CARE Bangladesh

Strategic Impact Assessment Research Proposal

Introduction This proposal sets out a research program for the next two months (May through June) that will inform the Strategic Impact Inquiry on Womens Empowerment for the next two fiscal years. The broad question to be investigated over the next two years centers around the concept of womens empowerment, and in particular how different projects enable women to change their ideas about the causes of their powerlessness, recognize the systematic forces that oppress them, and act to change the conditions of their lives. The more immediate question to be addressed focuses on how programming approaches intersect with and reflect rural womens own views of power and powerlessness, equity, exclusion and notions of mobility and womens day-to-day strategies to negotiate unequal power relations. The approach adopted has been guided by CARE USAs research protocol1, whilst emphasizing the importance of the dynamics and interrelatedness of project interventions, organizational culture and the social context in which projects operates.

Towards Organizational Gender Equity in CARE Bangladesh 2 CARE Bangladesh began working with and for womens development as early as the 1980s, starting with the Womens Development Program (WDP). This program sought to address womens basic health needs as well as income generation; whilst recruiting, training and deploying women staff managers and field workers. When the program ended in 1997, the organizational landscape had changed considerably with women comprising nearly 65 percent of field workers and support staff (administrative assistants and officer helpers). The 1997 Long Range Strategic Plan (LRSP) institutionalized the emphasis on gender programmatically and organizationally. Projects, regardless of their programmatic emphasis, incorporated a Gender and Development approach, while progressive gender policies to promote a more gender equitable and women-supportive work environment were designed and implemented. A Gender Committee consisting of 13 members was formed and Gender Focal Point (GFPs) persons were elected or selected and trained to ensure implementation of the new policies. In 1998, the Gender Committee formulated a Sexual Harassment Policy and circulated it throughout the organization. By 2000, CARE had recruited two senior level staff (Gender Adviser Organization and Gender Adviser Programming) to assist in the mainstreaming of gender equity in the organization and promote gender sensitive approaches in its development initiatives. In the same year, the organization developed a Project and Program Design Process Guide that emphasized gender analysis and the integration of gender equity and
1

See Martinez, E. 2005. Proposed Global Research Protocol For CAREs Strategic Impact Inquiry on Womens Empowerment. Atlanta: CARE USA.
2

This section heavily draws and liberally cites Moffat, L. 2002. Gender Assessment Report. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh.

womens empowerment in all aspects of program / project development. Addressing the Underlying Causes of Poverty An Iterative Process In 2001, CARE Bangladesh adopted a Rights Based Approach (RBA). The 2001 LRSP adopted five strategic directions: rights and social justice, governance, gender, organizational culture and organizational strengthening. The organizations commitment to promote gender equity and assist women to extricate themselves from poverty, discrimination and marginalization was reaffirmed and strengthened. A rights based approach meant that the projects/ programs across CARE were to address some of the more fundamental and underlying causes of poverty, including poor governance, lack of education, gender and ethnic discrimination. From 2001 onwards, various projects and programs commissioned studies to better understand the context in which CAREs initiatives are operating (see Appendix I). These included studies on the underlying causes of womens condition as well as the institutional landscape at the national, regional and local level. The findings of these analyses assisted projects to refine their approaches: improved participant and community targeting, changes in facilitation methods, and more inclusive engagement and alliance building with social actors that influence institutions which shape access and control over resources and the ideological dimensions of womens subordination. Gender Dynamics in Bangladesh Gender ideology figures prominently in all spheres of Bangladeshi society. Womens rightful place in the home and that men are responsible for womens emotional and physical welfare are important components of this ideology. In day to day life, this principle of male responsibility informs not only marital relations, but also the exercise of power in multiple domains. In particular, the political sphere is regarded as a male domain that excludes women, despite statutory provision for their inclusion. 3 The power of gender ideology stems from its reference to abstract qualities strong/weak, rational/emotional defined as masculine and feminine. Through this reference to biology and nature, gender representations are often used to naturalize inequalities and to preclude dissent within as well as beyond the household. In other words, contestable issues are often consigned to what Bourdieu 4 refers to as doxa -that which is taken for granted. There is a growing body of literature that suggests that gendered norms and roles in Bangladesh are changing. NGO participation, including micro-credit, and womens entry into the labor market, including migration, have improved womens position as their ability to contribute income undermines the (perceived legitimate) domination by men on the basis of their providers privilege. At the same, time, studies suggest that access to credit or womens migration may lead to a backlash when women resist male control over how credit is used or refuse to resume traditional gender roles upon returning from
3

