1. Gender, Power and Campaigns
CALP Webinar
February 5, 2014
Shawna Wakefield
GENDER, POWER and
CAMPAIGNS
Shawna Wakefield
For CALP 2015
2. From Oxfam national
influencing guidelines
• “Addressing unequal gender and power relations is
foundational to Oxfam’s theory of change and must
be addressed as an organisation that puts women’ s
rights at the heart of all we do.”
• “Women and girls represent the majority of poor
people Oxfam is trying to reach through its work. This
means that our influencing propositions, and the
strategies to achieve them, must recognise and
respond to the specific needs and capacities of
women and girls.”
3. Why Gender Power Analysis?
• Gender analysis has been required in Oxfam
projects, programs and campaigns, given gender
is a key determinant of poverty and suffering.
• Gender power analysis now emphasized given
power inequality undermines gender equality
and developments goals. Part of all OCS.
• This is also required by the “Oxfam Roadmap on
Putting Women’s Rights at the Heart of All We
Do”
4. Characteristics of Power
• Women and men hold multiple roles and relationships.
They have different access to and control of resources.
• Power can be economic, political, social, cultural and
symbolic. People are rarely powerful in (nor powerless
across) all forms.
• Power is socially constructed.
• A person’s experience of power can depend on their
gender, race, class, age, etc. One’s relationship to
power changes in difference contexts.
• Power is not a zero-sum game.
5. Adapted from Gender at Work
Community
Household
National
Global
Individual Change
Formal
Systemic Change
Informal
Women’ s access
to resources
Formal institutions,
laws, practicesCultural norms,
values, practices
Women’ s and men’ s
consciousness
A framework for looking at
gender and power
9. Expressions of Power
(with Gender Dimensions)
• Personal power (Power Within, Power To): The power
within and power to know, pursue and achieve one’s
interests.
• Cooperative power (Power With): The power with others
to work together to pursue one’s collective interests.
• Controlling power (Power Over): The power over others
through rules and governing processes (visible), through
determining who has the right to participate in decision-
making and the settings in which people interact (invisible),
as well as through the power to define what is possible,
reasonable or logical within a given context through
shaping ideologies of kinship, capitalism, religion, science
and education (hidden).
11. Considerations for Gender
Power Analysis
• How is power structured on given issues?
• What are the gender dimensions and impacts of these
power relations?
• Who most influences change or blocks it (which
individuals, groups, institutions)? How does their
gender factor into their influence?
• Where and how are decisions made? Are they closed
spaces to women? Which women?
• What could be pivotal moments/windows of
opportunity?
• How can we address the barriers (social norms,
attitudes/beliefs, legislation) to change?
12. Principles of Power Transformation
Transformative power…
•is rights based
•aims to transform gender power relations and norms based on a gendered
power analysis
•incorporates an understanding of how multiple identities intersect to create
and sustain discrimination and violence
•facilitates and supports individual and collective capacity for sustainable
change
•supports women’s articulation of their own political voice and agendas
•supports partner organisations to identify their own needs and implement
their own agenda
•creates an enabling environment for women’s leadership at all levels and in
all domains (family, economic, political and social).
13. What do you do with analysis
• Identify which key changes you want to work on to have a
big influences on the desired change in lives of
participants. How are these linked to women’s rights?
How do they address different forms of power?
• These changes can happen on one or more of the 4
domains distinguished in the Gender at Work framework
• For each domain identify: what are success factors to
realize this result?
• Oxfam with partners should be able to influence this key
change (it has to be in our sphere of influence)
14. Lessons on Influencing on Women’s
Rights and Gender Justice
• Strong alliances with WROs ensure women’s
perspectives, interests and demands are reflected
• We can use our influence to convene, foster linkages
between and build broad-based alliances
• Legal advances are necessary, but transformation
requires change in social and cultural norms
• Engaging men and boys is necessary to build a broad
constituency against gender discrimination
• We need to allocate resources to do gender power
analysis and integrate in our advocacy, campaigns,
and influencing strategies – and our MEAL practice.
15. New VAW Campaign
Aim:
•To catalyze, with others, a critical mass of citizens and influencers in
20 countries to prevent violence against women and girls by 2019 (end
of strategic plan).
