to call maintenance numbers in South Africa, and the in‐stalla on parts produced locally in South Africa would take months to arrive. Source:h p://unitedexplana ons.org/english/2012/03/22/the‐story‐of‐playpumps‐merry‐go‐rounds‐water‐and‐failures‐in‐development‐aid/




One day the women and I had a conversa on about making bread. The only bread available in my village was brought in on a motorcycle from a bigger city about 25k away. The bread was terrible and it tasted like gasoline fumes yet peo‐ple always bought it because it was the only bread they could find. The women said, we know how to make bread. We could do it and sell it in our village. I asked the women to raise their own money at a weekly mandatory mee ng at my house. They agreed. At this same me I asked them to do some market research. I did the same and we all discovered that people really wanted bread, specifically a sweet bread over a salty one and they wanted the smallest size because it would be the cheapest.

A er the market research, myself with two other PCVs taught them a system of accoun ng for illiterates. We wrote bylaws, established repor ng prac ces, and even made a work schedule. These things we always decided upon by the women. I only posed ques ons such as, “I think (A) might be a good idea because __________. What do you think?” Once this was decided upon, we set about building the clay oven and covering. I was able to find about $100 from a fund open to PCVs in Benin and the women raised about $20. This was enough to get the basic stuff done but they de‐pended upon and agreed to reinvest all profits for a period of me to buy more supplies. We built the clay oven and started baking bread. I had been controlling the money box this whole me because I was asked to do so by the wom‐en. I kept a strict record that was always copied in another notebook held by the women. We also ins tuted rules en‐suring that money was always counted publicly and two separate records were kept. The bread was a massive success! They started making money hand over fist (for a rural village) and everything was going great. Li le by li le, I ceded responsibili es to women in the group. I thought they were prepared to take on the lockbox of cash so I turned it over to them to oversee. A few weeks went by. I would help make sure the repor ng was s ll being done and they would con nue to meet at my house. Then one day they didn’t make bread on the agreed upon schedule. I inquired and dis‐covered that the night before the women got together and liquidated all of the cash and split it evenly among them. Now they were dead in the water with no money to buy the next round of supplies. The project was over; it had failed.

Source: h ps://www.admi ngfailure.org/failure/anthony/




“Agricultural projects and land ownership: In the Jahaly and Pacharr Smallholder Project, an IFAD‐supported irriga on project in The Gambia, swampland on which women used to cul vate rice was reallocated as part of communal or household farms, o en with men as the heads (IFAD 2001d;Whitehead 1998). Because men were obliged to grow two rice crops in a year, they expected women to con nue providing their labor. This gave women some nego a on power over their labor if their demands were not met. The World Bank‐funded SEMRY (Sociétéd’Expansion et de Modernisa on de la Riziculture de Yagoua) irriga on project in Cameroon introduced irrigated rice crops in an area where women tradi onally grow sorghum, the staple crop. The project did not take into account this fact and redistributed the land cul vated by women to men or households headed by men and assumed that women would provide their labor on the land of their husbands. The scheme failed to sustain itself because of the refusal of women to provide their labor as expected. In a similar irriga on project in Kenya, women lost control over land and became totally dependent on their husbands (Zwarteveen 1994).”

Source: h p://www.ifad.org/gender/thema c/water/gender_water.pdf




In 1987 an aid organiza on designed a project for installing mills in rural communi es in Mali. The purpose of the project was to work through women and local churches to operate and maintain the mill, which would relieve some of the work burden of the local community, especially the women. The mills, their equipment and finances, were to be managed only by the women's associa ons of the communi es, in affilia on with local churches. A second condi on was that the president and treasurer of the women's associa on/mill management team had to be Chris an women and the vice president and secretary, Muslim women, in or‐der to facilitate 'collabora on across religions. The third condi on was that, in spite of the low income of the community, the mill's opera on would be dependent on the payments of the popula on and ten percent of the profits would go to a local church as the.

