The degree to which gender is studied or ignored in research can powerfully affect both research results and the communities those outcomes were intended to benefit. Yet, science and technology have historically and consistently ignored gender gaps. Critiques of systematic biases in research have made visible a multitude of biases and assumptions underpinning research and contributing to gender and diversity related data gaps. These biases are consistent with patriarchal and other social and power relations in societies, which in many countries in the Global South may be endogenous and/or the result of contact with colonial systems. Until recently such norms, and the barriers they create, have been invisible in research.
The Supporting Gender Equality Outcomes in Development Research: Reflections on a Multi-year Collaboration between Gender at Work, IDRC and its Partners monograph makes the case for a process-driven methodology that supports research institutions, and other development institutions, to fill the implementation gaps that are often found between formal gender policies and strategies, and the hoped-for gender equality outcomes. It draws on the experience of five International Development Research Centre research programs Gender at Work worked with between 2016 and 2022.
