Evidence on impact and outcome

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Annex 2: Evidence on impact and outcome Assumption Increased provision and uptake of services by girls and women leads to better development outcomes for them.

Link between impact and development outcomes Evidence DFID’s’ Strategic Vision for Girls and Women recognises that their increased uptake of maternal health, education, finance and justice services is vital to tackling poverty and that this will only occur if the enabling environment is addressed alongside measures to improve service provision.1 The evidence2 shows that: - Greater educational and employment opportunities for women (MDG 3) will help in alleviating poverty and hunger (MDG 1) - More educated women, as well as those in employment, are more likely to use maternal health care and antenatal health care services, thus reducing child mortality rates (MDG 4) - Progress on maternal health and improving access to family planning (MDG 5) will also have spill over benefits for the other MDGs, most clearly by helping to substantially reduce child mortality rates (MDG 4) - Lowering fertility rates would have a range of further development benefits such as reducing poverty.

Assumption Women leaders who benefit from the programme use their influence to attempt to change services, businesses, policy, regulation and legislation for the benefit of girls and women and to directly encourage or indirectly inspire further girls and women to

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Link between outcomes and impact Evidence Leadership programmes In building a network of change leaders, the programme will purposefully recruit and support women who have a track record of serving and representing disadvantaged women and the poorest of the poor.

Evidence from Vital Voices demonstrates that the women they train and bring into their networks go on to develop the leadership skills of other women in their communities and countries Sports programme graduates are also mobilising and organising their own projects with local girls3, providing a new generation with access to important community resources and role models.

DFID, 2011, A new strategic vision for girls and women: stopping poverty before it starts, London: DFID. John Ward, Bernice Lee, Simon Baptist and Helen Jackson, 2010, Evidence for Action: Gender Equality and Economic Growth, London: Chatham House

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access services and/or become leaders.

However, evaluations of leadership development programmes for women focus on the skills set of participants or whether the number of women leaders has increased. They tend not to focus on the impact on services and development outcomes for girls and women. Hence this programme will include thorough monitoring and evaluation strategies of programme impacts.

There is a body of evidence that women leaders in different areas of life (civil society, politics and business – see below) often focus on improving conditions for girls and women and have inspired others to access service and become leaders.

Women leaders in civil society There is a long tradition in almost every society of women leaders in civil society advocating for legal, regulatory, policy and programmatic changes to improve the lives of girls and women.4,5 Where women are least active almost invariably policies, laws, regulations and programmes actively discriminate against women.

Studies show that women’s organisations often focus on different issues than male-led organisations. For example, with input from women leaders in Cambodia, village development plans broadened focus from infrastructure to an increased emphasis on health, education, and sensitive issues such as gender-based violence.6 In Brazil, women-led community projects had a stronger focus on improving living conditions, including HIV prevention, education and day care whereas men’s initiatives had a stronger focus on cultural activities. 7 Where governments fail to act, CSOs often fill gaps in resource provision and governance. For example,

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Brady, Martha, Ragui Assaad, et al. 2007, Providing new opportunities to adolescent girls in socially conservative settings: The Ishraq program in rural Upper Egypt, New York: Population Council.

4 Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, 2011, Empowerment: A journey not a destination, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies; Brighton: IDS ; and research from the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability, Brighton: IDS 5 Batliwala, 2008, Changing their world: concepts and practices of women's movements, AWID and Batliwala, 2011, Changing Their World 2nd edition, AWID 6 Chhoeun, T., Sok, P. and Byrne, C., 2008, ‘Citadel of Women’: strengthening female leadership in rural Cambodia’, Gender and Development, Vol. 16, Issue 3, pp 535-547 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13552070802465433 (accessed 01/02/2012) 7 De Mello e Souza, C., 2008, ‘Grassroots Leadership in the Network of Healthy Communities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: A gender perspective’, Gender and Development, Vol. 16, Issue 3, pp 481-494

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women leaders in Brazil see their activism as fulfilling the need for basic services in their communities where government initiatives have failed.