Upon the aid workers’ arrival they were surprised to discover that the community already had a locally run mill. The mill, though only two years old and s ll very func onal, was barely making ends meet due to the compe on of another mill in the next town over and the seasonality of mill usage by the community wom‐en. In spite of the fragile situa on, they went along with the mill plan. The women were not organized into an associa on, and were not pleased with being asked to take on the full responsibility of physically main‐taining and managing the finances of the mill, ac vi es usually delegated to men. While the aid organiza on said that the project would be up and running in three months and men and women of the community in‐vested me and money into building it, the mills did not start working un l a full year later. Two weeks a er the mill opening, the aid workers le . By then three out of the four mills installed in the region were already broken. A week later the Kafinare mill stopped working. Having thought ahead that this might occur since, a er all, it had been arranged for a local tex le company to perform all repairs of the nearby mills. However, having no wri en contract signed, and with aid workers gone, the community had not means of holding the company to their agreement. Source: h p://www.globalhood.org/ar cles/briefingnotes/




“In high school, I travelled to Tanzania as part of a school trip. There were 14 white girls, 1 black girl who, to her frustra on, was called white by almost everyone we met in Tanzania, and a few teachers/chaperones. $3000 bought us a week at an orphanage, a half built library, and a few pickup soccer games, followed by a week long safari.

Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construc on work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work a er the sun set, re‐laying the bricks, and then ac ng as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could con nue.”

Source: h p://www.huffingtonpost.com/pippa‐biddle/li le‐white‐girls‐voluntourism_b_4834574.html




To further illustrate these unsuccessful a empts, Easterly (2006c) compares what he calls planners (aid agencies) versus searchers (private workers or chari es, for example). Several aid agencies and bureaucrats have a empted to help pros tutes in India by taking them out of the business and placing them in shelters to be trained in other professions. However, these other professions typically pay less than sexual services so the women return back to pros tu on. The increase in the spread of HIV was causing major concern for these failed a empts. To try and combat this problem, a public health clinic in India decided to take another approach. The team learned of the subculture within pros tu on and found that by engaging in peer educa on, condom usage drama cally increased, thus reducing the spread of HIV. Source: h p://dri.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/12361/WilliamsonRAEAid.pdf




“Some years ago, a wealthy donor approached GlobalGiving through his private banker. A er having launched a series of businesses from Miami to Kinshasa and having amassed a significant fortune, the donor wanted to honor his late wife by suppor ng university educa on for women and girls in the poorest of poor communi es. From long years of doing business in just such places, this donor had very specific criteria and repor ng requirements, meant to hold stu‐dents and organiza ons running these scholarship programs accountable. The subsidy per student had to be no more than $1,000. Students had to be women. Students had to be at the beginning of their university studies and enrolled in business or hard science. Enrollment cer ficates and report cards were required each semester. Students failing for a semester were no longer eligible. There was as much as $10,000,000 to support such students. For a me, the program worked well, and we were able to fund scholarships for hundreds of students who otherwise would not have been able to a end university. Unfortunately, the donor never agreed to sign commitment le ers or any other documenta on, and funding began to stop as the donor increased repor ng expecta ons, now requiring students to pose for pictures with copies of his memoir, and interrup ng funding when reports came in late. Finally, we were not able to meet these new expecta ons for a variety of logis cal and some mes cultural and security reasons, and the donor broke off rela ons with GlobalGiving. An elderly man, the donor then passed away, and the program is now defunct, leaving hundreds of students who had begun studies with the promise of a scholarship with‐out the money needed to con nue. Local partners that had made commitments to students were le in various levels of difficulty that we have only recently been able to sort out.” Source: h ps://www.admi ngfailure.org/failure/john‐hecklinger‐2/




For Facilitators:

Use this presentation to introduce the biggest issues facing women and girls in the developing world today. Highlight how these challenges affect entire communities, not only women and girls. Demonstrate that promoting gender equality can contribute to the success of many different development projects.

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Source: http://girlsnotbrides.theideabureau.netdna‐cdn.com/wp‐content/uploads/2014/10/GNB‐factsheet‐on‐child‐marriage‐numbers‐Oct‐2014.pdfhttp://girlsnotbrides.theideabureau.netdna‐cdn.com/wp‐content/uploads/2012/10/GNB‐Child‐marriage‐infographic‐950px.jpg

Other notes: Girls who give birth before the age of 15 are more than 5 times more likely to die in childbirth, and their children are less likely to live past age 1. One half of girls in developing countries become mothers as children. And of those girls who die from maternal complications, most of them are married. In fact, 90% of births that occur before the mother is 18 years old happen within marriage. Maternal mortality is the leading cause of death for girls ages 15 – 19 worldwide.

Many of these marriages are forced marriage and often times the man these girls marry is more than twice their age. Child brides are twice as likely to be beaten by their husbands. The chances of a child bride finishing her education, raising healthy children, and sending her children to school are much lower.

On top of the fact that child marriage is a violation of human rights, it is also really bad for a country’s economy:Reducing adolescent pregnancy in India by just 10% could add $767 billion to the Indian economy.