In 1997, women were elected to Union Parishads for the first time. Yet, elected womens discrimination, harassment and exclusion from important discussions and decisions persists widely, restricting their ability to effectively represent womens interests. See Nazneen, S. 2004 for a more detailed discussion.
4

See Bourdieu, P. and L.J.D. Wacquant. 1992. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

a migration episode. 5 Scholarly work from different parts of the world over the past two decades has emphasized the importance of how ideology and the material intersect and how class and gender are interconnected.6 In Bangladesh, Chen (1983), Hartmann and Boyce (1983), and White (1992) found that resource poor households are more likely to form separate household units, providing women greater freedom from the control of mothersin-law, who tend to act as strict guardians of gender norms. Women from poorer households tend to have greater decision-making power over resources, because of their income contribution as well as greater mobility (Kabeer, 1998, White, 1992). At the same time, the increased mobility reduces womens status in the larger society in light of purdah norms, whilst the overall ideology of male control most crudely manifested in violence against women tends to persist. (Kabeer, 1998, While 1992). Some scholars have also commented on the contrasting nature of middle class and resource poor womens adherence to gender norms. Ongs work in Malaysia (1990) and Rozarios work in Bangladesh (2004) found that urban middle class women in both societies have been far more directly caught up in the spirit of Islamic resurgence than working class women. This resonates with gender patterns in the rural context of Bangladesh, where middle and upper class women maintain stricter forms of purdah, although it is not clear to which extent this is related to the status oriented nature of Bangladeshi society and / or the increasing trend towards Islamism that spans nearly three decades. 7 Rural women belonging to well-off (rich and middle income) households tend to be subjected to greater control and have limited agency. This has important implications in terms of building solidarity amongst women of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Chen (1983) found that poor women felt exploited by rich women, and White (1992) argues that womens networks that include wealthier women help to reinforce gender and class norms in the village, since those who participate in these networks are careful to follow the rules. 8 This discussion highlights that womens powerlessness is mediated by their gender, as well as their class, age, and religion. Power expressed in the social relationship between groups that determine access to and control over the basic material and ideological resources lies at the heart of transforming gender dynamics. Enabling womens empowerment a process that changes the nature and distribution of power in a particular cultural context must take these multiple dimensions into account.
5

The gender discussion on Bangladesh draws on the literature review by Sohela Nazneen and liberally quotes her work. See Nazneen, S. 2004. Gender Relations in Bangladesh: The Household and Beyond: Dowry, Womens Property Rights and Salish: A Literature Review. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh.
6

The literature is indeed vast; authors that have wedded the conceptual and empirical in a helpful manner include Beneria, L. 1982. Class and Gender Inequalities and Womens Role in Economic Development. Feminist Studies 8/1:156-176; Fraad, H. et.al. 1994. For Every Knight in Shining Armor, There is a Castle Waiting to be Cleaned in Bringing it All Back Home: Class, Gender and Power in the Modern Household. Boulder: Pluto Press, 1994). For South Asia see Agarwal, B. 1991. A Land of Ones Own. Cambridge: Univeristy Press.
7

For a brilliant discussion on the growing role of Islamicist parties since the early 1970s and their influence on Bangladeshi national political culture see Riaz, A. 2004. God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
8

See Nazneen, S. 2004, for more details on this discussion.

