Perspectives: The ICRW Blog

A New Model for Social Change

ggaynair — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:22:30 +0000

ICRW launches new initiative in urban slums

A new ICRW initiative aims to foster deeper collaboration among organizations working in Mumbai’s slum communities. The goal is to promote shared learning and create lasting social change.

Lyric Thompson is special assistant to the president of ICRW.

A new ICRW initiative aims to foster deeper collaboration among organizations working in Mumbai’s slum communities. The goal is to promote shared learning and create lasting social change.

I recently returned from our Mumbai office, where I worked with local partners to develop a new ICRW initiative, known as the Site for Intensive Learning and Action (SILA). The SILA aims to create a different way of collaborating with diverse local partners to “move the needle” on staggering challenges faced by the people we serve in sprawling slum communities of Mumbai.

Our office is located on the edge of one of those slums, called Shivaji Nagar, which is home to Mumbai’s largest dumping ground. Many of the estimated 600,000 people here make a living as “rag-pickers:” Each morning, I passed women and girls, barefoot and stunted, plucking through dumpsters for yesterday’s recyclables to sell so they can feed their families. The area also has the lowest water coverage in the city. Women wait in long lines at public water sources. Public toilets overflow with waste. In the afternoon heat, the stench from the city’s open sewers is overwhelming. That this reality exists alongside one of the world’s financial capitals seems unbelievable.

In these communities, our researchers see firsthand what the country statistics tell us about the unique vulnerability of women and girls in India: The 2005–2006 National Health and Family Survey found that 40 percent of married women experienced violence at home. Police often don’t respond to domestic abuse complaints, and girls and women are commonly harassed by groups of boys and men, in what’s known as “eve teasing.” Many parents say they keep girls home from school for their own protection. And girls who don’t go to school are more likely to marry – nearly 45 percent of girls wed before the age of 18, and arranged marriages are still very much the norm. As I wandered the slum’s twisting footpaths, I saw girls everywhere doing wash, cooking and caring for children. Green bangles, symbols of a married woman, jingled on their wrists.

This is the world ICRW seeks to change. We have studied these communities for years, but now we want to use our research findings to empower people there – traditionally the subject of study – to craft their own solutions to the challenges they face. That is the motivation behind the SILA.

We plan to achieve this through a partnership model called collective impact. Essentially, the idea holds that like-minded organizations are stronger working together toward common goals – even when their individual approaches or programs differ – than operating individually or competing with one another in the same space. As a model, collective impact promotes mutual learning and a larger overall impact toward true, sustainable social change.

We’ll use this model to select the right partners working in the slums and hone in on a few priority goals that we will work on together. We believe that adolescent girls are our key entry point; they are among the most marginalized in the community. They are also central to the family and young enough that programs targeted at them could potentially yield a lifetime of benefits.

To help us lay the foundation for the SILA initiative, ICRW hosted three graduating MBA students from the Thunderbird Emerging Markets Laboratory (TEM Lab) at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, the leading international business school in the United States. The TEM Lab – which will be honored at ICRW’s May 23 gala – gives graduating MBA students a chance to apply their skills in real world settings like the slums of Mumbai.

The TEM Lab students spent more than a month in Mumbai helping ICRW and our local partners design a strategic plan to achieve measurable, sustainable social change in the slums. This included assisting our experts with identifying areas where adolescents are being underserved, and with developing a communications strategy and management structure to monitor the effectiveness of our partnerships with local organizations.

In a time of dwindling resources pitted against ever-increasing social challenges, our experience with the collective impact model we are launching in Mumbai will provide valuable lessons to the international development field. We believe the approach holds great promise – not only for the lives of adolescent girls in India, but for their communities, too.

A Poignant Reminder

ggaynair — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 16:02:04 +0000

A researcher is reminded that in the end, it’s about the people

A guessing game between ICRW researcher Jeffrey Edmeades and young married girls in Ethiopia’s Amhara region highlights how child marriage has narrowed the girls’ life horizons. Read more about Edmeades latest experience in the field and learn about ICRW’s GlobalGiving challenge that aims to tell the stories of young brides around the world – and show what the global community can do to end the practice of child marriage.

Jeffrey Edmeades is an ICRW social demographer and directs the TESFA project in Ethiopia.

As a researcher, it is sometimes very easy to focus on the forest and lose sight of the trees. We become so engrossed in the mechanics of research, worrying about things like sample size, response bias and quality control that at times it is easy to momentarily forget about the actual people our research strives to help.

I was recently reminded of this while in Ethiopia’s Amhara region for an ICRW and CARE-Ethiopia project that aims to improve the lives of girls who became wives and mothers before they ever had a chance to live out their childhoods. I have been working on this project for almost two years, and have had the privilege of talking to lots of child brides. Sadly, their stories are all quite similar.

As a group of girls and I gathered in the shade of a building one day, we talked about everything from whether they had ever spoken to a ferengi – a foreigner (they hadn’t) – to what the process of getting married was like. The girls were particularly interested in what girls their age did in “America” and how that differed from their experiences. So, we started a guessing game. I asked them questions about their lives and then they guessed what the equivalent was for girls their age in the United States – and for me.

“How old were you when you got married?” I asked them. Each quietly said a number – 14, 9, 16.