Objectives:
•To engage youth and their educators to promote transformation
within schools, universities and other places of creation and
dissemination of culture (e.g. social media)
•To change attitudes and beliefs of powerful norms setters such as
religious leaders, opinion-makers and other influencers as well as
power holders within key institutions (Justice system)
•To broker new alliances between women’s rights organizations, civil
society organizations and other social institutions and when relevant
strengthen their influencing capacity
16. Food for Thought
• Does anyone have an example of gender and
power analysis? What was challenging? What
worked?
• Does anything from the presentation resonate?
What can you apply this to your work?
17. Some inspiring examples
WE Can Campaign
www.wecanendvaw.org
Female Food Heroes
www.oxfam.ca/grow/female-food-heroes
VAW and Arms Trade Treaty
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/gender-based-
violence-and-the-arms-trade-treaty-reflections-from-a-campaigning-
305405
Raising Her Voice
http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/citizen-states/raising-
her-voice
10 mins presentation by me – basics of gender power analysis – build on session on power analsyis
Questions to consider
Shukri +Caroline reflect on gender power analysis and the role it played in advocacy, influencing work they have been involved with. 1) within a regional context working closely with women’s groups and 2) within a global context.
New guidelines make women’s rights and gender equality explicit in guidelines. They lay out why gender is relevant to our influencing work at national level, also good for our global or regional work.
Lays out specific guidance on gender as well, based on OI Gender Justice Guidelines on Engendering Policy.
Gender analysis: identifying key issues that contribute to gender inequality (who has control and access to resources, what roles/responsibilities do women have)
Gender power analysis: adds an analysis of power relations that maintain gender discrimination, subordination and exclusion in society (i.e. how does power determine access to resources, voice, agency)
Intersectional analysis: looks at how gender intersects with identity based on class, ethnicity, caste, age, disability, sexuality, and religion that can be a basis for marginalization.
*** Taken from CARE gender and power analysis resources.
For example:
a black man in the United States may have more power over his wife in the household, especially if he has more income or owns the house. But he may have little power in his place of work as a low wage worker.
a woman from a low caste in India may have little control over community-level decisions. However, a mother-in-law from the same caste can have power in the household as a mother-in-law.
Consciousness: knowledge, skills, political consciousness and commitment to change toward equality
Cultural Norms: influences what changes are possible at individual level, some think most important
We need to understand what change is needed in all of the domains to plot our intervention and achieve sustainable change and long-term impact.
GENERAL POWER ANALYSIS
What needs to change? Did you include in your analysis factors/institutions that either re-enforce gender bias or those that further marginalise women?
Who are the decision-makers and allies who can help you promote gender equality in relation to this issue?
Who are key allies who can help create synergies between the interests and concerns of women’s organisations and networks and Oxfam?
What (and who) are the blockers of women’s rights and the promotion of a gender equality perspective in relation to this issue (cultural, political, financial, practical)?
From work we’ve done in OI GJ on the fundamentals of our work to advance Gender Justice
Can’t assume women’s groups are included in civil society groups – we can help convene, foster linkages
Challenges
Small changes
Work w wros early
ATT / GBV
How arms perpetuate gender based violence – underlying cause of gender based violence is unequal power relations but arms exacerbates it
Not much support for the GBV issue and moves to include it in the treaty preamble but not at the heart of the treaty. Wanted all acts of GBV to be included. States manipulated the legal grey area and that concept of GBV was not sufficiently defined.
Looked at access to key spaces for women’s rights organizations to hold states to account on transfer of arms. WROs key partners to draw up guidelines.
Looking at diagram – focused more on formal systemic legal change and cultural norms and values are needed to change and if accepted WROs would be able to influence.
Used social media to create sense the issue was gaining support, technical lobby notes, understanding that it is not only about legal change
Raising Her Voice: in context of long term development programming
Emphasis of work in the Pan Africa program is about systematic change on formal elements. Usually the human rights reporting is for donors and continue to get funding.
Protocol agreed in 2008 and fasted acting protocol to come into force. Women did power analysis and tapped into national networks and identified easy wins to get countries (23) and identify who best to influence who – to get hard to convince countries on board. Laws on paper are really outdated – capacity building women great, but hard to complement with legal change. Strong alliances of women – dissemination is quicker, helps women to speak to each other on common agenda.
RHV has been going for 10 years – started on building up the commitment to WR at national level. Regional strength. WROs working together. ATT brought a marginalized issue to the mainstream.
Ideas for Follow Up Session:
Examples for doing fundraising
Case studies of integration and long term approach - Pan Africa (i.e. Africanizing the issue, follow through, more detail on the steps they went through)
slides 4-6 – take the framework