The Political Economy of Localities 9 CARE Bangladeshs work to improve the livelihood conditions of men and women from different socio-economic backgrounds in the rural Northwest has yielded considerable insights in terms of gender and class dynamics and how these enable / constrain forms of empowerment. As staff began to engage in rights-based approaches, it became apparent that the political and social dynamics of the localities play a significant role in shaping the types of initiatives and their outcomes. Para (hamlets), which most rural people in Bangladesh view as their community, vary considerably in terms of the patterns of economic differentiation and spheres of influence that powerful actors residing in them hold. 10 In communities in which land is highly concentrated, powerful actors tend to exercise considerable influence over formal and informal institutions.11 Here staff find it more difficult to raise awareness and mobilize resource poor households around issues that concern the poor, particularly women. Elites act as gatekeepers and carefully guard prevailing norms and values, including gender ideologies. In South Asia, amongst Hindus and Muslims, mens status and honor are linked to the control over womens sexuality and rural elites tend to enforce adherence to purdah norms within their communities. Limiting womens mobility removes from the public gaze and thus their ability to interact with non-affinal men. This reduces the chances of inappropriate conduct that could negatively impact the reputation of the kin group. In para in which the number of kin groups are limited (1-3) and are tied to one another through marriage, this elite control over gender ideologies is particularly strong. Here a clan patriarch is able to exercise considerable influence over the entire community through his unique position at the top of related kin clans. Such control over norms is possible because patron client relations in such communities are a common feature of life, where sharecropping, contract farming, and agricultural labor are often tied to cash advances or in kind advances. These conditions lead to a vicious cycle of dependency that few households are able to extricate themselves from. This situation is exacerbated when resource poor households have not been able to diversify their income earning opportunities sufficiently to enable greater bargaining power vis--vis the rich.
9

This section is based on a number of writings: Bode, B. 2002. In Pursuit of Power. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh; Bode, B., A. Haq and B.C. Dev. 2002. Forms of Land Tenure in the Northwest of Bangladesh in Field Review: The Newsletter of the Rural Livelihood Program. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh. Haq, A. and B. Dev. 2002. New Farmer Field School Cycle Selection Strategy. Dinajpur: CARE Bangladesh.
10

CARE Bangladesh Social Development Unit has developed a typology of para and guidelines to identify different types of para.
11

Institutions, here, are viewed in processual and dynamic terms. They are sites where production, authority and obligations are contested and negotiated and form a part of the interplay of knowledge and power. Berry, S. 1993. No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Agriculture. Wisconsin: University Press. Informal institutions in Bangladesh include: the family, salish (local dispute arbitration), jamat (the Muslim congregation), samaj (local brotherhoods), while formal institutions include: key committees that channel resources (bazaar committee, local government committees, locally elected bodies).

In communities in which powerful elites are absent, land is less concentrated and economic differentiation is less pronounced, whilst there tends to be a lack of infrastructural resources (schools, culverts, electricity) and support systems in time of periodic crisis (lean periods) or disasters (floods). Yet, with a greater degree of economic homogeneity, it becomes easier to create forums for collective learning and facilitate overt discussions regarding key practices that maintain or reinforce poverty and engage people in forms of collective action.12 Here, women enjoy greater freedom to associate in groups. Field staff have also commented that there are less restrictions to address issues beyond the material realm, making it easier to establish a dialogue around exploitative practices such as dowry, early marriage, the division of labor, etc.. 13 This is not to say that these communities are havens of equity, rather they continue to exhibit gender inequities, violence against women, and limitations to womens mobility outside their immediate locality. The connection between political patronage or its absence -- and gender norms is an important dimension to be considered in this work. It highlights that the degree of womens subordination is not uniform and thus womens ability to question, challenge and overt or covertly resist subordination is mediated by the local political economy in which social relations are embedded. Bringing Community Voices and Agency Back In The earlier discussion on gender merely touches the surface of a rich literature that looks at gender relations in Bangladesh. In many of the writings, however, scholars, activists and practitioners speak for women and interpret their conditions. Very little work has been done to understand how women themselves view power and powerlessness, equity and equality, social inclusion and mobility. 14 There is even less discussion about how women of different socio-economic backgrounds push the boundaries of what is permitted and the forms of overt and covert resistance they engage in. 15 This appears to ignore an important historical reality: where there is
12