“And how old was your husband?”

Twenty-two. Eighteen. Thirty.

"Did you know your husband before you met him at the marriage ceremony?”

Most did not, they told me, though some of them did, but usually not well.

“What was the process of marriage like for you?” I asked, knowing that in Amhara marriage is made up of several steps.

Speaking over each other, they filled me in on what’s involved: “Well, first you are promised to marriage by your parents, then you have a ceremony, then you start living with his family part-time, then full-time and then you sleep together…”

“Who decides when it is time to sleep together and how do they know it is time?”

Laughing shyly, the girls told me that for most the decision is made based on physical changes during puberty. None had chosen when to start having sex; their husband or in-laws decided for them.

“How old are girls at that time usually?”

Most answered “14, 15, 16,” but a handful said 10 years old, which is almost certainly before many girls started puberty given their poor diets.

I explained that in the U.S., girls usually live very different lives. Virtually no girls their age would be married already and very, very few would have children. Most girls would be in school and wouldn’t be thinking of marriage until they finished with university.

And then it was my turn.

When I told them that my wife was older than me - by a mere eight months - there was an audible gasp of surprise and then the girls started laughing. In Amhara wives are on average eight years younger than their husbands. Most of the girls guessed that I was ten to 17 years older than my wife.

They were particularly impressed by how long women in the U.S. waited to have children, even after marriage, and that many are able to continue their education until they want to stop - something several girls expressed regret at not being able to do.

More than anything, our conversation highlighted the ways in which the girls’ life horizons had been narrowed by poverty, the rural nature of their setting and early marriage, which robbed them of the opportunity to finish school or have any experiences beyond that of being a mother and wife.

As we talked to each other about our lives, I realized that I had been in the forest too much; at some point I had started to think of these girls as a large, homogenous group rather than the individuals that they clearly were. Chatting with them that day was an important and poignant reminder of the human impact of early marriage, and that each girl has her own strengths, her own dreams.

The purpose of our work, I was reminded, is not so much about the sample size or response bias, as is about helping these young wives and mothers reach their full potential.

Related blogs from Ethiopia:

Quiet Determination

Transformations

Eyes That Haunt

A Price Too High To Bear

ggaynair — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:52:02 +0000

ICRW studies the cost of maternal mortality in rural Kenya

Each year hundreds of thousands of women die from pregnancy-related causes. ICRW is investigating the financial and social costs of such deaths in rural Kenya.

Radha Rajan is an ICRW consultant with expertise in qualitative research and program evaluation.

Ours is the only vehicle in sight on the bumpy dirt road to the village of Nyamula in Western Kenya. Compounds with semi-permanent houses set far apart from each other dot the landscape, and acres of farmland fill the spaces in between. I’ve come to this remote community to meet a few families who are reeling from an unexpected loss.

It’s quiet as we drive into one family’s compound situated miles away from any town center; the only sound is the bleating of a small goat as our jeep pulls to a stop. Before we leave the vehicle I ask my colleague from the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) if a woman wanted to give birth in a hospital or at a clinic, how would she get there?

“After she goes into labor, someone may give the woman a ride on the back of their bicycle,” my colleague tells me. “If it is night, there is cell service and the family knows someone, maybe she can get a ride on a motorcycle. But that is often too difficult. Many women give birth at home.”

I picture a woman in labor faced with the options of riding a bike to the health clinic or delivering at home without the benefit of skilled medical care, and I start to understand the importance of advocating for increased funding to support maternal health. In women of reproductive age, maternal ill health is one of the leading single causes of death and disability. Each year about 358,000 women worldwide die from pregnancy-related causes, and most who die in childbirth suffer one of five preventable or treatable complications, such as severe bleeding. Recent reviews show that while the annual global number of maternal deaths declined by about one-third between 1990 and 2008, a large number of African countries, including Kenya, have made little or no progress in lowering maternal mortality rates over the past two decades.

Here at ICRW, we believe those figures can be reversed, and we’re working to illustrate, through research, the need for more investments to prevent maternal deaths. With the KEMRI/CDC Research and Public Health Collaboration and Family Care International (FCI) our latest research on maternal mortality aims to demonstrate the social, emotional, financial and practical burdens rural Kenyan families experience when a young woman dies during childbirth or pregnancy. Estimating how this combination of burdens – as opposed to just one – affects families and communities makes this study particularly unique. Ultimately, we hope our findings on the costs of maternal mortality will compel policymakers to take action so families can avoid another mother’s preventable death.

In Kenya, we are meeting poor rural families affected by maternal death to better understand their experience. We are collecting data on the financial toll they incur when they have to pay for emergency treatment and funeral services. And we’re learning how families already struggling to make ends meet are sent further into a cycle of poverty when they lose a productive member of their household.

While I was in Nyamula, we visited a house where a woman died, leaving behind one child. The mother of the deceased used to take small jobs outside the home to earn income that helped offset household expenses. Now that her daughter is dead, she must look after her grandchild and cannot work outside the home. As a result there is less money to pay for daily expenses and less flexibility to earn the money the family needs.

The emotional strain of a maternal death also weighs on surviving family members. The same mother told us that since her daughter died she has relied on her school-age children for help with household chores. The children resent having less time to study. Furthermore, the mother also said that she is frustrated because she has to rush through cooking meals so that she can care for her baby granddaughter. She said she feels like she wouldn’t be going through all of this if her daughter were still alive.

