Gender Analysis: key conceptual tools. Amsterdam, The Netherlands What is Gender Analysis? Social...

Gender Analysis: key conceptual tools

Amsterdam, The Netherlands www.kit.nl

What is Gender Analysis?

Social analysis to distinguish the resources, activities, potentials and constraints of women relative to men in a given socio-economic group


What is Gender Analysis?

Who does what?

Who has what?

Who decides? How?

Who wins? Who loses?


• Gender Division of Labour/gender roles

• Access to and Control of Resources and Benefits

• Condition and Position

• Practical Gender Needs and Strategic Gender interests

• Transformatory Potential

• Gender unaware and aware policies and programmes

Gender Analysis Concepts


Gender Division of Labour

Men and women are assigned different roles, responsibilities and activities according to what society considers appropriate.

Furthermore, these roles are given relative values.


Gender Division of Labour

Men and women have multiple roles mostly related to work:

• productive• reproductive • community


Productive Role

Work that involves the production of goods and services that usually can be exchanged for cash or kind. Both men and women engage in productive work, but women's work is usually undervalued and often invisible.


Reproductive RoleActivities carried out to reproduce and care

for children and household.

Includes child birth, child rearing and family planning, food preparation, water and fuel collection, shopping, housekeeping and family health care.

It is usually unpaid, manual work done mostly by women and girls


Community Role

Community work includes ceremonies and celebrations, local politics or provision of community services such as health clinics and communal kitchens.

Although both men and women participate in community work, men's community work is often valued more and is sometimes paid.


Women's community work is often undervalued and provided on a mostly volunteer basis. For women, it often is an extension of reproductive/household

work.

Community Role


Access and Control of Resources and Benefits

Access is the opportunity to use something.

Control is being able to define and impose its use.


Access and Control of Resources and BenefitsResources include time, money, land etc. used to carry out activities. They can be defined in political, financial, productive etc. terms.

Benefits are the result of the use of a resource and include basic needs, money, asset ownership, education and status.


Condition and Position

The distinction between the everyday condition men and women face and their positions in society.


Condition and PositionCondition refers to our material state and our immediate environment. This usually includes basic needs and our daily routine.

Position, on the other hand, refers to women's economic, social and political

standing relative to men.


Condition and Position

Most development policies and programmes attempt to address women's condition but not their position

in society.


Practical Gender Needsand

Strategic Gender Interests


Practical Needs & Strategic Interests

Practical gender needs (PGNs) arise from a person’s condition

Strategic gender interests (SGIs) arise from a person’s position in social relations of gender


Practical Gender Needs

PGNs are immediate perceived needs that are a result of the gender division of labour and related to men’s and women's condition.


Strategic Gender InterestsInterests that are related to improving the relative position of women and men.

They result from women’s subordinate position and men’s privilege. Therefore men do not share these with women.


PGNs/SGIs

Addressing PGNs does not automatically challenge women's subordination.

PGNs and SGIs are not mutually exclusive. Addressing PGNs is important and may be a precondition for women to identify their SGIs.

Addressing SGIs can sometimes be done while addressing PGNs. Depends on “how” PGNs are addressed


PGNs

tend to be immediate and short-term

unique to particular men and women

relate to daily needs and GDOL

SGIs

tend to be long –term

common to almost all men and women

relate to disadvantaged position


PGNs

easily identifiable

can be addressed by provision of specific inputs (food, handpumps, clinic…)

SGIs

not always easily identifiable

can be addressed by consciousness raising, increasing self-confidence, education, strengthening women’s organizations


Addressing PGNs tends to involve

women as beneficiaries and perhaps as participants

can improve the conditions of women

generally does not alter traditional gender roles and relationships

Addressing SGIs involves women as

agents or enables women to become agents

can improve the position of women in society

can empower women and transform gender relationships


Transformatory Potential• Acknowledges both men and women

maintain and accept gender roles and relations, they are affected by them, but then also can challenge and transform them

• Considering the transformatory potential of an initiative can show us how PGNs can be met in ways that have the potential of transforming power relations


Gender Unaware policy• Gender Unaware policy design and analyses

are those which are implicitly premised on the notion of a male development actor

• While couched in gender-neutral language, they are implicitly male-biased in that they privilege male needs, interests and priorities in the distribution of opportunities and resources.


Gender aware policy• Gender neutral - accurate assessment of the

existing gender division of resources and responsibilities

• Gender specific - intended to target and benefit a specific gender in order to achieve certain policy goals

• Gender transformative - interventions designed to transform gender relations more equitably

Gender Analysis: key conceptual tools. Amsterdam, The Netherlands What is Gender Analysis? Social...

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