Strategic Impact Inquiry on Women’s EmpowermentPhase 2 Report: A Portfolio on the Cusp…

Limiting our Vision The opportunity costs and

strategic risks of “good enough” programming

Unleashing Our Potential From “good” to “great”: Claiming a New Niche in

theInternational NGO sector

•a portfolio on the rise, the payoff from five years of investment

•Important empowerment gains – strongly focused at the level of women’s individual capabilities as we first reported last year – for more that 20 million men, women, and children over the past decade or more.

•More substantive and wider changes in structural aspects of women’s marginalization and in the social relations through which lasting changes in women’s empowerment will be achieved.

Yet…•a portfolio riddled with missed opportunities to achieve deeper, faster, and more long lasting changes in poverty and social justice.

Two broad changes will go far:•Deeper understanding of women’s own preferred pathways and strategies, and men’s resistance, while not being timid about questioning these through consciousness raising approaches.

•Become an “ambidextrous organization”, one that deploys more robust long-term program strategies and more effective knowledge sharing and learning to achieve both significant short-term improvements and the lasting impacts on poverty and social injustice our Vision demands.

The Bottom Line of Phase 2

Phase 2 Women’s Empowerment Impact Research:By the Numbers…

Phase 2 Research19 countries25 projects

+20,000,000 participants$300,000,000 total value

+300 staff; 4 CI membersCUSA cash budget: $140,000

•Project Designs (11) using Phase 1 findings•U of Wisconson

What Good Projects Do Well, Their Impacts, Their Opportunity Costs and Harms

Good women’s empowerment projects…

…Deliver tangible, technical, gender

disaggregated outputs under

contractual obligations

…Focus on women’s capabilities, skills, knowledge without trying to influence

gender norms

…Begin and frequently ends with a donor

contract (a “project”)

…that lead to impacts that are…

…strongly individual, psychological, asset/service

focused

…able to mitigate the effects of poverty and

social injustice, not eradicate/eliminate them

…”seedlings” for such sustainable

impact on underlying causes

of poverty

…and create harms such as…

…reversible gains; longer

term irrelevance of output and

effects

…increased workloads and

violence against women and girls

…Male abdication and

feelings of worthlessness

…Weak sustained learning between projects

CARE Bangladesh - RMP

CARE Bangladesh Rural Maintenance Project

• Technical focus on road maintenance, project coverage noted in terms of population served by roads. Major change noted in SII is the acceptability now of women working outside their homes, but associated challenges not addressed.

• 166,750 women employed over 23 years in RMAs, show increase in incomes through savings investment, and some improvement in social status. Yet use of solidarity groups since mid-1990s could have increased numbers 3-5 fold, and resulted in more widespread social and political gains for women

• Women staff known for being first on motor bikes in Bangladesh – but used only to supervise and monitor activities, not to reflect on methodology. Staff involved in SII action research produce as their learning from this, however, a set of recommendations with far reaching implications – as project is closing

• Capacities built of Union Parishads across Bangladesh, but no ongoing engagement on gender issues. Leverage potential used randomly by other CARE projects to gain acceptance by UP officials because of legitimacy provided by RMP

CARE Guatemala - FODEMH

CARE Guatemala - FODEMH

• Technical Diversion: Plan to support the position and voice of a nascent Mayan women’s citizenship rights organization, converted to more “classic” organizational strengthening and (literacy) service delivery project.

• Accountability Conflict: Donor-required creation of a new development organization (ADIMH) from an existing women’s movement (FODEMH). Growing pains, internal conflicts, and deep staff-partner tensions arising from results management.

• Spectacular Results: ADIMH grows from 10 to 110 members, and reaches 8,000 women with cascading rights training, and 1,350 with literacy training (70% literacy achievement among enrollees).

• Weak Politicial Voice: Platform and capacity for policy advocacy on wider women’s issues not developed: advocacy alliances hostage to inter-organizational rivalries.

• Mission Shift?: ADIMH seen as solid development partner (GTZ, CEFA), but not financially sustainable at project’s end, and in competition rather than coalition with wider women’s and mayan political movements.

13% of projects in one sample (of evaluations) conducted gender analysis

How Broad and Deep is the Performance Gap?