Tragically, that mother’s experience is all too common in rural Kenya and poor communities worldwide. But this is more than just about just one mother or one family: ICRW’s study and other efforts striving to curb the rate of maternal mortality can contribute to alleviating ill health, poor education opportunities and poverty worldwide. For instance, studies show that a mother’s health has profound implications for the long term well-being of children – particularly girls – through its effect on their education, growth, and care.

There are solutions for Kenyan families and others around the globe. Maternal deaths can be avoided by anchoring health facilities in locations accessible to the poorest, more remote households. That way, women can easily take advantage of pre-natal, post-natal and other care. We also have to change social norms so that women – young women especially – are allowed by other household members to access this important care. And we need the political will – from health and finance ministries to donor organizations – to invest in these solutions.

Related publication: “Women Deliver for Development”

The Right to Land

ggaynair — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:51:55 +0000

What new guidelines could mean for women's land rights

A new set of global guidelines hold promise for women seeking the right to own and access land. In the final installment of our Rural Impressions blog series, ICRW's Krista Jacobs reflects on what the guidelines could mean for women farmers in Uganda.

Krista Jacobs is an ICRW economist with expertise in women’s property rights.

Last week in Rome, a group of delegates brought together by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization agreed to a set of global guidelines on responsible access to and ownership of land. One of the important issues covered in the guidelines is promoting women's equal right to access and own land. This was welcome news to me, especially after spending the past two weeks in Uganda looking into the challenges to land rights that rural women farmers face there.

In the grand scheme of things, a set of U.N.-brokered, voluntary guidelines on a seemingly niche issue might seem insignificant in a world rife with problems. They are not. The guidelines could build momentum for governments to revamp policies, making it easier for women like those I've met in Uganda to own and access land – instead of being dependent on husbands, fathers and brothers. The guidelines also could prevent others from grabbing land and property from widows, an all too common phenomenon in developing countries.

Such changes won't only help women – they also hold the potential to make a much broader impact on communities and countries.

A growing body of research demonstrates that when women own assets such as land, houses and livestock, their overall well-being improves, as does the quality of life for their families. Economies grow stronger and, data show, even global hunger decreases among some 150 million people. The evidence also illustrates that when women own assets, households spend more on life's essentials including food and children's schooling. Women invest their earnings from selling eggs, for example, into a goat or a cow which brings more money into the household.

Still, women in low-income societies are five times less likely than men to own land, and when they do, their farms are usually smaller and less fertile. Putting the new guidelines into practice will take a lot of effort, even for countries that have been working on land reform for a long time.

Uganda – like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa – has grappled with the thorny issue of land rights for years. The most recent wave of reform began in the 1990s, and there is still a lot of work to be done to make the changes on paper a reality for the women who till the soil of Uganda's rolling countryside, rich in crops like coffee, bananas and corn.

The country's written law means little to many of the women I have met. The legislative workings in Kampala are a world away to the woman whose neighbor is trying to take over her land by planting his own crops on her property or the widow whose step-children threatened to chase her away after their father died or the elderly woman whose brother continually threatened to kick her off their family land and repeatedly stole her cow. Women rarely report these offenses to the police or courts, and sometimes don't even inform their village leaders. Most people – women, men and local leaders – don't know much – if anything – about what the law says about women's land rights.

Despite the challenging reality, progress is being made. For instance, organizations such as ICRW's partner Uganda Land Alliance educate thousands of women, men and leaders about national land laws through village meetings, radio programs and volunteers. Then there are groups such as the Land and Equity Movement, which helps cultural leaders and institutions resolve land disputes. They have guided different clans towards a consensus that blends law and age-old customs, encouraging leaders to write down rules and articulate how they will protect women from land grabs and respect their property rights. Hundreds of copies have been distributed to clan leaders, women and men, police officers and development organizations.

As these village-level efforts take place, governments are starting to align their policies and practices with the guidelines that were agreed to in Rome. As additional governments do so, it will help put more women's names on deeds, allowing them to become economically secure and pursue new income-generating opportunities.

And in the end, as the evidence shows, entire societies will reap the benefits.

Small Earnings Mean Survival for Rural Afghan Women

ggaynair — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:58:49 +0000

Women’s ingenuity and resilience keep families afloat in rural Afghanistan

Despite social restrictions, rural women in a remote Afghan district use creativity to eke out a living after the fall of the Taliban. ICRW’s Paula Kantor recounts her experience in the third installment of our Rural Impressions blog series.

Paula Kantor is a senior gender and rural development specialist at ICRW.

Although it’s been a few years since I lived in Afghanistan, the ingenuity and resilience of women in the country’s northern Dawlatabad district made a lasting impression on me. For them, home is along the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, a place where poor families struggle to eke out a living. I wanted to better understand how rural households were faring since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

Amidst the dynamically changing landscape that was – and is – Afghanistan, the insecurity of conflict, a prolonged drought and the global food crisis had taken its toll on these villages. Families that had relied on agriculture for their livelihoods were forced to find other sources of income. Men often left home to look for work as jobs were hard to come by in this remote area. For those left behind, a household with more men had a better chance of making it. Women, meanwhile, had very few work opportunities since political and social circumstances had left them less educated and skilled than men. And the culture dictated that women should not work outside the home.