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Source: http://www.equalitynow.org/node/1010

3

Sources: http://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2013/04/01/banking‐on‐women‐extending‐womens‐access‐to‐financial‐services

Sources: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2012/03/revenga.htm

4

Sources: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs334/en/http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/

5

Sources:http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs334/en/

6

“Looking Out for Baby Girls.” Jun 28 2011. The Economist.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/sex‐selective‐

abortion.

WHO: Gender and Genetics. http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index4.html

ICRW. http://www.icrw.org/sites/default/files/publications/Son‐Preference‐and‐

Daughter‐Neglect‐in‐India.pdf

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United Nations. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/beirutglobal.htm

The World Bank.

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2012/Resources/7778105‐

1299699968583/7786210‐1315936222006/chapter‐6.pdf

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Care International: http://www.care.org/work/education/girls‐educationUNICEF: http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_70640.htmlDay of the Girl: http://dayofthegirl.org/girls‐denied‐education‐worldwide/

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World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/Care international: http://www.care.org/work/health/maternal‐health

You build a hospital in the center of town, which is far away from the most impoverished village. Who does your hospital serve? What types of doctors are available and what do they specialize in? How can local people reach your hospital? Are women allowed to travel alone to this location?

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Curriculum Scenarios: Scenario 1: Your aid group has been working for many years in a village to get more children enrolled in school. After five years of work, you realize that, while your project has increased the number of children in school, most children attending schools are boys. You decide to launch a new initiative to specifically increase the number of girls enrolled in school. What are your first steps in launching this initiative? What are some questions you should get answered before beginning work? How can you involve the community in this process? After talking with a variety of villagers, including women and girls, you discover that there are multiple barriers preventing girls from attending school. These barriers include:

1) Spending hours each day gathering water 2) Responsibilities for domestic chores, such as caring for younger children 3) Limited desire on the part of fathers, who control household finances and decisions, to

send daughters to school What are your next steps? How do you revise your initiative given this information? Do you change your goals or timeframe? Considerations for facilitator: Did the group immediately identify talking with locals, particularly women and girls, as a critical planning step? Did the group recognize information they needed to gain to successfully implement the initiative? Did the group make a special point of involving women in the process? Did the group prioritize the problems facing girls and possibly identify a problem that should be addressed before school enrollment? Was the group cognizant of the time scale for implementing this type of cultural change? Possible response: We would first talk with the community, especially women and girls, to see what is currently preventing girls from attending school. We would form a committee of local people to address the issue. Given the multiple barriers to girls’ education, we might work on getting a water pump in the community to alleviate chore burden before launching our school initiative.

Scenario 2: You have started an organization that aims to limit human rights abuses inflicted by multinational organizations in developing countries. Primarily, you hope to target poor work conditions and low wages that affect women in textile factories. You travel to one of these factories to discuss working conditions with factory workers. Upon interviewing multiple workers, you discover there are two differing view points of factory work. Half of women report that factory work conditions are dangerous: Long hours, dangerous machinery and building structure, poor health conditions, and other factors are all viewed as threats. Additionally, low wages keep workers in a cycle of poverty that prevents them from leaving their job or providing for children’s health and education. The other half of women report that, while factory conditions are not ideal, the opportunity to work in the formal sector and earn their own wages has increased their power in the household, made them more confident, and freed them from rural poverty, which they view as more oppressive than their current working situation. How do you interpret these responses? Do you revise your organization’s goals? If yes, how? If no, why not? Considerations for facilitator: Did the group recognize that both view points are equally valid? Did they recognize their own bias in dealing with these situations? Did they make a conscious effort to avoid ethnocentrism? Possible response: These response helped us recognize that, while there are potential human rights abuses at textile factories, there are also positives to factory work for many women. We would revise our goals so that they are more inclusive to all viewpoints. For example, we could help the women form a union or other organization that would allow them to lobby for better working conditions without risking shutting down the factory or causing women to lose their jobs.