Women’s organisations that get involved in supplying basic services can evolve into more feminist and political entities. Yet whatever their path to political consciousness and activism women’s organisations and movements often have to compromise on addressing deep-rooted gender inequalities when they try to engage with male-dominated political processes or they are used in the short-term by political parties during the consolidation of power and their influence is not necessarily encouraged and sustained over the long-term .8,9 There is also some evidence that women leaders in civil society can be reluctant to delegate power and to train junior staff for future leadership in their organisations.10 This programme explicitly supports the development of new and emerging leaders as well as established ones.

Women leaders in formal politics There is some compelling evidence from both industrialised and developing countries that when women leaders have influence in politics they contribute to changes in laws, regulations, policies and institutions on behalf of women and children.11,12 For instance, women's greater representation in local political office, such as the panchayats in India, results in greater budget allocations towards infrastructure and services serving women's and children's needs.13 Further evidence suggests that women political leaders positively affects girls’ educational aspirations14and enrolment in education, particularly at secondary level and that increased women’s representation in parliament increases public health spending. They positively influence the number of doctors and the percentage of women who receive pre-natal care.15 Furthermore, the number of women 8

Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, 2011, Empowerment: A journey not a destination, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.

Batliwala, 2008, Changing their world: concepts and practices of women's movements, AWID and Batliwala, 2011, Changing Their World 2nd edition, AWID 10 Kumar, (date?) Women and Women’s Organizations in Post-Conflict Societies: The Role of International Assistance, Kumar, USAID (draft paper) 11 Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, 2011, Op.Cit. 12 MarizTadros, 2011, Women Engaging Politically: Beyond Magic Bullets and Motorways, Pathways Policy Paper, October 2011, Brighton: Pathways of Women’s Empowerment RPC 13 See a summary of this evidence - The World Bank, 2012, World Development Report: Gender Equality and development, Washington DC: World Bank 14 Lori Beaman, Esther Duflo, PetiaToplova, 2012, Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India, ScienceDOI: 10.1126/science.1212382 15 Knack, S. and Sanyal, P. 2000,’Making a Difference: How Women In Politics Affect Health and Education Outcome’, World Bank Mimeo 9

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who attend and actively participate in local political meetings is significantly higher where the local political leader position is reserved for a woman.16,17,18 Being exposed to women political leaders also positively influences voters’ opinion of women leaders.19 Interviews with women involved in interfaith organising in the USA showed that exposure to female political role models helped them to overcome their own fears of engaging in activism. Two thirds of these women found mentoring to be significant to their political involvement.20 However, there is also evidence that when women have political influence they disassociate themselves from women’s issues to demonstrate that they are ‘serious’ politicians21 or they pursue other allegiances such as class and ethnicity.22 Moreover, donors tend to focus on supporting getting women into positions of power rather than the creation of an environment that would enable women leaders to change policy, budgets and ensure implementation. This is especially true in FCAS where the immediate challenges of peacebuilding and statebuilding overshadow a gender equality agenda.23 Women leaders in fragile and conflict-affected contexts 16

Chattopadhyay, R. and Duflo, E., 2003, ‘The Impact of Reservation in the Panchayati Raj: Evidence from a Nationwide Randomized Experiment’,Econometrica, vol. 72, no. 5, pp. 1409–43 http://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/natura/0027.html 17 Beaman, L., Duflo, E., Pande, R., and Topalova, P., ‘Political Reservation and Substantive Representation: Evidence from Indian Village Councils’, India Policy Forum, 2010, Ed. Suman Bery, Barry Bosworth and Arvind Panagariya, Brookings Institution Press and The National Council of Applied Economic Research: Washington, DC and New Delhi, Vol. 7. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/rpande/papers/politicalreservationandsubstantiverepresentation.pdf (accessed 01/02/2012) 18 Deininger, K., Jin, S., Nagarajan, H. K., Fang, X., 2011, ‘Does Female Reservation Affect Long-Term Political Outcomes? Evidence from Rural India’, Policy Research working paper, World Bank, Washington, DC http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?pagePK=64165259&piPK=64165421&theSitePK=469382&menuPK=64166093&entityID=000158349_20110628093513 (accessed 01/02/2012) 19 Beaman, L., Duflo, E., Pande, R., and Topalova, P., ‘Op. Cit. 20 Caiazza, A., 2006, Called to Speak: Six Strategies That Encourage Women’s Political Activism, IWPR http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/womens-public-vision/publications-commentary/called-to-speak(accessed 01/02/2012) 21 Franceschet, S. and Piscopo, J. M., 2008, ‘Gender Quotas and Women’s Substantive Representation: Lessons from Argentina’, Politics and Gender, vol. 4, pp. 393–425. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=2183572(accessed 01/02/2012) 22 Castillejo, C., 2009, Seminar: Strengthening Women’s Citizenship in the Context of Statebuilding, FRIDE http://www.fride.org/expert/315/clare-castillejo (accessed 01/02/2012) 23 O’Connell, Helen with Wendy Harcourt, 2011. Conflict-affected and fragile states: Opportunities to promote gender equality and equity? DFID.