Still, despite such limitations, the women of Dawlatabad found a way. Their very survival depended on their ingenuity.

One of the creative paths they relied upon was to make and sell Afghan rugs. The rugs are renowned for their craftsmanship, a tradition passed down through generations. The intricate patterns woven into these carpets represent the heritage of diverse ethnic groups. But carpet weaving is physically demanding and the hours are long. A 9-meter carpet would take one person about a year to complete.

Creating such treasures is mostly women’s work, and it’s work that they can do at home. So that’s what many women did to help feed themselves and their children during periods of prolonged drought, rising food prices and increasing physical insecurity after the fall of the Taliban. For the poorest households, usually headed by a woman, weaving carpets was the sole source of income, though not a preferred one, as one woman acknowledged: “Only very poor people who have no other income still weave carpets.”

This is because the earnings are meager. Women weavers often worked on a small commission while middlemen took their rugs to markets. This meant working early mornings and late nights to finish their creations, while also completing their other daily household tasks of cooking, cleaning and caring for children. The resilience of the women – and men – was remarkable. Life was difficult for many of these families. They worked hard to meet their daily needs yet their hard work often was not enough, especially in the face of unexpected events like a drought or illness.

But for these rural families, a woman’s small but regular income became the backbone of survival during the economic crisis that ensued after the Taliban’s defeat. Women’s financial contributions to their family became even more important. And with these contributions came the potential for new levels of respect from others, including men.

It is striking how few choices women have and how much more they could contribute if they just had access to better opportunities, training, jobs and resources. My experience was just in one far-flung corner of the world, but the narrative is the same in many other places around the globe. For rural households at the margins, a woman’s ability to bring in a meager amount of money means survival. That’s powerful.

Imagine if women like those in Afghanistan's Dawlatabad district had a real shot at a decent living. Imagine how much they could help reduce their family’s poverty – and that of their community.

Only an SMS Away

ggaynair — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:35:08 +0000

Mobile phones can jump-start Indian women’s entrepreneurial opportunities

Anjala Kanesathasan is a senior public health specialist at ICRW.

“Now with all our business converging onto the mobile, and with the mobile making life so simple, I can think of growth without getting stressed. My markets, my vendors … they are all just an SMS away.” -- Sarita, an entrepreneur in Chattisgarh State

India is a country where the mobile phone is seemingly ubiquitous. The imagery of India in the worldwide media tells a story of economic and technological growth but large numbers of the country’s half billion women are being left out of the equation, as is the case in so many other developing and emerging markets.

We have researched this phenomenon and produced a report “Connectivity: How Mobile Phones, Computers and the Internet Can Catalyze Women’s Entrepreneurship.” Globally, 300 million fewer women than men own mobile phones, and in India alone, 90 million women are without the technology. This gender gap represents a significant, untapped market.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) in particular have enormous potential to spur economic growth in low-income societies if they were tailored to meet women’s needs. Yet a large proportion of women do not have reliable and unhindered access to computers, the internet and mobile phones, let alone applications created to help support rural women’s business ventures. Filling this gender ICT gap could help women grow their businesses, become financially independent and have a stronger voice in their societies. Furthermore, it could lead to tremendous economic advancement.

Our study outlines cases where organizations are working together to bring the benefits of ICT to women in India. For example, Sasken Communications Technologies has a new mobile phone application that helps members of rural women’s groups who sell products like honey reach larger and more distant markets than ever before.

This research forms a part of a larger international effort to raise awareness of the benefits of ICT for women in particular. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) has in recent years examined a number of ways in which technology and innovation can help economically empower women, and as a result, the societies they live in. The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women and GSMA Development Fund first addressed this topic together with research that quantified the gender gap across regions and launched the GSMA “mWomen” program, which aims to close the gender gap by harnessing the collective power of the private, public and nonprofit sectors to improve women’s lives through mobile technology.

The aim of this research is to inform and encourage policy makers and other key stakeholders to do more to connect women with ICTs in such a way that raises their status. The fact is, when women are empowered, everyone stands to gain from their success. However, it will take partnerships across sectors to accomplish something on a sufficient scale to make a real difference to women’s day to day lives.

Pedaling for Water

ggaynair — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:41:06 +0000

Rural women in Ghana benefit from a simple agricultural technology

Payal Patel is an ICRW gender and development specialist who focuses on women’s economic empowerment.

When the dry season arrives in Ghana’s northeastern Bolgatanga district, land becomes a colorful labyrinth of tomatoes, okra, onions and green peppers. But growing these vegetables on the flat terrain of this very hot, arid area requires constant watering. And that can be a back-aching, time-consuming proposition for the women farmers who are responsible for soaking their land plots using buckets and well water.

However, a new technology recently introduced to the area is helping to make irrigating the land easier – and, I found out, is beginning to reap other benefits for rural women in Bolgatanga.

I traveled to Ghana at the tail end of the dry season to analyze an International Development Enterprises (iDE) program that promotes treadle pumps as a way to water farmland. By the time I arrived, about 300 farmers – some of whom are women – had bought and used the wooden pumps to help with their dry-season vegetable production. Installed to a well, the pump suctions groundwater to the surface when farmers pedal the pump’s treadles.