Scholars of collective action have long argued that homogeneity of a group is an important aspect to successful mobilization. See Olson, M. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; McCay, B.K. and J.M. Acheson. (eds). 1990. The Questions of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resources. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.
13

In elite dominated paras staff have to spend considerable time with elites to ensure their buyin to work on issues beyond income generating activities around the homestead. For more discussion on staff tactics to negotiate elite support see: Howes, M. and B. Bode. 2004. Securing Access to Water Bodies. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh and CARE Bangladesh, Social Development Unit with Kamal Kar. 2005. Building Solidarity Through Collective Action: A Process Reconstruction. Rangpur: CARE Bangladesh.
14

See Nazneen, S. 2004. Gender Relations in Bangladesh: The Household and Beyond: Dowry, Womens Property Rights and Salish. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh. This literature review cites few examples of work that touches upon womens strategies.
15

This is in striking contrast to work that has been done in other parts of South Asia (e.g. see Agarwals work that draws on dozens of studies, some of which comment on the tactics that women employ to resist male domination. Agarwal, B. 1991. A Land of Ones Own. Cambridge: University Press) and around the world: Ong, A. 1987. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hart, G.

domination, there is resistance to domination and alternate, albeit contested, views about how to organize social life. The missing dimension of womens agency has permeated the thinking of many development organizations, including CARE, where women are frequently viewed as powerless and in need of outside intervention to bring about their liberation from oppressive structures. Such forms of paternalism on the part of development practitioners can have significant implication in terms of how staff approach their work. A recent review of one of CARE Bangladesh programs commented on how staff was in the forefront of organizing women and actively leading the processes through which women were addressing social issues (dowry, early marriage) and gaining access to state-funded entitlement and services schemes, placing the sustainability of the intervention into question. 16 The same review commented on how a pilot project 17 that seeks to build solidarity amongst men and women to collectively address poverty and gender equity, has failed to place women in the forefront or at least side-by-side with men of community-led activities.18 Whilst Rozario (2004), who visited a folk drama organized by one CAREs projects, wrote:
..rather than always portraying women in helpless situations, some positive role could be given to women in the drama. Similarly, in the lectures that were interspersed with the drama, different language needs to be used. Instead of showing momota (pity), women need to be given their due respect. 19

These critiques raise the issue to which extent our work further legitimizes existing identities that rationalize the sources of structural domination.20 This points to the need to consider our own understanding of womens power and powerlessness and how processes of empowerment would look like if built on existing forms of survival that are different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society. The notion of agency in particular womens strategies to negotiate day to day forms of subordination is an important element of this Strategic Impact Inquiry. Viewing women as strategic actors also reflects CARE Internationals 1st Programming Principle: promoting empowerment. (We support the efforts of poor and marginalized people to take control of their lives and fulfil their rights).

1990. Household Production Reconsidered: Gender, Labor Conflict and Technological Change in Malaysias Muda Region. World Development. Carney, J. And M. Watts. 1990. Manufacturing Dissent: Work, Gender and The Politics of Meaning in a Peasant Society. Africa 60 (2).
16 17 18

See Chipeta, S. et.al. 2005. Rural Livelihoods Programme: Capturing Lessons Learned. CARE Bangladesh. Nijeder Janya Nijera (We, For Ourselves)

Informal discussion with staff from other CARE projects who visited this pilot have also confirmed this view, whilst recognizing that women had benefited from collective activities.
19 20

Rozario, S. 2004. Building Solidarity Against Patriarchy. Dhaka: CARE Bangladesh. P. 52. This issue has been raised in a recent review of CARE Bangladesh Gender-Based Violence Initiatives. See Robinson, V. 2004.

