Gender analysis frameworks

Gender and development initiatives have a long history, but what is the long game and how do we put ideas into practise?

One of the major points of contentions and debate in the gender and development field is how to effect real change while also attending to the immediate and urgent needs of women and communities.

Achieving gender equity involves confronting power, law, norms, economics, government, culture and more.

So how is it possible to plan for change across all these areas while also working with women in their communities? How does development play the long game and drive systemic change in the face of urgency?

Feminists, activists, and gender and development workers are constantly engaged in creating new and more relevant approaches to such planning.

Frameworks for the ‘long game’

Gender analysis is a planning framework that’s produced a range of tools for assisting local, national and global organisations to analyse the most effective, context-relevant types of interventions.

One of the most original and enduring of these approaches is one devised by gender and development scholar Caroline Moser.

According to Moser’s (1989) approach, it’s necessary to devise interventions and approaches to meet both practical and strategic gender needs.

To learn more, listen to this audio clip from Maree (you can also read a transcript here).

Your task

So far this week, we’ve looked at different approaches for understanding and addressing gender inequality from WuDunn and Kristof, who promote giving to charities and NGOs as a path to ending gender inequity, through to Moser who promotes a longer, more strategic approach.

Given that it’s not easy to translate any of these frameworks or approaches into successful outcomes, how do you think these tensions could be addressed and transformed into workable solutions? For example:

• What would you suggest as first steps?
• How would they contribute to the long game?
• What barriers to success might these steps encounter?

Use the comments to discuss your thinking with other learners.

Reference

_{Moser, C. 1989, Gender planning in the Third World: meeting practical and strategic gender needs, World Development_, vol. 17, no. 11, pp. 1799 – 1825.}