When positioned close to vegetable plots, the treadle pump provides a relatively regular stream of water that flows down small trenches running through the crops. Having a more easily accessible source of water means that women farmers can irrigate their plots in much less time than it takes using buckets. And that’s traditionally how things have been done: women throw a bucket tied to a rope into a well’s depths, fill it with water and pull it back up. Then, they haul the buckets to their plots to water the soil. And then they do it all over again. Back and forth, back and forth.

Using treadle pumps has spared women farmers from the physical rigors of “bucket irrigation.” The efficiency of the pumps also allows many women to expand the vegetable gardens they cultivate, which in turn yields larger quantities of vegetables. If women are able to successfully sell their products in local markets, it can mean more money in their hands during the difficult dry season, and more food on the table for their families.

Most importantly, iDE offers microcredit loans to help women and other farmers buy the pump, which costs about $60. The loans also include a small amount of cash for fertilizer, seeds and other agricultural resources, which must be paid back in 4½ months. The loans are especially helpful for women farmers, who told me that without them, they couldn’t afford a pump. Combining the pump with a loan gives women a jump-start on their productivity. In addition, the program provides agronomic training to farmers on such things as how to protect crops from pests. Some women farmers felt the training helped them to improve their farming skills, as well as the quality of their vegetable harvests.

It’s just one place, in one corner of the world. But the treadle pump is a powerful example of a relatively low-cost piece of agricultural equipment that, if accessible to rural women, holds great potential for them to boost their productivity and economic earnings. Such innovative technologies, combined with better access to agricultural information and microfinance opportunities, can help change the trajectory of rural women’s lives worldwide.

Read Liquid Gold, the first installment in the Rural Impressions blog series, which is being published to mark the 56th session of the UN Conference on the Status of Women.

Liquid Gold

swon — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:01:35 +0000

A small investment in women coffee farmers in Tanzania yields unexpected returns

Rekha Mehra directs ICRW research and programs that focus on economic development.

Over the years, I have seen evidence time and again of the impact even small investments – if done right – can make in the lives of rural women.

In December, I was reminded of one of those moments while in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania. I was in the country as part of an ICRW team to set up network of practitioners to share ideas and challenges on how to effectively integrate women farmers into agricultural development projects across the country. The initiative is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

But several years prior and far from the dusty streets and sultry Indian Ocean breezes of Dar, I traveled to a remote corner in the country’s southwest. Its lush, rolling hills are supported by an intricate patchwork of small fields of corn, vegetables, fruits and, importantly, coffee trees.

Like many parts of the world, the women I met – wives, daughters, sisters and mothers, all of them farmers – were charged with the very time-consuming and labor-intensive work of processing crops before they are sold. During harvest season, they spent days washing coffee beans by hand and preparing them for men to take to market where they would sell them to traders. However, the women farmers told me that they often saw little of the money their hard work had helped earn. Sometimes they didn’t even know the price the coffee beans had fetched, leaving them uncertain about their household’s true income.

This changed when a wet mill was introduced into the community. This simple piece of modern equipment drastically slashed the time women dedicated to washing the beans. The mill freed up valuable hours in the day in which women could engage in other income-generating activities, child-rearing duties or household tasks – to the benefit of the whole family.

Using the mill included an option to sell the coffee beans directly to the wet mill operators, ensuring a fairer price than traders often offered. At the mill, the men received a cash receipt showing the value of the coffee and the payment the farmer would receive when the coffee was eventually sold outside the village. When the cash receipts came home, women could see exactly how much the coffee earned.

Just a few numbers on small scraps of paper can go a long way: they empowered women farmers with critical information. Women now knew just how much money was available to invest in things they considered a high priority like their children’s education or a new roof to keep the house dry and the family healthy. The receipts also equipped women with knowledge they could use to have a voice in critical household decisions.

An increased injection of smart investments tailored for women farmers – a village wet mill, portable irrigation pumps or even mobile phone technology that can help them reach their own markets for their farm products – can boost growth in rural areas where the majority of the world’s poor live. The economic and social returns for these women and their communities can be high.

I asked a group of women coffee farmers if they had ever tasted the end product – a cup of coffee – that would eventually be culled from their beans thousands of miles away. “No,” they replied. It was too precious: it brought income and a chance to have a say over how their meager household resources would be managed — powerful options for a poor rural woman.

Laying Down Arms, Picking up the Pieces

smarfil — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:07:47 +0000

Meeting the unique needs of both women and men in post-conflict Republic of Congo

Jennifer McCleary-Sills is an ICRW social and behavioral scientist.

Although the conflict in the Republic of Congo officially ended almost a decade ago, the tough business of mending broken lives is still underway. As is true in many wars, women's lives were deeply affected.

The conflict that raged through the Republic of Congo for more than a decade, unnoticed by most of the world, destroyed homes, schools, government buildings, crops and roads. The fighting between government forces and militias left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. In the wake of this destruction, families faced starvation, violence, social exclusion and disease. As in many wars and civil conflicts, women bore the brunt of this.

