Books and Papers

The monograph, “Change is like a slow dance” – integrates the reflections of three organizations which participated in a fourteen month Action-Learning Programme facilitated by Gender at Work in South Africa during 2004 and early 2005. The main objective of the programme was to catalyse and assist in facilitating a change process in three social change and human rights based organizations to deepen their own capacity for improving gender relationships and power inequalities both internally and in their programmatic work. The bulk of the monograph consists of chapters two, three and four, the three case study chapters that share the reflections of the participating organizations in the programme. The first and fifth chapters (ie. The introduction and conclusion) are written by two Gender at Work team members, the South African programme manager and facilitator with one of the organisations and the team’s documentalist. Chapter one, introduces the change process, its assumptions as well as the three organizations. Chapter five concludes the monograph by highlighting key lessons and insights that emerge from the process.

“This report is an evaluation of SDC's gender equality work. The team looked at a sample of projects in Mozambique, Pakistan and the Ukraine, as well as examining the organizational systems that support SDC’s efforts in this area. There are three major elements in SDC’s gender equality work: mainstreaming gender equality through gender analysis and appropriate follow-up in all projects and activities; projects targeted specifically to enhance gender equality (usually but not always targeted to women and their organizations); and activities to promote women’s advancement and equal opportunity within SDC. The evaluation looked at a wide range of projects, including humanitarian and long-term development projects in different sectors, as well as donor-harmonized activities and policy work.“

This paper analyses the experience of developing a gender mainstreaming strategy for a multilateral development agency, the UNDP. Gender mainstreaming is central to the global mandate of this organisation. A core gender strategy has been developed centrally and passed down to country offices in the form of policy directives. The paper examines the extent to which this stated ideological commitment to gender equity has been successful in creating spaces for renegotiation of gender relations within the organisation, and the colonisation of these spaces by advocates for gender issues. Creating a conscious, committed and skilled group of internal gender pioneers, while simultaneously working to make the environment more hospitable to their ideas and activities are the central focus of the gender mainstreaming strategy. This group has to evolve strategies to take forward the stated commitment to gender mainstreaming, and counter the invisible resistance stemming from the gendered structures and traditions of the organisation.

Gender Equality Architecture and UN ReformsIn the last decade, efforts to make the development, human rights and peace/security ‘mainstreams’ work for women have resulted in impressive gains as well as staggering failures. Futhermore, gains for women’s rights are facing growing resistance in many places and too often positive examples are the exception rather than the norm. This paper briefly outlines the successes and failures of the current UN system in addressing gender equality and women’s rights, and puts forth several principles and characteristics that are critical to reforming the gender equality architecture in order to deliver consistent positive gender equality outcomes.

Jenny wrote an e-mail to Gender at Work to say, "the approach [in this article] comes from our participation in the Gender at Work process, and our participation has helped us 'see' a way of working with deep culture."

This story Jenny shares "gives you a brief insight into how we at Justice and Women work with gender-power issues. A story from one of our staff meetings serves as the example. All our staff meetings start with a debriefing space where we encourage ourselves to truly listen to one another because we believe that if we are not heard ourselves, how can we in turn listen and hear others?"

From 2006 - 2008, Gender at Work worked with PACE (Partner in Cross Sectoral Engagement), an Oxfam Canada capacity building program in the Horn of Africa. The work was to deliver a capacity-building program for gender equality with six civil society organizations in the Ethiopia, Somaliland, and Sudan.

The GAL Program – a two-year, a multi-stage, non-prescriptive, collaborative process with these organizational partners – focused on enabling them to improve their capacity to deliver services and programs in a gender-equitable manner. This process often means focusing on the organization itself, i.e. its process and structures.

The following papers share the successes and learnings from the PACE/GAL program in the Horn of Africa.

Development organisations can play a significant role in supporting women in the communities where they work to challenge unequal gender relations. The authors of this article argue that the majority of development organisations fail to do so because they pay insufficient attention to the importance of social institutions in perpetuating inequality. The article also examines how Gender at Work encourages development organisations to analyse gender relations in the societies in which they work, and in the organizationsinstitutions they need to challenge.

The Inter Press Service (IPS) recently interviewed Aruna Rao on the need for institutionalisation of women's empowerment. The women's movement over the last decade has revealed how legislative guarantees and policy reforms do not necessarily result in opening institutional spaces, and that participation does not necessarily translate into influence. Aruna argues that governance systems play a large part in women's ability to realise their rights and making their voice heard. For the full interview see: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38586

Of all the buzzwords that have entered the development lexicon in the past thirty years, "empowerment" is probably the most widely used and abused. In this article, Srilatha Batliwala argues for reclaiming, reframing, and resistance women’s empowerment, which requires a new clarity of vision and invigorated strategies on the part of feminists and their movements. A critical piece of this is to reformulate the concept and practice of movement-building. A compelling, powerful vision needs to be rearticulated with accessible messages to which poor women - and men - can connect at the local, national and global level. This is possible only by listening to poor women in their movements and struggles, to learn from them the values, principles, and actions that frame their search for justice. From such a process a new depth and breadth of organising and a genuine global feminist movement can be built.

This chapter is from the book “Institutionalising Gender”, published by the Royal Tropical Institute, and was initially written as an overview paper to introduce the international seminar on Transformation for Gender Justice and Organizational Change held in South Africa in mid-1998. The main intention is to offer perspectives on what has shaped the connections between gender justice and organizational/institutional transformation debates, what visions are emerging and what are some of the current salient concerns. The issues outlined in this chapter have been abstracted from experiences and writings from practitioners in various contexts. While remaining cognizant of contextual differences is that this collage of issues will provide a useful introduction to this book on gender mainstreaming where the assumptions, paradigms and practices from different contexts will be explored. Through identifying important linkages, new questions can be articulated to further work in the field of organizational change.

“The delivery of gender-sensitive basic services for women is a prerequisite for development. The current global development objectives, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), will not be achieved unless and until women are able to contribute to and benefit from development on equal par with men. This means ensuring that women have access to services that enable them to fully develop and use their capabilities and support the full realization of their human rights."

This speech was delivered by Srilatha Batliwala at the High Level Thematic Debate on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment held by United Nations General Assembly in March 2007. She lists the magic bullets popular in the area of women’s empowerment and gender equality: gender mainstreaming, micro-finance focused on lending rather than women’s empowerment, and quotas for women in formal political systems, and how empirical evidence indicates that none of these, singly or together, necessarily empower women. Of great urgency today are programs and strategies that address the invisible, informal, traditional systems - the arenas in which the majority of the world’s women negotiate their lives - which continue to oppress and exclude women and subvert their search for justice. Dr. Batliwala urges the Assembly to work for the implementation of a strengthened and unified gender entity within the UN system, which will have the resources to support gender justice activists and advocates on the ground in developing innovative new approaches and strategies that can create more sustainable transformations in gender relations at the levels where these are most critical.