Passports to Progress

Expert panel will address ending violence against women as part of ICRW’s year-long Passports to Progress discussion series.

The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) on June 13 will host a panel on the challenges to and opportunities for ending violence against women in all its forms – whether it happens in the home or is used as a weapon of war. The event is part of ICRW’s year-long Passports to Progress 35^th anniversary discussion series, which aims to address critical issues likely to shape the lives of women and girls in the coming years.

Titled “When She is Safe ...” the conversation will be held at The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. It will feature panelists Abigail Disney, filmmaker and founder of the Daphne Foundation and Fork Films, Donald Steinberg, deputy administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Mary Ellsberg, vice president of research and programs at ICRW. The panel will be moderated by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, ICRW board member and author of the New York Times best-seller, “The Dressmaker of Khair Khana.”

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ICRW chose violence as a discussion topic because it continues to contribute significantly to some of the most pressing problems affecting women, such as poverty and poor health. It also comes with an economic cost – to families who must pay for services to treat survivors or prosecute perpetrators, and to communities that must spend resources on court, health and social services. This remains the reality, despite much attention to the issue – particularly in conflict zones – and despite two decades of research and programming on violence against women, including by ICRW.

It was during the 1990s that research evidence began to show that violence against women was not just a “women’s issue,” but rather, a development, health and economic issue. ICRW at the time was the first organization to study the prevalence of domestic violence in India – and document its connection to poverty, maternal mortality and other issues. Findings from the ground-breaking study also were used to advocate for the passage of India’s 2005 anti-domestic violence law.

For the June 13^th Passports to Progress event – the second in the series – panelists will address the challenges that practitioners, governments and civil society face in addressing violence against women in developing countries. They also will discuss how best to tackle the issue in a way that is sustainable and cost-effective.

Ending violence against women – like each topic for the year-long discussion series – represents key areas of research and strategic advice for ICRW throughout its 35 years.

The organization was founded in 1976 as a program of the Federation of Organizations for Professional Women in response to concerns voiced at the first International Women’s Conference in Mexico. During the conference, participants suggested that development efforts were benefiting women and men unequally – to the detriment of entire societies. At the time, women’s roles, contributions and constraints were invisible to those who determined how countries spent funds to combat poverty, hunger and poor health. ICRW was established to make the invisible visible.

Learn more about ICRW’s 35-year history »

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s writer/editor.

WASHINGTON – By creating more multi-sector partnerships, organizations and governments will be better positioned to quickly execute innovative ideas that improve women’s lives in developing countries, stressed a panel that included USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah and former British first lady Cherie Blair during the International Center for Research on Women’s (ICRW) International Women’s Day event.

Moderated by NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, the March 8 discussion focused on innovations that have the potential to change women’s lives. Shah and Blair were joined by Tim Hanstad, president and CEO of Landesa, and Bobbi Silten, chief foundation officer at Gap Inc. The event, attended by close to 300 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., officially kicked off ICRW’s Passports to Progress year-long 35^th anniversary discussion series.

ICRW also honored Gap Inc. for its Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (P.A.C.E.) program during the evening. P.A.C.E. provides life and educational skills to female garment workers in factories that make Gap Inc. products in India and Cambodia. ICRW is a partner on the effort.

“These women are not only changing their lives, but they’re bringing change to the lives of their families and communities,” Silten said of P.A.C.E. participants as she accepted ICRW’s annual Champions for Change award. “We really believe at Gap Inc. that if we can advance women, we can change the world.”

During the discussion, Silten offered more details on how the P.A.C.E. program developed. She said that key to Gap Inc. was to assess how it could leverage its assets – beyond writing a check – to create social change. And it was important to the company that its investment not only advance women, but benefit their children and communities, too.

“We really believe that’s the way to create sustainable programs,” Silten said. “When everybody gets something, they keep doing it.”

She added that in the case of P.A.C.E., the various components of the program were not necessarily ground-breaking. Rather, the innovative approach was in how those components were put together. “Innovation doesn’t have to be invention,” Silten said. “It can be looking at a problem differently. It can be bringing existing solutions to a different application.”

Tim Hanstad, president and CEO of Landesa.

Other panelists also expanded on their organizations’ efforts and addressed how they measure whether their ideas are successful. Shah highlighted USAID’s reform strategy, called USAID Forward; Hanstad discussed new approaches for ensuring that women can own and benefit from land, such as developing micro-plots; and Blair touched on the work of her Cherie Blair Foundation for Women to get more mobile phones in the hands of women entrepreneurs.