I traveled to the Republic of Congo (often referred to as 'Congo-Brazzaville' and not to be confused with its eastern neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo) recently with my colleague Katherine Fritz, ICRW's Director of Global Health. We saw firsthand some of the lingering effects the war has had on communities, and in particular, on the lives of women there.

Although the conflict officially ended almost a decade ago, the tough business of mending broken lives is still underway. This requires much more than combatants laying down arms when the very fabric of society is so badly frayed. The United Nations Interagency Working Group on Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) hired us to investigate how to make their programs more responsive to the gender-specific and HIV-related needs of beneficiaries. In Congo-Brazzaville, this means working with the program that for the past 12 years has been helping the communities most deeply affected by violence get back on their feet, and back to healthy lives.

During the civil war here, sexual violence became more widespread, and anecdotal evidence suggests that the women who suffered such violence are unlikely to have received any medical, psychological, or legal support. Evidence from a growing body of literature also shows that people are more likely to become infected with HIV as a result of war.

However, in the Republic of Congo, providers at HIV testing and treatment sites do not ask patients if they were raped. Nor do they question patients about other potential health risks they may have experienced during the conflict, such as unprotected consensual sex, poor nutrition, and limited access to clean water. This combination of factors increases the social, economic, and physical vulnerability of all members of society – women, children and men – working to rebuild lives derailed by civil war. And it puts them at greater risk of enduring persistent poverty and health problems.

Meanwhile, about 5,000 ex-combatants in Pool have not yet fully reintegrated into society and have little social support. They don't have any viable job options. And few services are available to meet their health and psychosocial needs.

It's because of this demanding landscape – one that must meet the needs of both civilians and ex-combatants – that the next phase of DDR programming in the Republic of Congo will face unique challenges related to gender and HIV. But it's also a landscape ripe with opportunity to do it right. I will be helping the new project do just that when I return to Brazzaville and Pool in late February to advise our UN partners on how to best measure their success at reintegrating the men and women into society according to their unique needs. This is one among many critical steps on the road to picking up the pieces of their lives disrupted by the conflict.

Define the Problem

smarfil — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:03:35 +0000

Ending sexual violence requires more than words

Brian Heilman is an ICRW program associate whose work focuses on reducing violence against women and promoting their economic empowerment.

The U.S. Department of Justice's announcement earlier this month that it is expanding its antiquated, 80-year-old definition of rape was welcome news.

Before January 2012, the word "rape" in the United States was defined as "carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will." All other violent sexual attacks were not considered rape and as such were not factored into national statistics. They now will be.

Definitions matter. In this case, they ensure that comprehensive evidence on the prevalence and true nature of sexual and gender-based violence will play a role in shaping public debate, which in turn can light the political spark that leads to policy change. But definitions alone will not change behavior without the cultural and social will to meet them halfway.

Although the context is quite different, all of this got me thinking about the thousands of women around the world who are raped every day despite official definitions – and clear laws criminalizing such behavior – that are on the books in their respective countries. ICRW’s research has examined the many challenges in translating legal language into real changes in people’s lives in diverse countries such as Bangladesh, East Timor, Fiji, India and Vanuatu.

One persistent challenge is that traditional legal authorities, such as tribal chiefs, village elders, and religious leaders, do not keep pace with changes in the formal justice system’s response to sexual violence. A new law from the capital city can mean next to nothing in an area where the formal legal system has little reach or influence. This challenge points to the need for widespread education and training on how to effectively implement laws.

Moreover, rape remains one of the least reported and prosecuted crimes in the world, a result of real and perceived obstacles that prevent survivors of rape from reporting abuse or pursuing justice.

In Bangladesh, for instance, survivors can face retaliatory violence after disclosing experiences of rape. Some women have been forced to marry the men who attacked them. In Fiji, survivors of violence by police or military forces are blocked from pursuing justice by a new decree guaranteeing impunity to these perpetrators. And around the world, survivors of sexual violence are still unfairly stigmatized or even blamed for the violence they have suffered.

The women we meet in our research consistently assert that in addition to the effective functioning of the justice system, rape survivors also need services that will help them recover physically and emotionally. And there must be consistent efforts to prevent violence before it happens.

ICRW and our partner organizations around the world are working hard to promote the three-pronged solution of simultaneous advances in justice, services, and prevention. We need all the necessary ingredients to ensure we end sexual violence worldwide, and in the meantime, help survivors overcome the trauma of rape when it does occur. Otherwise, definitions and laws tucked away in books will continue to do little more than gather dust.

Eyes That Haunt

smarfil — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 22:42:09 +0000

Life as seen by an Ethiopian child bride

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s senior writer and editor.

After an hour's drive over sprawling, rock-filled terrain, a flat tire change and a steep half-hour hike up a mountain, we finally reach Tigist's* home, perched near the edge of a cliff.

Tigist greets us with a shy smile and a soft salaam. She's one of more than a dozen child brides – some of whom say they were forced to marry as young as 6 or 10 – I've met in the last couple of days in Ethiopia's central highlands. I came here to better understand what the girls' lives are like and learn about their marriages as well as talk to others about the practice and whether it's changing.

