WUNRN
Local First is an approach to international development that prioritises the views and leadership of people and organisations in the countries affected, over those of outsiders from the international community. The Local First website aims to develop a community of practice and knowledge around this approach, and to offer information and debate for those who are already working or would like to work in a Local First way.
LOCAL & GENDER FIRST
- PROGRAMS OF/BY/FOR/WITH WOMEN & PARTICIPATORY LOCAL DEMOCRACY
Every issue that Local First hopes to address is fundamentally a gender issue. Deeply entrenched gender discrimination is not merely a factor in poverty, hunger, humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction – it is a root cause. And unless that root cause is fully understood and addressed, even Local First solutions are apt to reinforce the patriarchal structures that gave rise to the problem to begin with.
The organisation where I work – The Hunger Project (THP) – learned this through direct experience. From the beginning of its field programmes in 1990, THP applied what can now be called a Local First approach. THP never posts expatriate staff, and instead creates locally led THP organisations in each country.
When we began facilitating communities in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America to pioneer bottom-up, integrated rural development, the majority of initiatives focussed on improving the lives of women. This made sense: women were the majority of the poor and improving their lives also improved the lives of the family and the community. These first communities prioritised women-focussed programmes in literacy, microfinance, improved agriculture, water and sanitation: the usual actions communities pick to meet basic needs.
But these actions did not transform gender relations. Child marriage, keeping girls out of school to do chores, and grossly unfair divisions of labour persisted, perpetuating chronic malnutrition. This link was made glaringly clear by leading nutritionists in the 1996 Unicef Asian Enigma study. Our confrontation with this reality led to a dramatic redesign of our approach. We needed to combine our people-centered development strategies with high-leverage interventions for gender equality.
Simply addressing gender gaps in programme participation is not really a gender intervention. Real gender interventions start with gender analysis before program design begins.
Good gender analysis does not come from ‘outside’. Virtually every country on earth has a long-standing local women’s rights movement. Good gender analysis comes from listening carefully to local leaders on the front-lines of the women’s movement, and learning two things: (1) what are the specific barriers to women’s full and equal partnership in the issue at hand, and (2) where is the crest of the wave of women’s emancipation? What local trend – if empowered – would most likely catalyse social transformation?
In the countries where we work the answers were quite different. With
indigenous women in Latin America, the crest of the wave was social empowerment
– strengthening their organisations. In rural Africa, it was economic – putting
women in charge of rural banks. In Bangladesh, it was the rights of girls. In
India, it was political; the 73rd amendment to India’s constitution reserved
1/3 of seats in village councils and presidencies for women.
As our new gender interventions took hold, we noticed that picking the
highest-leverage place to start had a spill-over effect on other forms of
empowerment. Attitudes and behaviours towards all forms of female empowerment
improved: social, educational, political and economic.