Scenario 3: Your aid group aims to improve the state of maternal health in a poor and rural region with a high maternal mortality rate. You decide to start your work by interviewing any local health workers and a sample of mothers in order to get an idea of the various factors that contribute to such poor maternal health outcomes. However, you quickly discover that there are very few health workers in the area, and many of the mothers are unwilling to speak with representatives of your aid group due to the fact that many of you are foreigners and there are cultural norms against women speaking with strangers, particularly about private matters. What assumptions did your group make upon beginning your work? Where do you go from here? What steps can your aid group take to continue with your goal? Should you revise your previous project aim or is this a problem that can be overcome? What kinds of resources will you need to move forward? Considerations for Facilitator: Did the group recognize that perhaps the aid group was not familiar enough with the region and its people before arriving and beginning their work? Did they make forming connections with the people and utilizing prominent members of the community a priority for the aid group? Did they keep maternal health and women at the center of their discussion? Possible Response: The aid group did not have a good idea of the on-the-ground situation before coming to the region to start its project and did not have sufficient connections to the people, which is critical in any project like this. In their situation, we would start forming connections with the local area and earning their trust. We would recruit willing locals to work with us and on behalf of us to help bridge that divide. Then it would be easier to actually improve maternal health because the population has more confidence in us.

Scenario 4: One important function of the international organization of which you are a part is the distribution of mosquito nets to protect against malaria. The nets have been shown to be extremely effective in other areas, where the death rate from malaria has decreased dramatically. However, your organization notices that in a particular area where you have distributed many mosquito nets, there has been no noticeable change in the rates of malaria. You investigate the issue and discover that many of the nets are not actually being used as they were designed. Instead, many people are using them as fishing nets, which is the main source of food and income in the area. You interview some of the people to find out what is going on. Who should you interview in the area, and what types of questions will allow you to understand the use of mosquito nets as fishing nets? After talking with many people, your organization learns that many of those who use mosquito nets for fishing are the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community, particularly women, who cannot afford real fishing nets and must choose between protecting themselves against malaria and acquiring enough food each day. Unfortunately, besides not protecting against malaria, the use of mosquito nets for fishing has been found to deplete vital fish populations, harming the prospects for everyone in the community. What are some options for addressing this problem? What kinds of considerations do you have to take into account? How do you balance the need for fishing, especially for the poorest members of the community, with the need to protect against malaria? Considerations for Facilitator: Did the group consider the need to speak to not only the people using the nets for fishing, but also community leaders who may have other insights into the problem? Did they discuss the sometimes precarious balance between economic survival and health that this scenario demonstrates? Did they avoid making quick judgments, such as suggesting that the government just immediately outlaw the use of mosquito nets for fishing? Possible Response: We would interview people who use the nets for fishing and then those who use actual fishing nets to note the differences between them. We might ask them what has led them to use/not use the mosquito nets for fishing, and what it would take for them to switch to real nets, if they do use mosquito nets. Based off these responses, we might then work with other groups (governmental, village council, etc.) to address the problem, such as by addressing the price of real fishing nets so that they are more affordable for the poorest people. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for-malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for-malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-nets-for-malaria-spawn-new-epidemic-overfishing.html

Scenario 5 Your aid organization has set a goal to reduce malnourishment and underweight status of children in a particular village. Care packages of nutrient-dense food are distributed to each family with children on a weekly basis for six months. After these six months all of the children in the program are assessed again. It is discovered malnourishment and being underweight are still much higher in girls than they are in boys. What does your organization do with this information? What are some steps your organization can take to determine why this happened and prevent it? Considerations for the facilitator Did the group recognize that this information means their plans need to be more girl-centric than perhaps originally anticipated? Did the group recognize that the first step for them is to speak to the families and the girls to determine where the food is going? Did the group recognize that the root issue of the problem is that a culture shift it needed? Possible Response: In order to prevent this issue we could talk to the girls and families about where the food is going on why. We would also make an effort to distribute the food directly to the children (particularly girls) or set up a different sort of program (such as meal programs where children come to a particular place and eat there). We would also attempt to set up education programs to help individuals understand that girls are just as valuable as an asset as boys and should be treated equally.

Scenario 6 Your aid organization wants to reduce unwanted pregnancies and STIs. You decide that the most cost effective way to go about this is to make condoms accessible in the local health clinics. After one month you stop by to replenish the supply of condoms and are told that very few individuals at all have come to get condoms, almost none of them women. What does this say about the effectiveness of your program? What steps do you take next to revise the program? Considerations for the facilitator: Did the group consider why the program was ineffective? Did the group acknowledge the cultural issues and the imbalance of power between women and men? Did the group consider speaking to members of the community, particularly women about why they were not using the condoms? Does the group acknowledge the difficulty of the problem that women are not allowed to say no in many cultures or do they just assume that she can demand condom use? Possible Response: First we would speak to individuals in the community, particularly women, about why they were not using the condoms. We would seek to offer different types of contraception that are more women-focused. We would also attempt to begin to implement education and empowerment programs for women as well as education programs for men in order to attempt a culture shift.

curriculum feb 8

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