Читать книгу Gender Equality Results in ADB Projects - Juliet Hunt - Страница 10

RGA-I demonstrated that GAPs are effective tools for ensuring that both women and men participate in and benefit from loan projects because they promote a systematic and integrated approach to addressing gender issues in project design and implementation. RGA-II in Indonesia confirms this finding.

The CERD project’s GAP ensured that women were able to participate in all project activities and hence realize benefits in an equitable manner. Because of the project GAP, the CERD achieved comprehensive gender equality results including many practical benefits for women, some strategic changes in gender relations, and some institutional changes.

The DBEP’s gender targets also contributed to the achievement of important practical benefits for women and girls. However, because some gender provisions were not implemented, opportunities to enhance practical benefits and achieve more strategic gender equality results were missed.

The SCBD project has not yet achieved many gender equality results. However, with more sustained attention to overall GAP implementation, the project has the potential to increase the number of women in regional government decision making and to achieve practical benefits for women in the longer term by improving the delivery of public services and promoting a gender-responsive approach to poverty reduction and economic development programs.

Factors that helped to achieve gender equality results in Indonesia included the following:

(i)	Comprehensive gender analysis during project preparation. Loan designs for the CERD and SCBD projects included assessments of key gender issues. This helped to shape the project designs. In the CERD project this resulted in GAP strategies or targets for each component that ensured that women participated and benefited equally with men. The DBEP’s design also included some gender analysis but it did not focus on gender-specific barriers to basic education or women’s involvement in school management committees; this led to missed opportunities to enhance gender equality results.
(ii)	Targets for the participation of women. The loan designs of the CERD project and the DBEP included targets for women’s participation. These directly contributed to women benefiting from project activities. In some components of the CERD project’s design where there were no targets for women’s participation (for example, in decision making regarding infrastructure), there was less participation by women. In the DBEP, project implementers were unaware of some targets, which also led to missed opportunities to enhance gender equality results.
(iii)	GAP and gender targets included in the loan covenants. In all three projects, the greatest attention was paid to implementing those GAP strategies and gender targets that were included in the loan covenants. However, some covenanted gender provisions for the SCBD project and the DBEP were not routinely monitored or reported on by either ADB or the executing agency.
(iv)	Capacity building of implementers and ownership of the GAP and gender provisions. The CERD and SCBD projects provided gender training for implementing contractors and staff. This promoted ownership and understanding of GAP requirements in the early stages of project implementation. The DBEP did not provide training for implementing staff, and many of them were not aware of the project’s gender provisions. Comparing the approaches taken by the three projects highlights the importance of
	discussing the GAP and gender provisions with implementers early in project implementation, of ongoing dialogue, and of monitoring of gender equality results throughout implementation.
(v)	Gender advisers supported implementation. The CERD gender adviser provided capacity building and support to executing agency staff, implementing agencies, and beneficiaries to enable effective implementation of the GAP. The SCBD project gender adviser assisted with the development of GAPs in the districts. In both cases the project gender advisers helped to ensure that GAP elements were understood. To improve results the project gender advisers could have been used more strategically, by focusing on monitoring and evaluation of overall GAP implementation, addressing GAP implementation challenges, and sharing effective strategies for achieving gender equality results and project outcomes. As the DBEP had no project gender adviser, there was no opportunity to build the capacity of staff to address barriers to the implementation of some gender provisions.
(vi)	GAP linked to loan disbursement. The SCBD project required that a district GAP be developed for each CBAP as a condition for release of initial CBAP funds. Implementation of CBAP gender provisions and targets was a condition for subsequent releases. This was successful in ensuring that all districts developed a GAP. However, the quality of the CBAP GAPs varied considerably. Ongoing monitoring of compliance with implementation remains important.
(vii)	Executing agency leadership. In both the CERD and SCBD projects, there was leadership and commitment from district government staff and implementers. This was supported by the capacity building efforts of the project gender advisers.