What We Do
"The expression 'gender at work' ... seemed to suggest something different to whatever 'gender mainstreaming' was . . . At one level it refers to gender relations at workplaces but at another, it also refers to the active and daily ways in which gender relations and identities express themselves. It implied that this was always going to be ongoing and dynamic work that could not be neatly dispense with through one workshop -- so there was the promise of ongoing support with activities." (Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, South Africa)
When policies are not enough
For decades, governments, NGOs, civil society organizations, donors and community-based organizations have sought effective ways to improve the lives of girls and women. But when it comes to achieving gender equality, well-meaning policies and commitments have proven to be not enough.
We walk alongside organizations to facilitate real change: learning through doing
We use an organization’s work in the community as the entry point for analyzing and transforming power relations within the organization. We believe that when organizations change, they change the lives of individuals who work for and with them, and they change the communities they serve. And we believe that change happens through doing. Unlike gender training, which imposes a preset list of goals and values, our action-learning approach, core to our Civil Society Organization Strengthening Program (and which we also use in our other programs), is a non-prescriptive, collaborative process through which organizations are enabled to safely surface their own particular issues and find their own culturally appropriate solutions. We don’t believe in “one size fits all.” We help organizations craft and implement unique solutions to their own specific problems of gender inequality at the systemic and individual levels.
The learnings do not come from external experts, but from each organization’s own experience of doing – setting their own goals, allowing for the unexpected, refining their plans as they face challenges and gain new learnings, all the while drawing on their own cultural expertise. Throughout this process, organizations receive ongoing support from the other like-minded organizations in peer-learning workshops and from Gender at Work Facilitators.
“My new insights: … Altering the change project according to the lessons learned and the experience we had in the field. This flexible planning and review makes my change project the best.” (India Program Participant)
Our partners’ stories of personal, organizational and cultural transformation continually confirm that our Civil Society Organization (CSO) Strengthening Program, as well as our other global partnership programs, work; yielding deep-level transformations of biases, attitudes and behaviours – where real change happens.