Bringing It All Together This discussion has highlighted that we need to be more critical of how our world views influence the ways in which we interface with rural communities and particularly how development practitioners allow their own perceptions of womens marginalization to shape the interventions through which they wish to support women in their processes of empowerment. It suggests that we revisit the studies that we commissioned and tease out underlying assumptions, most importantly how women are represented in the body of work that we have internalized and subsequently incorporated into our developmental tool kits. It challenges us to examine the extent to which we have been able to incorporate the knowledge filling our office shelves into our day-to-day interactions with rural men and women and how this has shaped our engagement in developmental and empowerment processes. If we have failed or partially failed to do so, this work may provide us with an opportunity to guide us into new directions and at minimum improve our approaches. Continuing our reflections on organizational transformation of the past few years and how the significant changes we made have trickled down and permeated project culture and programming approaches will also be a challenge, albeit one we are familiar with. Finally, refining our understanding of the intersection between socio-economic context and womens condition and how women navigate the structural inequities, whilst contributing to the multiple spheres of day to day life, will assist us to tune our work to existing realities. The task ahead has multiple dimensions:

1) the initial work will consist of a literature review (May) that summarizes CAREs thematic studies on gender and power and
relates these to the approaches that the projects chosen for the SII have adopted.21 The literature review will incorporate a discussion of CARE Bangladesh effort to transform itself into a gender equitable and less hierarchical organization (consultant 1); 2) based on this review the same consultant will then reconstruct with staff the projects intervention (consultant 1); 3) side by side, another consultant will engage staff to understand how they conceive of gender relations (consultant 2); and 4) a case study approach in one community to a) ascertain how men and women from the community view power and powerlessness, equity and equality, social inclusion/ exclusion and mobility, b) work with women to understand how they negotiate day-to-day life in relation to the structural inequities that they face; and c) reveal how women understand structural inequalities and the construction of (local) morality. This case study has the potential to give us an alternate view of women. It
21

The Bangladesh SII team has selected 1) Violence Against Women initiative of Partnership for Healthy Life (PHL); 2) Nijeder Janyia Nijera (We, For Ourselves) pilot situated in RLP; and 3) Womens Access to Markets and Labor Contracting - an initiative situated in ISFP.

will also provide us with a first draft methodology to assist us to better understand women and their strategies in our future work. (consultant 2) Key questions: The key questions to be addressed in this first period of CARE Bangladesh Strategic Impact Inquiry 1) What are the underlying assumptions about women in the literature that CARE has commissioned? 2) How are CAREs programming approaches (three SII projects) and interventions shaped by the bodies of thought and knowledge that we have commissioned and our organizational culture? 3) How do our programming approaches and interventions intersect with and reflect womens own view of power and powerlessness, equity and equality, social inclusion and mobility and build upon existing strategies through which women negotiate forms of subordination in their day-to-day lives? This work will provide the basis for Impact Assessment in fiscal year 2006. The Strategic Impact Projects The CARE Bangladesh SII Team has selected three project initiatives to be researched over the next two years. A brief summary of each intervention is provided below. (Initially, the SII team was also considering to include the HIV project, but consensus now appears to have been reached that research findings would not apply to other projects / programs as the sex worker population is a subculture whose condition are not comparable to mainstream society.) Initiatives to Address Violence Against Women: A. Violence Prevention and Rights Reinforcement Cell (VPRRC) June 2003 to June 2004 This initiative has been implemented in the northern part of Bangladesh for the past two years. It is situated within the Rural Maintenance Program, which employs destitute women to maintain earthen roads. RMP also works with these women to raise awareness of human rights and health issues and provides basic literacy and small business development training. This small pilot project was designed to address violence against women. The pilot works with 2 men and 3 women elected representatives, who receive training on gender issues, in particular violence against women. These individuals collectively form a cell, a body that responds to confidants, trained by RMP, who operate on a village level and intervenes in salish (informal dispute arbitration, usually dominated by village elites and elders) on behalf of women who raise issue around violence. B. Violence Against Women Initiative of Partnership for Healthy Life (PHL) 2002-2004 This project operates in the northwest of Bangladesh and evolved from pilot project (Safe Mother Initiative) that addressed maternal mortality and morbidity. PHL was

designed to explore, test and demonstrate different community based approaches to addressing priority health and social issues that affect poverty. A key dimension to the project is its work that seeks to mitigate violence against women.

