III. Entry Points and Instruments for Gender Mainstreaming - IFAD

“ENGENDERING DEVELOPMENT
IS COMPLEX AND INEQUITIES
OF DECADES CAN NOT BE
UNDONE IN A FEW YEARS.
THE NEGLECT OF WOMEN’S
NEEDS HAS BEEN GLARINGLY
OBVIOUS, AS HAVE THE KINDS
OF DISCRIMINATION THEY
HAVE BEEN SUBJECT TO IN
THE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC
AND POLITICAL SPHERES. IT
IS THEREFORE NATURAL,
AND JUST, TO DISCRIMINATE
IN THEIR FAVOUR.”
Statement made by
Jeffrey Dellimore,
Deputy Director,
Social Development Department
at CDB at the inauguration
of the Saint Lucia workshop.
COOPERATING INSTITUTION
Definition of Project-Specific Policy
and Strategy for Gender
Mainstreaming 5
When identifying the target group,
a distinction must be made between
man and woman-headed households
and different strategies developed for
each group. Projects need to define a
gender-specific strategy for working
with each group. Furthermore, they
must identify factors that limit equal
participation of stakeholders and
define how gender issues are to be
incorporated in each project
component.
A gender mainstreaming strategy
helps to avoid the creation of
marginal activities specifically for
women, e.g., handicrafts, sewing, etc.,
instead of their integration as fullyfledged
beneficiaries of the original
project components. Separate
“women activities” have often
resulted in women’s exclusion from
more profitable development
alternatives.
Political Will and Sensitization
Training of project staff in gender
issues and developing genderspecific
strategies, participatory
methods and tools and a gendersensitive
monitoring system are in
themselves no guarantee for
attaining gender-related objectives.
The political will to truly empower
rural men and women, enabling
them to take charge of their own
development and to reduce gender
inequalities, is one of the essential
factors that determine project
success. Sensitization of government
counterparts and project staff,
including project managers, through
programmes such as PROSGIP, is
essential. Positive changes in attitude
towards a gender-sensitive approach
and increased women’s participation
in all project activities including at
the project manager level, have been
noted as two of the immediate results
of PROSGIP.
Gender-Sensitive Monitoring
Indicators 6
It is now widely recognized that
gender-sensitive monitoring and
evaluation systems are important for
effective project implementation. For
this purpose, projects need to
enhance their information and datacollecting
systems, disaggregating
data by sex.
Performance, monitoring and
success indicators need to be
formulated in order to:
● measure advances made in the
implementation of the project’s
annual plan of operations in
relation to gender mainstreaming;
and
● monitor and evaluate the effects
and impacts of project
intervention on gender gaps
among beneficiaries; i.e.,
determine whether the project
has contributed to the increase or
reduction of gender inequalities.
Since qualitative changes (such
as gender inequities) cannot be
measured on a monthly or
three monthly basis, special
studies should be conducted on
a yearly basis.
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Costa Rica Dominican Republic Mexico
5 In Section 6, an experience with gender mainstreaming in project design in PRODAP-II, El Salvador, is presented.This
experience is also reflected in the case study presented at the PROSGIP workshop in Chile, 1999. Case Study: Strategy to
Implement Equity and the Gender Approach, PRODAP. R. Moreira and I. Schreuel, IFAD/PROSGIP, June 1999.
6 Refer to document on gender-sensitive monitoring and evaluation systems (English and Spanish).V. Budinich. IFAD/PROSGIP,
1998 and 1999.This baseline document was produced with the support of the Programme for Strengthening the Regional
Capacity for Monitoring and Evaluation of Rural Poverty Alleviation Projects in Latin America and the Caribbean (PREVAL).
Ecuador