2% of CPIN projects did gender analysis as part of project design; 12% had an explicit gender strategy; 1% did gender training for partner organizations; 1% raised awareness about violence against women; 9% raised awareness on women’s rights.

Of 32 project proposals Only about 10% articulated empowerment goals with a clear, context specific strategy and measures backing them up.

How Many CPIN Projects state they deploy…

Empowerment approaches 57%

Empowerment + GED approaches 37%

Empowerment + GED + Policy Advocacy 17%

Emp. + GED + PA +rights-based approaches 15%

Emp+GED+PA+RBA +focus on marginalization 11%

Emp+GED+PA+RBA+Marg +citizen participation 10%

• Underlying causes of gender inequity identified and change pathways explicitly stated

• Programs increase in coherence over time: they are cumulative of analytical and experiential learning. Projects are deployed within this framework to complement each other

• Accountability to key local constituencies – women, partners, government – for impact (not project deliverables) is paramount, and local reputation is crucial

• Women organize and connect horizontally and vertically to achieve social and political influence

• Explicit strategies bring women to engage with men in the home, community and external institutions

• Risk taking is critical to success, and the continuing action-reflection cycle and management of this knowledge results in short and longer term impact and brands CARE as a knowledge organization.

“Small changes, if they add up to anything coherently, it is just luck. We can be more strategic than that.- Andrea, Bangladesh

Building Coherence: What world class programs do to leverage social justice for

women

Depth and Breadth of Lasting Impacts On Poverty And Social Injustice

+strongly individual, psychological, asset/service+Learning of MFI

- reversible-Workload and violence-Gender roles unchanged/exacerbated

+strongly ind., psych., asset/service focused+household roles start shifting+ “Seedlings” of deeper change

-Reversible-workload/violence-sustained learning between projects-Little risk taking

To Best (right now)

CARE’s “Best Right Now”

+structural and relational shifts (from “seedlings” to “pathways”)+political power/representation+collective action+Builds Knowledge Capital

-no data to show poverty eradication

Village Savings and Loans, Poverty, and Social Justice:

CARE’s “Better” Approach

to Better

“efficient credit” approach

From Good

Depth and Breadth of Lasting Impacts On Poverty And Social

Injustice

Strictly Technical Strongly technical Learning Program, long term, learning approach

From Good to Great… in Action

Projects are positioned in broader and longer-term learning programs for impact on gender inequality and UCPs . Shift accountability from vertical (to donors) to local (to communities and to women)CARE Asia Women and Girls strategy – supporting COs in re-thinking their work as programsNiger gender equity program, with MMD as a key “hook”.

As underlying causes of poverty and gender inequity are identified, strategies selected reflect an explicit change pathwayBangladesh: Social Development Unit and Community power mapping and institutional analysis (Nijera, etc)Burundi: Dialogues Valorisants

Programs help women to organize in connections of solidarity, around agendas of strategic changeIndia: CASHE – connecting women beyond “self-help” through Solidarity Group methodologySudan: Women’s Rights and Leadership Promotion – building a women’s agenda for peace (next year’s SII)

Explicit plans and strategies for women to engage, collaborate with, and challenge men and other powerful actors/institutionsPeru: Civil Society Strengthening (proposal) – positioning women and women’s organizations in municipal policyBangladesh: Nijera/VAW Ethiopia: FGC Eradication project

Managaement shares in and and rewards responsible risk taking and institutional learningIndia, Vietnam: Inner Spaces, Outer Faces InitiativeReflective Practices Exercises/SII

What Staff are SayingThis is very empowering of local level staff and partners. It requires us to value front line staff much more if we do this learning systematically.

The SII offered an opportunity to build a culture of critical inquiry…to take back the thinking role we had…let slide.

I think it is great, I would like to see more of this type of approach as a normal part of our program cycle.  I think that evaluations could be of a much higher quality and really designed for our learning (rather than for donor reporting).  I think the process brings new challenges to teams, new quality of discussions

Qualitative Assessment of CARE VSL impacts onWomen’s Empowerment and Poverty Eradication

Em

po

wer

men

t

Agency, structure, relations

Agency level

Poverty

Lifted out of poverty

No apparentOr very minimal gains

Mali

TANZ

NIG

CASHE

Forms of Empowerment Political

Social

Economic

agency

relations

structure