Ulaanbaatar 2013

Mongolia Compact Gender Summary Report: Best Practices And Lessons LearnedTrack and monitor the progress of the implementation of the GIPIdentify issues to be shared with the MCC-SGA team in order to seek further adviceContinued accountability through reporting and highlighting any issues or progress to the MCA andthe MCC has helped maintain focus and accountability.Introducing issues that are new and unfamiliar to implementing entities or contractors requirescontinued follow-up, support and monitoring to ensure implementation. The Road project is anexample of this. The project‟s SGA interventions focused with its contracting companies on workingconditions, with a specific focus on sexual harassment and a safe working environment, women‟semployment in construction, and preventing TIP. On sexual harassment, an amendment was made inthe organizational internal regulation which contains provisions on awareness raising actions to allemployees and employers‟ duties and obligations to take appropriate measures to enhance employees‟knowledge and understanding and prevention of gender issues, gender based violence and issues ofsexual harassment at work. On TIP, the workforces were trained on this issue, as were the surroundingsoums nearby the road. And yet, for the contractors and the contractors‟ personnel this is an issue theyhad not dealt with in the past. In follow-up meetings it was discovered that the implementing entitiesand contractors as well as their personnel were still not completely clear as to what TIP entails, andhow to deal with it. Continued training, discussion, information sharing and follow up on thesepreviously unfamiliar issues are needed, as well as presenting the content and information in a veryeasy to understand way. The aim is adequate understanding of what TIP means for constructioncontractors who have not dealt with such requirements in the past and who had not establishedsystems and procedures for dealing with them.The MCA-Mongolia Compact is a clear example that gender is not just about women, but mustinclude both women and men and should give attention to specific groups such as the disabled.The Health Project is a good example of where a lack of focus on male health challenges resulted ininsufficient attention to the need for specific targeting of males. This project also late in theimplementation stage added an activity to ensure that disabled people would benefit from the NCDscreenings. The lesson learned was that gender analysis does not only reveal the ways in whichwomen are, or are not, affected, it equally indicates that particular measures may be necessary toenhance the participation and access of males or vulnerable groups. Delivering of female and maletargeted interventions by the Health Project is now carried out nationwide.Efforts to sex-disaggregate data through regular monitoring are welcome, but it is not alwayspossible to make substantive program changes if the data show inequalities or issues. Longerterm impact evaluations should explicitly require gender analysis, using both quantitative andqualitative methods. All quantitative data collection, to the extent possible, should be sexdisaggregatedto allow us to see and understand gender-differential impacts. Data collection andanalysis should be used to help inform and change project implementation, if needed. This hashappened in Mongolia to some extent. A positive example of how Indicator Tracking Table (ITT)data was used mid-course is the Peri-Urban Rangeland Project where changes to the project expansionsites were made following the analysis of monitoring data that showed gender disparities concerningaccess of female-headed households. In the case of TVET, however, even though gender disparity inearnings of TVET graduates was identified, it was no longer possible to redesign the project in such away that it would comprehensively assist girls in undertaking studies leading to higher paying sectors,though media activities were carried out to encourage girls to pursue non-traditional careers.Impact evaluations cover another area requiring explicit engagement of the SGA group to ensuremeaningful information is obtained. Even when MCC and MCA-Mongolia asked impact evaluationcontractors for sex-disaggregated data collection, their baseline report did not as a matter of courseanalyze data in more detail, as became apparent when additional requests were made by the SGAteam members. This indicates the need to clearly highlight the gender analysis requirements in asmuch detail as possible in the ToRs for survey contractors. In most cases, MCA-Mongolia‟sevaluations consisted of quantitative but not qualitative data collection and analysis, even thoughqualitative data gathering is important and useful for social science research. Good gender analysis14Page 14 of 80