Nijeder Janya Nijera (We, For Ourselves) October 2004 to September 2005 This is a pilot that emerged from the Rural Livelihood Program. It attempts an approach to rural development that a) works in politically and economically marginalized communities, b) employs Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) as an entry point to build solidarity, c) facilitates a process of self-realization through analysis and action to enable various interest groups within communities to set their own developmental agendas and pursue these, d) encourages community to community sharing and community consultants (natural leaders) to inspire neighboring hamlets to take responsibility for key aspects of development that do not require state subsidy or support, and ultimately e) seeks to build a larger forum within unions through which marginalized groups and communities can effect change in local governance. Womens Access to Markets and Labor Contracting: 2003-2004 The initiatives falls under the BUILD Capacity Project situated in the former Integrated Food Security Program that ended in the fall of 2004. BUILD had been working for several years with elected local government on the supply and demand side of service provisioning to the larger constituency. Womens Access to Markets is an initiative to increase womens facilities to engage as vendors in market places. The project chose selected sites, where local authorities and market committees endorsed this initiative, and brokered between prospective women traders, local government officials and market committee members to facilitate the provision of funds for building physical market infrastructures (stall, toilets, etc). The construction contracts were issued through transparent open bidding processes in which Local Contractors Groups (LCGs) -- headed by women participated as bidders. Practical Considerations The core SII team: Anna Minj, Frank Noij, Shameem Siddiqi and Brigitta Bode (this is largely by default as other members where not present) agreed that the first initiative to be researched (approach and context) would be the PHL project, located in Dinajpur district. This is largely because PHL has operated for longer than the other two initiatives. It was also agreed that we would limit this investigation to the Northwest of Bangladesh, where all three initiatives have field locations. The advantage to limiting ourselves to the Northwest is that the majority of context analyses were undertaken in this region. In addition, CARE Bangladesh Social Development Unit operates from Rangpur and over the past three years its staff have acquired considerable research skills, with the potential to be a helpful resource to future consultants.

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The model constructed by members of the CARE B SII Team (Anna, Frank, Shameem and Brigitta)
External Influences (Media, NGOs, etc)

Project Intervention Choice of Location Entry Point / Activities Group Formation Solidarity building (with whom) Engagement with key actors and institutions Engagement with Men

Agency

Local Political Economy Position in the wider power structure Socio-economic differentiation class, age, religion, ethnicity Social Position Social Inclusion/Exclusion Social Capital -Networks/Association Mobility

Structure

Identity Forms of Consciousness

IMPACT

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Questions to Understand Context: What is the communities location in the larger society? What is its relation to the larger power structure What types of social relations exist between community elites and the larger network of powerful actors ?

Methods:

What is the communitys profile in terms of socioeconomic differentiation? What is the religious make up of the community? What is the distribution of landholdings? What types of professions are different households engaged in? How many men and women are selling their labor power and in which areas of work? Which households are / were members of other NGOs and local committees?

Resource and Elite (formal and informal leaders) mapping of the larger community (union and village) Interviews with elites and other residents to understand resource flows (state funded entitlement and services schemes) to selected community and influence in Salish (local arbitration system) Use of para typology developed by SDU (see Appendix)

Card exercise which captures information on each household in terms of religion, size of landholding, profession, labor in and out, and NGO membership. This information can be used to make simple tables, charts that provide a profile of the community

What types are the types of formal or informal networks are women engaged in? What kind of resources flow along these networks? What kind of support do these networks provide in times of crisis How do these networks / associations intersect with class?

Network Analysis (including geneaology)

What kind of mobility do women have within and beyond the para? By class / age/ religion

Mobility Mapping

How do men and women of different socioeconomic backgrounds view power, powerlessness, equity, exclusion, mobility?

