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

The first rapid gender assessment demonstrated that GAPs are effective tools for ensuring that both women and men participate in and benefit from loan projects, because GAPs promote a systematic and integrated approach to addressing gender issues in project design and implementation. The RGA in Viet Nam confirms this finding, with the GAPs from all three projects directly contributing to the achievement of gender equality results.

With its GAP and targets for women’s participation, CRUEIP ensured that women were able to participate in project activities and increase their skills. Furthermore the gender analysis conducted during project preparation shaped the design of the whole project and not just the GAP elements. Because of its high-quality GAP, its long-term project gender adviser, and ownership of the GAP by the provincial project management units, CRUEIP achieved comprehensive results, including a range of practical benefits and some strategic and institutional changes by enhancing women’s role in decision making.

The HICH project had a high-quality GEMAP and achieved important practical results by increasing women’s access to health services. It also achieved strategic results by reducing women’s burden of care for sick family members. By further building the capacity of staff, and with more input from the project gender adviser and sustained attention to the barriers to women’s access to health care, the HICH project has the potential to build on these results over the final year of the project.

USEDP increased girls’ enrollments, and achieved practical benefits by upgrading facilities and equipment, providing vocational advice, and training female teachers. However because the GEMAP was not well targeted and was difficult to understand, it was not well monitored or understood by project stakeholders. As a result, project implementers missed many opportunities to enhance the gender results that were achieved.

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

(i)	Comprehensive gender analysis during project preparation and implementation. Loan designs for CRUEIP and the HICH project included an assessment of key gender issues and this helped to shape the project components. Further gender analysis during project implementation ensured that the HICH project’s GEMAP strategies were relevant and effective. While some gender analysis was undertaken for USEDP, this could have been extended to more fully consider the barriers to both boys’ and girls’ access to school.
(ii)	A high-quality GAP. The differences in the quality of the GAPs for CRUEIP and the HICH project, compared to the GEMAP for USEDP, underscore the importance of having a quality GAP that is well targeted, clearly linked to project components, easily understood, and able to be implemented.
(iii)	Targets for the participation of women. All three projects included targets for women’s participation in training. CRUEIP and the HICH project also included targets for women’s participation in decision making, which in CRUEIP’s case helped to achieve strategic changes in gender relations.
(iv)	Ownership of the GAP. Ownership and understanding of the GAP by project implementers was due to an investment by the executing and implementing agencies and ADB in gender capacity building and was highest in the HICH project, and in CRUEIP in some provinces.
(v)	GAP included in the loan covenants. Loan covenants committed the government to implement the GAP in all three projects. While this was an important factor in CRUEIP and the HICH project, the experience with USEDP shows that ADB needs to assertively follow up on compliance.
(vi)	Capacity building of implementers. Both CRUEIP and the HICH project invested in gender training for project implementers to build ownership and understanding of GAP activities. USEDP provided some gender training for teachers and curriculum developers but not for implementing staff. Consequently, few of them were aware of the project’s GEMAP.
(vii)	Gender advisers supported implementation. CRUEIP and the HICH project had project gender advisers who provided gender capacity building to project implementers and critical support to implement the GAP and who fostered discussion and ownership of GAP elements. USEDP did not have a gender adviser for implementation and needs one to help revise and implement the GEMAP for the remainder of the project.
(viii)	Leadership from project implementers. In CRUEIP, more comprehensive results were achieved in those provinces where provincial project management units demonstrated leadership and openness to implementing the GAP. In the HICH project, provincial government officials valued the GEMAP because they recognized that it assisted to implement Government of Viet Nam policy.