Research within Programs

Research has long been integral to IWDA’s work, helping determine our priorities and focus, and supporting action to improve the life choices and well being of women, girls and their communities in our region.  Most of our development activities operate within an action research dynamic – an ongoing cycle of action, reflection and learning that informs what we do and how we do it. 

Some programs incorporate specific research components. This often involves documenting and analysing local gender issues using participatory methodologies and action research, to inform and support women to make ongoing improvements in their lives, capture evidence of what needs to change or what works, and advocate for the policies, practices, laws and behaviours that are required if women are to achieve equal human rights. 

An example of this ‘embedded’ research is the detailed participatory social research of aspirations and perceptions (RAP) among women and men about natural resource management, undertaken with Live and Learn Environmental Education in the Solomon Islands in 2009. 

Grounding design in research

In many parts of the Solomon Islands, logging is unsustainable and women in particular are concerned about the future of their communities but struggle to be heard.  The RAP is a semi-structured process of learning with and from communities about their aspirations of and perceptions towards access and power structures, community strengths and weaknesses and other relevant social, cultural, political, environmental and economic information that helps shape the relationship between people and the environment.  It was facilitated in seven sites across four provinces and involved some 219 women and men from 32 communities.

The research provided rich data on women’s and men’s perceptions of natural resource issues in their area, who gets a say in decisions, how decisions are made, and how this links to land tenure and community hopes and plans for the future – the change they would like to see.  This included information about the capacity of communities to contribute to more inclusive and sustainable management of natural resources.  The research provided baseline data (how things are at the start of the project, so communities can assess what difference it makes); helped identify appropriate opportunities to work with communities; anticipate where social, environmental, political, structural, economic, religious and institutional factors might constrain the impact of activities; and which livelihoods approaches have the best potential, given the reality on the ground. 

The research guided the design of a large five-year project (2009-2013) involving IWDA and Live and Learn Environmental Education Vanuatu, Building community resilience: natural resource management – Tugeda tude fo tomoro. By generating detailed local information, the research enabled the design to directly target the practical and strategic changes that women, men, young women and young men see as most important.  While the need for change, and community willingness to change, were evident from the research, communities are also profoundly challenged by the need to balance long-term sustainable natural resource management, immediate cash needs, flow-on effects of pressures associated with extensive logging/mining, and population pressures. 

The research also contributed to our decision to use an ongoing ‘learning by doing’ action reflection model that builds on existing strengths, desire for change and learnings from the partners’ previous work in Solomon Islands.  Sex-disaggregated findings enabled the partner organisations to ‘start from where the communities are at’, identify community-led projects that will improve livelihoods for women, men, young women and young men, and support existing groups and networks in advancing women’s leadership in inclusive and sustainable natural resource management.

Evaluation

As a non-government development organisation managing a large number of projects each year with partner organisations in the Asia Pacific Region, participatory evaluations that assess achievements against project objectives are a routine part of our work and essential to ongoing learning.  IWDA usually undertakes a number of major end-of-project evaluations each year. 

IWDA’s usual approach to evaluation is situated within a participatory, action research framework.  For collaborative projects that involve multiple partners, such as the One Just World series of development forums, IWDA takes a collaborative approach, negotiating agreed evaluation priorities with stakeholders. 

Researching long term impact

IWDA undertakes specific research projects from time to time to assess the impact of its work with partners, such as the collaborative research funded by AusAID and undertaken with the Vietnam Women’s Union, Empowering poor women: microfinance – what works? 10 years of experience and reflection in Vietnam .

The research underlined the value of microfinance as a tool for facilitating economic and wider empowerment in a world of imperfect markets and systemic barriers to women accessing financial and business support services. It also found that the way in which microfinance was provided ? and the nature and scope of the support, assistance and learning available to women ? was critical to overall impact. IWDA-VWU microfinance activities involved much more than the provision of savings and credit services. They provided women with life skills, solidarity, technical knowledge, social networks and opportunities for decision making. The women believed that it was the wider benefits, in particular new knowledge and skills, that had the most profound impact on their lives, even more than access to financial services.

In contexts where women live with significant gender inequality, it is not surprising that they need and value the support of peers, specific skills development and the opportunity to share, learn and contribute in spaces that are supportive.

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