FGDs with men and women (separately) of different socio-economic groupings (separately) to get at meaning. Questions such as when did you feel most powerful / most powerless? Which men or woman from your socio-economic background or other backgrounds do you consider empowered"? Who is a role model to you and why? (Developing a Methodology to get at these issues will be part of the external consultants TOR)

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According to women, who sets and enforces the boundaries? Is there variation by class, joint, nuclear or female-headed households, religion? When have boundaries changed? And why? FGD with women Timeline of key practices (women selling labor, working in agricultural activities on land away from the home, involvement with NGO) and reasons for change FGD Individual Interviews

What are womens overt and covert strategies to cope with the structural inequalities (by class/ nuclear / joint / female headed households) they face? How do women address inequities in terms of food distribution (if any) within the household? How do they negotiate for access to resources? What kind of leverage (if any) do they use? How do women mitigate the girl /boy biases that occur in households? How do women cooperate (or fail to) to reduce violence within the household / the compound / the community?

(Much of this generally requires ethnographic engagement with a community and individuals. At the same time raising these issues with women that have worked with CARE and have built relationships with our staff can be helpful. Nazneen will certainly have her own methods of how to approach such sensitive issues)

Questions to Understand Programming Approaches What is the programs entry point? How does it chose location? How does it approach group formation and targeting?

Methods Process Reconstruction with staff about Criteria used to narrow down location, who in the locality provided information in terms of the locality; Criteria for selecting participants

How much time do staff spend to engage program participants (and non-participants) in different activities?

Production Flow Chart constructed with staff to capture Sequence of activities Time spent Actors involved

How do staff approach gender and group activities? What are the methods through which staff initiate discussions on gender? How do they analyze the discussion and how do they act on it? How is group leadership determined and how does it work? How do groups operate and make

Literature Review on Program Documents Process Reconstruction with staff about Issues raised Staff time spent on reflection of discussion Staffs guidelines to forms groups Groups guidelines in terms of decision-making

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decisions? How do staff build solidarity between women (and men)? Does this involve women of similar or different socio-economic backgrounds? Does it involve women from the same kin group Does the approach build on existing networks of women? Use context analysis (see above) to determine group membership by Class, religion, etc Kin group Existing networks

What is the engagement with existing institutions? What kind of institutions do staff interact with What kind of institutions do the groups interact with?

Literature Review on Program Documents Interviews with staff

What is staffs understanding of gender, power, and empowerment? What are the different views among men and women staff / junior and senior staff?

FGDs with staff (by gender and position)

What does program culture look like? What is the basis of staff performance evaluation in relation to program activities What is the staff composition? What do internal gender dynamics look like?

Interviews with staff

Consultants and CARE Bangladesh Input The work to be accomplished would require two consultants and input from CARE Bangladesh Social Development Unit, which has already developed and applied many of the methodologies and tools that will be applied in the context analysis. Consultant 1 will work on the literature review and do parts of the process reconstruction of the first project to be studied. It is estimated that this would take around 21 days. Consultant 2 will work on the more difficult question of how rural women and men construct their identities and what empowerment means to them and their coping strategies. An important output will be a methodology that assists CARE Bs projects and programs to gain a better understanding of women and their condition. She will also contribute to the understanding of PHLs programming approaches by working with PHL staff to ascertain their views regarding gender as well as the projects internal gender dynamics. This work will take around 25 days (including report writing, attending and presenting at the London Workshop in June).

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Social Development Unit staff will not only assist the consultants, but will also provide the ground work for Consultant 2, prior to her arrival. Budget
Line item Initial Consultant (10 days @ US$ 350/- per day) (Linda Moffit) Local accommodation, local travel and other expenses for the lead consultant (Linda Egypt) First Consultant (21 days @ US$ 575/- per day) Second consultant (25 days @ US$ 919/- per day) International travel for consultant(s) to / from Bangladesh (excluding the Cairo workshop and global synthesis workshop) Field visits including accommodation, travel, etc. Mini workshop, meetings, CO synthesis workshop Materials Contingencies Total: Cost (in US$) 3,500.00 1,500.00 12,075.00 22,975.00 4,000.00 3,500.00 3,000.00 500.00 1,500.00 52,550.00

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