She and others also called for more partnerships between the private sector, governments, donors and nonprofit organizations on programs aimed at helping impoverished women. “What distresses me somewhat is that while there is all this great work going on, we still are not very good at sharing; we still have a rather siloed mentality,” Blair said. “We have to learn to have a little more confidence in the power of partnerships. If we come together … we can all in fact become better at what we do.”

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah.

And particularly in today’s tight budget environment, Shah said that collaborations between diverse sectors can help speed the time between when a good idea is born to when it takes root in women’s lives.

That’s one of the great challenges in development work, he said, and to tackle it requires an open mind, risk-taking that is rewarded and a willingness to challenge old assumptions.

“We need to make a commitment to say that we will make big investments in trying new things, developing new innovations and experimenting in how we do our work,” Shah said.

“We need to get better and faster at what we do.”

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s writer/editor.

Photos: ©Kaveh Sardari/sardari.com

In honor of ICRW’s 35th anniversary celebration that kicks off March 8, International Women’s Day, President Sarah Degnan Kambou shares her thoughts on the organization’s role in global development now and in the future. Kambou responded to questions by e-mail.

Read Kambou’s previous Q&A »

You’ve said that achieving meaningful social change is within our grasp. Why do you believe that we are in the midst of a transformative time?

Never in my 25 years as a social scientist and development practitioner has promoting women’s rights and gender equality been featured so prominently in global development. The role of women and girls in building safer, more just and prosperous societies is now a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy. The United Nations and World Bank have special initiatives focused on women, making gender a primary element of their development programming. And the private sector is exploring how to bolster its business models by addressing women’s unique needs as employees, customers and citizens. It’s now become clear that government, the private sector and civil society must work together to dismantle obstacles hampering women’s social and economic development. We have never had the kind of harmony – in terms of intent, political will and investment – that we have today.

What’s most encouraging is that each of these players is looking at the issues ICRW has long known to be essential to improving the status of women: laws that protect women’s rights, access to economic opportunity and services to maintain the health and well-being of women, their families and communities.

As you said, many organizations now recognize the importance of addressing gender issues in global development. What makes the work of ICRW different?

What makes ICRW different is that we specialize in taking apart complex problems – describing how they impede progress, exposing their underlying roots – and discovering pathways to positive change. ICRW’s core business is anchored in generating evidence to inform policy and programs that seek to alleviate poverty while promoting gender equality. Over the past 35 years, we’ve tackled some of the world’s most intractable development problems: the marginalization of women-headed households, feminization of HIV and AIDS, pervasiveness of violence against women and the under-valuing of small-scale women farmers’ contributions. 

As social engineers, we design and test new approaches to stimulate change and measure the direction and magnitude of that change. Finally, as advocates, we use our findings to influence the global discourse on gender and development.

Few organizations practice such a layered approach to advance gender equality and alleviate poverty. We let evidence, not ideology or intuition, guide our recommendations on how to address gender issues through policies and programs.

How does ICRW’s research and strategic advice influence others working in gender and development?

ICRW’s niche is creating evidence-based approaches to increase the effectiveness of policies and programs. Our impact is less about providing direct services to advance women and girls and promote gender equality. Instead, we measure our impact by how our research is used in the gender and development space. The fact is, many organizations now know the value of understanding the distinct, unique needs of women and men to achieve global development goals – thanks in large measure to the work of ICRW. How to do this remains the challenge.

ICRW works like a software patch: install our gender app and watch how gender-informed strategy boosts your program’s outcomes. We draw from our research and vast field experience to help organizations implement practical, gender-sensitive programs and measure results. Social change takes time, and for the most part, we’re looking at incremental change. We can trace how our research has contributed to moving the field. That’s how I know ICRW is making a difference.

ICRW is celebrating its 35^th anniversary this year. Where would you like to see the organization in the next three years, in terms of its role in the field of global development?

Over the next three years, our team of researchers will focus on exploring critical intersections in women’s lives that affect their economic opportunities, health and well-being.

Why ‘intersections'? Because no one experiences life in silos. Women’s experiences and relationships are complex and constantly in motion, reacting and adapting to their environment. These converging factors impact impoverished women’s opportunities for a better life. We believe that answers to the root causes of and solutions to gender inequality are found by understanding what happens in those intersections of women’s lives.

Along with strengthening our analysis in this area, we’ll also focus on deepening our research on women and technology and women’s leadership. We’re particularly eager to gain insight into technology’s impact on women and gender dynamics and its state of play at the intersections.      

ICRW is hosting Passports to Progress to celebrate its 35^th anniversary. What do you hope to learn from the series? 

My hope is that the series will serve as a launching pad of new ideas for how to address emerging and long-standing issues that affect women in developing countries. We’ll have some very smart, thoughtful people at the table. I hope that our conversations with them will help set the agenda for how best to move forward.