Ethiopian law officially bans marriage under the age of 18—a critical first step in improving girls’ lives. Changing age-old customs, however, is also necessary if the practice is to end. But altering entrenched traditions, as history has shown, can be an arduous journey

I am surrounded by extremely remote yet mesmerizingly beautiful villages of the South Gondar zone of the Amhara region. Fields that grow wheat, barley and teff – which make injera, Ethiopia's traditional spongy, sourdough-like flat bread – are now brown and dry. Each day, men and boys wearing the traditional white shawl draped around their upper bodies walk through stony fields, herding cattle, guiding sheep, whipping donkeys carrying cargo. Women and girls snake up mountainsides, hunched over as they carry their babies or water jugs on their backs.

Girls here live excruciatingly isolated lives. Most told me they didn't know they were getting married until a few days before or the day of the ceremony. They all described violent first sexual encounters with the husband their parents had chosen. Those who were mothers didn't understand that they were pregnant until someone else told them the kicking they felt in their bellies was a baby.

Their words and faces keep playing in my head: "I was so scared." "I didn't know what was happening; I was just a child." "They told me it was my duty."

Tigist's story is no different. But there is something haunting in her eyes that I saw on the first day we met. I saw it again today, when we walked up the mountain to spend more time with her.

She invited us inside her home and placed a small blue tarp-like material on the ground for us to sit on. She immediately started tending to the fire to prepare shiro, a spiced chickpea-based stew, which she served later with yogurt and injera. Her baby daughter was constantly at her side.

Tigist married Bekele two years ago when she was 15 and he was 26. She went to school until the 4th grade and tells me she "very much" misses that time, when she used to learn new things and play with friends. I asked her if she thinks she could return to her studies. "I have a home and a child," she said through an interpreter, "so I can't go back to school now."

But customs do seem to be slowly shifting here. And maybe the trajectory of Tigist's life will eventually shift, too.

In addition to the law, a national awareness campaign about the consequences of child marriage seems to be infiltrating even very remote areas. And for girls who've already married, ICRW and CARE-Ethiopia have partnered to help improve their quality of life by arming them with information about their health and about saving money.

Bekele thinks attitudes towards long-standing traditions here are indeed changing.

"We got married early," he told me. "We're suffering from disadvantages and we don't want the next generation to go through that."

He said there are lots of problems with child marriage: If the girl isn't old enough, she can't maintain a home. She can't have discussions with her husband. "She needs to be an adult."

I asked Tigist what kind of problems she thought early marriage presented. She immediately looked to the ground and was quiet. Bekele gently encouraged her to share her thoughts.

She gave that shy smile, and then: "It hurts to sleep with a man before you're old enough to do so."

Then she looked away. Her expression was distant.

I still don't know what her eyes were saying.

*Because child marriage is illegal in Ethiopia, we have changed all names in the article to protect the individuals’ identities.

A Tool for Social Change

ggaynair — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 20:01:49 +0000

Research triggers Pacific region leaders to action in ending violence against women

Mary Ellsberg is vice president of research and programs at ICRW.

I recently returned from Australia, where I facilitated the Pacific Women's Empowerment Policy dialogue on eliminating violence against women, and where it became abundantly clear that research can be a powerful tool for jump starting governments and communities into action.

Co-hosted by Australia and the United States, the meeting brought together more than 100 leaders from the Pacific Islands to address ongoing challenges to ending violence in the region. And the situation in the Pacific is indeed concerning: Research I led four years ago in Melanesia and East Timor showed that sexual and physical violence against women was a significant problem, although data documenting its prevalence were limited. Even more disturbing, most of the police, magistrates, health providers, traditional leaders and community members we spoke to considered violence against women to be a normal state of affairs.

Meanwhile, traditional customs such as bride price made it particularly difficult for women to escape a violent relationship. “He will say he’s paid bride-price so that gives him the right to hit her,” one woman told us. “The chief and the family will agree with this. They will say that ‘You are his property.’”In other cases, if a girl was raped, a typical solution was for her to marry the rapist – since no one else would wed a girl who was considered “spoiled” – or have the rapist pay compensation to the girl’s family in the form of woven mats, whale’s teeth or cash. We found that regardless of the scenario, almost no consideration was given to the needs of the survivor of violence.

Our 2008 report documented this situation and put forward concrete strategies to end violence against women. We stressed that research had to be a core element of the response.

Earlier this year, ICRW was hired to evaluate how much progress had been made since the last report. I was amazed at what we found: Since 2008, every government in the region had signed a declaration condemning violence against women. Legal reforms were enacted in several countries to protect the rights of survivors. Male advocates were trained to work with women’s rights advocates to raise awareness around violence against women. And efforts to engage faith-based organizations and male leaders were successful.

Research not only played a pivotal role in these outcomes, but also in fostering an enabling environment for ending violence against women. It demonstrated the extent of the problem and its impacts on women, households and communities. The evidence helped convince key stakeholders to take action. And it was because of the research findings that the Australian government approved a substantial increase in funding to address violence against women.

The experience from Melanesia has several lessons for those of us working to end violence against women. We need to know what is and isn’t working when violence-related laws, services and programs are implemented. This can only come with additional monitoring and evaluation research, such as what ICRW is doing with partners in Bangladesh to determine the impact of that country’s new domestic violence law. We also need to build the research capacity of grassroots organizations that are at the forefront of violence prevention and response activities. ICRW has been doing just that with the Gender-Based Violence Prevention Network, through which local advocates are trained to conduct research relevant to their ongoing work. Several of these studies were recently presented by our partners at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative meeting in Cape Town, South Africa.

