Gender Wise

IWDA Gender Wise: specialist expertise matters

Despite over 15 years of widely stated international commitment to gender mainstreaming among development organisations, in practice, much development work still fails to serve women’s interests.

Research consistently shows that ‘overall, the history of gender integration and implementation has been one marked by inaction (or at best partial action and limited follow up), despite virtually universal commitment at the level of goal and strategy.’¹

Even with the best will, and despite the plethora of gender analysis tools now readily available, many development practitioners need the confidence, specialist knowledge and experience to adequately integrate gender considerations into their work.

Recognising this, IWDA established Gender Wise as a gender training and advisory service in 2010.

IWDA Gender Wise initiates and responds to requests on a fee-for-service basis to gender training and advisory services. We deliver through our program partnerships in Asia and the Pacific, phased inputs to NGO project collaborations and through customised training programs and consultancy services for multi-sectoral clients.

Gender Wise is also the mechanism through which IWDA maintains and expands gender expertise within the organisation itself.

Examples of work over the past year include:

Gender training and mentoring for Live and Learn Environmental Education Solomon Islands Tugeda Tude Fo Tomoro project staff
As a component of our commitment to working with our project partners to build their gender knowledge and skills, IWDA Gender Wise regularly contributes to this project’s reflection process. This year Gender Wise facilitated sessions for male and female staff on designing monitoring and evaluation processes to capture gender dimensions of change; integrating gender dimensions in community action planning; understanding power and participation; and understanding the behavioural continuum from disrespect to abuse and how this impacts on program implementation and reveals the hidden nature of gender disadvantage in relation to the lives of girls and women.

Gender-focused monitoring and learning activities have included:

• structured interviews capturing gendered experiences of male and female community facilitators working for change within their communities
• interviews with men and women in communities about internal and external constraints and enablers to moving beyond traditional gender roles, and
• developing tools that increase understanding on the multiple dimensions of power and disadvantage that determine individuals’ capacity to participate in development and decisionmaking.

These tools provide a basis for developing strategies to increase women’s participation that are grounded in men’s and women’s lived experience.

Supporting gender capacity in WaterAid Australia and Timor-Leste
IWDA Gender Wise has continued to provide training, mentoring and practical support with learning activities for staff of WaterAid Timor-Leste (WATL). This work has built on learning from research conducted by Gender Wise and staff of WATL and their partners in 2010. The research process and its findings provided significant insights and valued learning for staff. This resulted in a marked increase in understanding of and commitment to integrating a gender perspective in all aspects of their work.

Gender Wise has worked with staff to conduct further enquiry processes that provide a safe space for women and men in communities to talk about contentious gender issues. Gender Wise is also supporting the development of training that will become an integral part of WATL’s ongoing work. This includes monitoring and evaluation approaches for WaterAid staff in Timor-Leste and Australia.

WaterAid has invested in developing capacity to integrate disability in their work, and Gender Wise inputs have incorporated this dimension. Gender Wise, with WaterAid and disability specialists, also co-facilitated workshops on Gender and Social Inclusion in Melbourne and Brisbane for Australian and international development practitioners.

In November 2011, IWDA Gender and Training Advisor Di Kilsby, with colleagues from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, co-facilitated a WaterAid Inclusive WASH webinar on the topic of gender.

Gender training for Live and Learn Environmental Education in Pacific Islands countries
Live and Learn Environmental Education Australia (LLEE) contracted IWDA to provide technical support to the one-year pilot project ‘Modelling and testing sanitation marketing and hygiene behaviour change in rural communities in the Western Pacific’, to strengthen the role and capacity of women in target communities.

This commitment to gender integration resulted from LLEE’s recognition that women in project locations had little or no voice in decision-making processes and in setting development agendas. IWDA’s support to this project contributed to an increase in the engagement of women to generate sanitation and hygiene demand and change at the community level and an increase in awareness of the impact of gender on WASH-focused activities.

Technical gender support and training to the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) initiative was provided in Fiji, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. The gender training aimed to further develop gender awareness and related skills among senior management and program staff involved in project planning, implementation and monitoring. This has contributed to new thinking about power and gender relations in project locations and increased knowledge and awareness among LLEE staff and stakeholders to reinforce gender equality considerations at community and organisational levels.

Other training and advisory services delivered by Gender Wise during the year included:

• Office for Women, Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs: End of Year One progress review of the National Women’s Alliance Program
• Oxfam Australia: Gender Justice training
• Commonwealth Local Government Forum, Fiji: Introduction to Gender and Gender Auditing training
• Training conducted through IWDA Gender Wise representation on AusAID’s Peace, Conflict and Development Panel, Training Support Group: Course on Fragility and Conflict training
• East New Britain Sexual Health Improvement Project, Papua New Guinea: IWDA technical input, Papua New Guinea Australia Sexual Health Improvement Program, AusAID

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