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Although the opening up of democratic space at national and local levels in the aftermath of conflict has facilitated women’s increased political participation in formal politics, the opportunities opened up in peacebuilding and statebuilding for securing gender equality and equity have been missed, such as the negotiations around the peace agreement, the political settlement and in building gender-responsive service provision. 24 Women leaders in business Recent evidence from developing countries shows that this pattern of women benefiting other women (and children) is not confined to women political leaders. Women leaders in business and women-owned enterprises tend to hire more female employees than male-owned enterprises. The World Bank and International Financial Corporation recently released 2012 report on "Women, Business and the Law," for instance, notes that in economies where women cannot get a job without the permission of a husband or guardian, female-managed firms (but not male-managed ones) override these restrictions and hire female employees.

Women leaders have strong links to other women in their communities so that they are in a position to effectively coalesce a wider ‘voice’ that ensures there is pressure brought to bear on improvements in services that are crucial to the lives of women.

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Overall there is a lack of evidence on the impacts of women’s participation in informal and formal politics on improvements in services, peacebuilding and statebuilding and development outcomes. Therefore, the evidence gathering component of this programme includes a focus on this area.

Evidence from Bangladesh, Brazil, Ghana and Egypt demonstrates that drawing on the women’s movement for support and direction in terms of setting agendas for service improvements locally and nationally can give such agendas a legitimacy they would lack without such support.25,26Researchers and activists stress that civil society organisations (CSOs) and women’s social movements have a vital role to play in developing a constituency that is able to express women’s concerns, holding the government to account, demanding open and transparent processes, advocating for human rights, and providing a space for the development of women’s leadership skills from which women can transition into formal politics.27

O’Connell, Helen with Wendy Harcourt, 2011. Op. Cit. Pathways of Women’s Empowerment, 2011, Empowerment: A journey not a destination, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies 26 Llanos and Sampleet al, 2008, From Words to Action: Best practices for women’s participation in Latin American political parties, International IDEA, Stockholm 27 Castillejo, C., 2009, Seminar: Strengthening Women’s Citizenship in the Context of Statebuilding, FRIDE http://www.fride.org/expert/315/clare-castillejo , and Yost, C., 1998, ‘Introduction’ in A Changing Asia: Women in Emerging Civil Societies. The Asia Foundation 25

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Without a clear consensus within the community on gender equality issues, elected women do not have a constituency to which they can refer and rely on for support when addressing gender issues through formal politics, as found in Morocco28 and Costa Rica29, making measures to enhance gender equality less likely to succeed.

Changes in policy and legislation in favour of improved service delivery for girls and women feeds through to actual improvements in services

By creating strong links and networks between established women leaders at a global level (Vital Voices) and facilitating social networks for emerging leaders at a community level (Women Win), this programme will also increase the potential of women to become more active in contexts where there is not a strong women’s movement as well as those where there is.

