Steps

Exploring Change in Women’s Lives with Staff

Following introductions and reflection on the inquiry and the women’s empowerment concepts/framework, the facilitator reviews the one-page summary of macro level factors (economic, social and cultural) that underlie the context of the project’s operating environment. In small groups, participants then work together to focus more on women themselves and what is changing for them due to forces that may not be related to CARE. Discussion questions may include:

• What are the most significant changes shaping women’s lives in the project area?
• What are the major factors/causes directly leading to these changes?
• What evidence supports this position? According to whom?

To help organize group discussions, the Promising Practices Inquiry Guidelines provide the following matrix:

 

Wider (Societal) Change	Important (Underlying) Causes	Dimensions of Women's Empowerment

 

Major changes in women’s lives – and key forces driving change – are agreed upon based on plenary discussion of group work.

Exploring Project Impact on Women’s Empowerment

Following an introduction and discussion on attribution and its differences with:

• Changes that result from forces beyond the project,
• Changes that result from the project, and
• Changes that are happening but we really don’t know who or what attribute to them.

In small groups, the team then reflects on the major changes identified by the team. Participants then construct a logic map of the various factors involved in producing change. As a reference, groups refer to the women’s empowerment framework and sub-dimensions, and consider how any change in one sub-dimension may affect other sub-dimensions for women’s empowerment.

Analyzing the logic maps, groups also discuss and identify where CARE’s activities have contributed to women’s empowerment.

Some questions to help guide the process may include:

• What contributions has CARE made, if any, to the empowerment of women and the advancement of gender equity?
• Programmatic:
  • ‘Agency’ question: In what way(s) does our project enhance women’s individual and collective capacity to think, choose, and act? What evidence is there that CARE’s project supports the expansion of women’s capabilities to identify, pursue, and achieve their basic needs and rights?
  • ‘Structure’ question: What are the structural forces/barriers of change in our context, and how do our programs help change those structures? What evidence is there that our project promotes a more responsive and equitable enabling environment, as embodied in cultural constructs, legal and policy frameworks, economic and market forces, and bureaucratic and organizational forms?
  • ‘Relation’ question: What are the relational forces/barriers to change, and how do our programs help change them? What evidence is there that CARE’s project promotes more interdependent and accountable relationships among women, and between women and the key people and institutions they engage in pursuit of their needs and rights
• Organizational: Finally, what internal factors about CARE itself – who we are, how we act and think, our funding model, policies and rewards, etc. – are shaping the nature of our impact on women’s empowerment, positively or negatively?

Groups then return to plenary to discuss logic maps, and identify causes of change that are not related to CARE’s efforts. Together the team discusses what constitutes evidence, and in groups participants discuss evidence that would link to CARE’s contribution to women’s empowerment. Within groups, one person should act as ‘helpful skeptics’ to seek, probe and challenge evidence to strengthen analysis.

In plenary, each group then presents evidence, and the team challenges assumptions. Some helpful questions to probe deeper into analysis may be:

• How do we know women wouldn’t have done better anyway, just because of their own characteristics (resources, education, personalities, etc.)?
• Are groups absolutely sure that the exact same changes are NOT happening elsewhere, where CARE is NOT working?

The discussion was then document in the following matrix:

Capturing the Practice

Reflecting on the evidence brought forth, the team brainstorms the specific project practices linked to the claims of evidence that CARE’s project contributed to women’s empowerment. Some questions to spark conversation may include:

• What is the real mix of programmatic practices that the project has used to promote/achieve women’s empowerment?
• What types and mixes of practices seem most effective?
• How prevalent are such practices in the project?
• What is the effect of organizational factors (e.g. culture, structure, staffing mix, resource base, etc) on the degree/nature of impact achieved?
• What are the organizational practices facilitating positive change?

The facilitator then introduces definitions of a ‘promising practice’ and participants split back into groups to brainstorm output to identify which practices (programmatic as well as organizational) that should be considered promising. A checklist to help groups think about promising practices included:

• CARE’s own work style, values and gender roles
• Performance management and/or reward system
• Nature of project funding
• Awareness of / accountability for the Programming Principles
• Awareness of / accountability for the CO Gender/Diversity Policy (if applicable)
• Identity/positioning of CARE in local civil society
• Selection and/or nature of partnerships and alliances,
• Partners and staffing mix
• Recruitment priorities (e.g. skills or capacities emphasized)
• Project team profile (e.g. gender, ethnicity, religion, class, etc.)
• Staff training/capacity-building investments
• Technical assistance (if applicable)
• Level at which decisions (about interventions, resource allocations, etc.) are made
• Collaboration and teamwork (within and beyond the project) on priorities, lessons,
• challenges & achievements
• Knowledge management and learning infrastructure
• Balance of time between implementation and reflective/learning work
• Ability to innovate, take risks, make mistakes in CARE

In plenary, the team then presents group work, and comes to a consensus on a few top promising practices that they feel critically influence the project’s impact on women’s empowerment. To help narrow ideas, it may helpful to have the group organize their thoughts into what a program must do, should do and could do. to produce the intended change.

Groups should then work to refine the description of these practices to ensure sufficient detail. To guide this process, some helpful guiding questions may be:

• If you were doing to try to do this again, what would you be sure to do again?
• What would you do differently?
• Where did the practice originate? In the community? In the markets? From local feminists or rights activists in the government?
• Why did the project support/initiate this practice? What community, organizational, or programmatic purpose did it fill?
• What was it about the local context (economic, political, social, geographic...) that made this practice important, and effective?
• Where did its impacts travel? Who decided to take the action? Was there a formal analysis? Whose?
• Who led the action? With whom were they connecting? Which women? Which men? Why?
• What specific steps did they take? Why did they do it this way?
• Did the project practice change to support the action after implementation started How did this happen?

To close the workshop, the team discusses an overview of peer review, plan for the documentation of the Practices and a Process Report, and reflect on the process of the workshop. Some questions for the workshop closure may include:

• Which one aspect of today’s process did you enjoy the most?
• Which one aspect of today’s process did you enjoy the least?
• What was the easiest part of today’s process?
• What was the hardest part of today’s process?
• What one thing have you learned today about women’s empowerment?
• From the many topics that surfaced today (e.g. power, empowerment, reflective practice, etc.) which would you most like to learn more about?
• How did it feel to assess our work in this new way?
• How will you use the learning from today’s process?
• Did your discussion of the ‘causes of change’ uncover or affect anything about how you think about change in women’s empowerment (for example: what you tend to see and what you tend to miss, or how you tend to explain and attribute change)?
• How did your discussion of evidence affect your level of confidence about project impact?
• Now, in retrospect, how much time would you advise others to prepare for their reflection workshop?

Please provide any additional comments or suggestions that could help us improve the process.