Nuffic puts gender challenges on the agenda

15 Sep 2010

On 17 June 2010, 55 people came together to share their experiences with gender in NPT and NICHE capacity development programmes. Nuffic organized the seminar to encourage implementers to better address gender issues and to offer a forum for joint learning and networking.

We were very pleased to have among the participants Robert Dijksterhuis from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Veena Gill from Nuffic's sister organization SIU in Norway.

The former presented persuasive facts on the tremendous backlog that women face in various aspects of life: from education to economic opportunities; from health to security, including violence against women as a weapon in conflict situations. He demonstrated that creating opportunities is not only a woman’s right, but also ‘a smart thing to do’ for the simple reason that it makes development more effective and cheaper.

Different world views

Veena Gill explained how SIU's programmes deal with gender inequalities and concluded by saying that, as women and men have different world views, programmes and projects can only be effective when women participate in analysis and design.

The workshop continued with Nuffic explaining how gender is integrated in NICHE phases and instruments, from identification to M&E. Four implementers of three NPT projects and one NICHE project presented how they tried to integrate gender in their projects.

Analyses, resources and women involvement are key

The presentation of projects with little attention for gender was useful in that it clearly clarified some of the reasons why this was the case. They showed how difficult it is to integrate equality issues without a proper analysis, sufficient resources and women's involvement. Although implementers often say ‘we do not address gender because there are no objectives or results and there is no analysis’, some projects which did manage to produce gender-generated best practices, even though their outlines did not contain strict and detailed instructions.

Getting to work

Working groups were organized to stimulate discussion among participants on preselected themes. The working groups and other discussions yielded much information about views and perceptions on gender in NPT and NICHE projects. They also generated numerous ideas and good practices for implementation. From the working groups and the evaluation it was concluded that the seminar had achieved its objectives.

Three views

Three views with regard to integrating gender perspectives in projects emerged:

Facts, evidence and policies are the main drivers behind a gender-specific focus and a commitment to reduce the disadvantaged position of women compared to men. This ensures that women have more opportunities at hand for their own empowerment and development.
Integrating gender in project conflicts with the idea of demand-drivenness and the financial viability of projects (‘therefore, we don't address it’).
‘If Nuffic does not explicitly ask for it, we don't have to address it’.

In Nuffic’s view, ‘leaving gender out of projects', ignores the views and needs of women and increases the disadvantaged position that women have to combat their poverty. Such projects are not able to demonstrate their alignment with national policy, are likely to increase the gender gap by creating more opportunities for men than for women. Such projects are sub-optimal in relevance and effectiveness as they will fail to contribute to raising women's potential for development and poverty reduction.

More information

The report of the seminar, two presentations and the recommendations can be downloaded below. They contain more information about the seminar and ideas on how to deal with gender in projects.