A study of the impact of quotas for political representation by women in Indian councils found that a greater investment in water provision enabled women to spend less time on domestic chores and more on economic activities.30 A further study showed a positive impact on the education attainment of girls 31 and that increased representation of women in political leadership positions leads to a greater number of doctors in the health service and an increased percentage of women who receive pre-natal care.32 However some studies that look at changes in policies and legislation and increased budget allocations in favour of girls and women show a disappointing impact on development outcomes for girls and women33, which contradict our assumption that such changes lead to better outcomes. This is believed to be because pervasive social and institutional discriminatory practices limit the realisation of benefits in their

http://www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org/beijing12/rpt_chan1.pdf (accessed 01/02/2012) 28 Liddell, J., 2009, ‘Gender Quotas in Clientelist Systems: The Case of Morocco’s National List’, al-raida, Issue 126-127, pp. 79-86 http://www.lau.edu.lb/centers-institutes/iwsaw/raida126-127/main.html(accessed 01/02/2012) 29 Sagot, M., 2010, ‘Does the Political Participation of Women Matter? Democratic Representation, Affirmative Action and Quotas in Costa Rica’, in Quotas: Add Women and Stir?, eds. M. Tadros and A. Costa, IDS Bulletin, vol. 41, no. 5 ht,tp://www.ids.ac.uk/go/idspublication/quotas-add-women-and-stir(accessed 01/02/2012) 30 Jha, R., Nag, S., and Nagarajan, H. K., 2011, ‘Political Reservations, Access to Water and Welfare Outcomes: Evidence from Indian Villages’, ASARC Working Paper 2011/15 http://www.crawford.anu.edu.au/acde/asarc/pdf/papers/2011/WP2011_15.pdf (accessed 01/02/2012) 31 Figueras, I. C. 2009, Are female leaders good for education? Evidence from India.Economics Working Papers we077342 32 Knack, S. and Sanyal, P.,2000, ’Making a Difference: How Women In Politics Affect Health and Education Outcome’, World Bank Mimeo.

33 Knack, S. and Sanyal, P.,2000, Op. Cit.

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lives.

Hence the innovation aspect of this programme will support leaders to develop and promote best practice service delivery models, challenge social norms and build political commitment.

Empowered girls will be able to challenge gender norms and take up services, supported by men and boys

Furthermore the evidence gaps component of this programme will examine: - How institutions, such as the work place, family, the state, the education and the health sector have and could be changed so that men and boys consider to be equally valuable, the contributions and agency of both girls and women, and men and boys - The ways in which the impacts of discriminatory institutions and social norms influence women’s political participation or how women’s political participation are negated by institutional and social norms.

An external evaluation of Minding the Goalposts, a girl-only programme which combines football, leadership development, reproductive health and rights education, and community service, suggests that the longer a girl participates in the programme, the more likely she is to agree that she can make decisions about her life, have access to sexual and reproductive health information, and believe that she can become as highly educated as boys34.

Evidence on the direct link between enabling the leadership of girls and women and development outcomes, such as improved service delivery and take up, is limited. It is proposed that Women Win monitor and evaluate the impact of its programme on service uptake.

There is general consensus that efforts to improve the lives of girls and women will fail if men and boys are not involved and if gender discriminatory attitudes and behaviours are not challenged. The focus of the majority of current programmes focusing on men and boys is on changing attitudes and behaviours at the level of the individual in the areas of sexual and reproductive health, violence against women and developing healthy relationships. Hence the evidence on men and boys focuses largely on these areas

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Forde, Sarah, 2010, ‘Moving the goalposts: Girls football, leadership and sexual and reproductive health and rights programme in Kilifi, Coast Province, Kenya‘, Presented at the Interagency Youth Working Group (IYWG) Protecting and Empowering Adolescent Girls: Evidence for the Global Health Initiative Meeting, 3 June. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PNADS921.pdf. (accessed 01/02/2012)

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and demonstrates that such interventions can lead to improved relationship with partners and improved health outcomes.35,36 However, there is limited evidence on how changes in the attitudes and behaviour of men and boys at a personal level can be (and have been) sustained through changes in institutional practices and policy reform and how fundamental changes in the attitudes and behaviours of men and boys could enable girls and women to have more influence in decision-making at different levels and in different areas.37 Therefore the evidence gathering component of this programme proposes to also focus on this issue.

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Howse et al, 2010, Men are changing: Ca Instituto Promundo and World Health Organization, 2007, Engaging Men and Boys in Changing Gender-based Inequity in Health, Washington DC: WHO 37 See for example Barker, G., Contreras, J.M., Heilman, B., Singh, A.K., Verma, R.K., and Nascimento, M., 2011, Evolving Men: Initial Results from the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES). Washington, D.C.: International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Promundo.

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