Researchers’ standard mantra after completing a study is “more research is needed.” In the case of ending violence against women, we should all be taking up the call in recognition of the critical role research plays as a tool for social change.

Ideas in Action

ggaynair — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 15:02:59 +0000

Former ICRW President Geeta Rao Gupta honored with Commitment to Development award

Sarah Degnan Kambou is president of ICRW.

I’m delighted to honor former ICRW president, Geeta Rao Gupta, who will be celebrated today with the 2011 Commitment to Development “Ideas in Action” Award, which is sponsored by the Center for Global Development and Foreign Policy magazine. It’s such a befitting honor for my colleague of eight years at ICRW, who has dedicated her life to advocating on behalf of women and girls around the globe. The annual award recognizes an individual or organization that has changed attitudes and policies about the developing world.

We at ICRW are proud to stand alongside Geeta who spent 13 years leading this organization. During her tenure, ICRW built the evidence base to demonstrate to policymakers and donors that investing in women and girls was pivotal to achieving the world’s economic and social goals. Take for example ICRW’s trailblazing work on HIV and AIDS. Geeta led a 17-country study in the 1990s that explored the nature of women’s vulnerability to HIV. Evidence from that study propelled the HIV community to talk about the growing number of women living with HIV and to understand how gender inequality was fueling the epidemic. At a time when biomedical science tended to dominate the discourse on HIV, Geeta spoke with deep compassion of the human story behind the epidemiological data.

Under her leadership, ICRW provided rich data on how to empower the world’s women by giving them access to education and economic opportunities, providing for their unique health needs and protecting them from violence. She anchored the organization squarely at the intersection of research and advocacy. And she worked tirelessly to ensure that evidence drives program design and policy priorities for women in developing countries. This continues to be ICRW’s mission today because while the broader development community understands the “why” of addressing gender inequality, we are still grappling with the “how.” ICRW is at the forefront of discovering practical, evidence-based solutions to ensure that women and girls have equal opportunities.

As we honor Geeta today, I will be participating on a panel with Geeta and her ICRW predecessor, Mayra Buvinic. Each of us is committed to fulfilling ICRW’s vision for a world where women and girls – as well as men and boys – are able to reach their potential and contribute fully to their societies.

It’s a vision we – along with the rest of the global community – can only achieve together.

Moving the Goal Posts for Girls

ggaynair — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 22:09:25 +0000

Encouraging girls to join sports programs can help empower them and their communities

The role of sport in international development and in promoting gender equality continues to grow. Just this year, the United Nations’ Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group inaugurated a new thematic area dedicated to gender and sport, which focuses on three priorities: empowering women and girls, including them in sports and providing them leadership opportunities.

Many of those themes are being discussed Dec. 1 to 3 during the Maidan Summit 2011, the second annual Sport for Development (S4D) international meeting in New Delhi. The gathering brings together policy makers, donor agencies and nongovernmental organizations to advocate for sports as a tool to strengthen education, health and communities in India.

Ravi Verma and Madhumita Das of our Asia Regional Office in New Delhi will be right in the thick of it, and rightly so. They have already put theory into practice with our Parivartan program in Mumbai, helping prove that sports, development -- as well as gender rights and equality -- go hand in hand. In Parivartan, cricket coaches double as role models and mentors for young men and boys. This includes encouraging the young cricketers to respect girls and women, promote gender equality and to not use violence against women now or in their future adult lives.

Verma, ICRW's Asia Regional Office director, spoke on an opening day panel of the summit that focused on how athletics can help empower women and girls and include them more in society. On Dec. 2, Verma and Das will lead a workshop to examine how sports can to promote gender equality and the role of coaches in bridging the gender gap in sports in India. In her presentation, Das, a senior technical specialist, will highlight the successes of the Parivartan cricket program.

“There are lots of initiatives where organizations are trying to bring women into sports and encourage them to take it on as a profession. But most organizations are finding it difficult because there are more barriers than they expected," said Das, who underlined that coaches, too, have a part in making the sports field more inclusive of women and girls -- both on the playing field and on governing bodies.

“We need to work with men so that these barriers are tackled.”

Cheers to Cherie Blair Foundation

ggaynair — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:12:10 +0000

ICRW partner releases new report on mobile communications and women

Congratulations to our partner, the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, which today launched a new report, “Women Entrepreneurs in Mobile Retail Channels: Empowering Women, Driving Growth.” This latest endeavor is another example of the foundation’s commitment to providing insight into how the mobile communications industry can benefit women entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

“If we are able to reach more women with mobile technology,” Blair told ICRW earlier this year, “it will bring valuable health benefits, education and increased income opportunities.”

We couldn’t agree more.

ICRW is also contributing to research about women entrepreneurs and the information and communications technology (ICT) field. Most recently, we collaborated with the Cherie Blair Foundation to examine how technologies such as mobile phones, the Internet and computers are changing economic opportunities for low-income women in India.

We’re putting the final touches on that ICT report – to be released in early 2012 – which builds upon our existing work that analyzes how innovation and technology can economically empower the world’s women.

Stay tuned for more at www.icrw.org