Volume 2, Number 1
October 1996

Gender Analysis in Research: Experience from the Field

Irma Silva-Barbeau, president and principle scientist at Silva Associates, shares with network members her approach to integrating gender and social issues into the Sustainable Agricultural and Natural Resources Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP).

At her site in Burkina Faso, there are 10 research groups carrying out various research projects related to sustainable agriculture. Irma and her collaborators have held several training programs for the research on gender analysis and social stratification. A workshop was held last October with the objective to examine each research group's research work plan and suggest areas where gender and social issues needed to be strengthened. At the end of the workshop, an ad hoc committee was formed to draft a document describing what steps needed to be taken next. They decided that no specific gender research group was to be formed, and that efforts to assist researchers in the integration of gender issues and social analysis should continue immediately and aggressively before the field research activities begin, and that a mechanism be put in place to study the impact of gender and social stratification on the outcomes of SANREM CRSP research, and visa versa.

Irma brought to our attention two particular observations she thought valuable for network subscribers. First, she mentions that the Burkinabe had a terrible time understanding the difference between the women in development approach (WID) and gender. She believed that this misunderstanding may have quashed efforts to integrate gender planning into fieldwork. Her second dilemma was that the project's gender training manual for trainers was reviewed harshly by the SANREM CRSP Global Technical Committee because of the committee's concern with bringing in WID. Irma expressed her discomfort that, in some cases, we should go ahead and integrate gender completely from the beginning. She pointed out that this is not to say we should forget WID or take it for granted that everyone already knows all this, and that it is irrelevant. Her feeling is that the program should go forward with the integration but still keep a core group that will make sure that "women" and "gender" do not fall by the wayside. In fact, Irma observes that at one of her sites, they got so involved with the "participation of the population" idea, that gender was neglected, because, as they argued, "if you have true participation, then women and gender implicitly are taken care of." Irma stresses that in this case, gender was not implicitly taken care of.

Her consequent request for comments relating to this strategy and the development of indicators for use in analysis sparked off a lively discussion. Revathi Balakrishnan, program director of Women in Development at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, writes that in her work, a distinction can be made wherein gender analysis is part of the implementation phase-- "to assess if our noble intentions are making any gains during implementation process or to identify any mid-course correction that would be required to accomplish gender integration." Revathi notes that if the gender focus is linked to monitoring and evaluation, then we are assuming that efforts for integration have already occurred at the planning phase. Such an assumption of universal integration of gender at the design/planning phase may or may not be true, due to various reasons, both social and political. In addition, though there is much interest in gender analysis, we still have not fully transferred this enthusiasm for analysis to create effective integration measures. She cautions that we have a long way to go along the integration path. Many national and multinational agencies are focusing on gender analysis training aimed at professionals hoping to create an impressive output of gender-integrated plans and intervention designs. The question of when and where gender and social science should enter in development processes is an interesting one. (Michael Cernea has written a discussion paper on "Using Knowledge from Social Science in Development Projects.") But careful consideration has to be given to the difference between gender integration and gender merging in the development assistant process. Revathi cautions that merging gender with another component would result in gender invisibility, if adequate steps are not taken. Irma Silva-Barbeau was in full agreement with this point.

Susan Poats of Facultad Latinoamerica De Ciencias Sociales-FLASCO Sede-Ecuador contributed to the discussion by adding that SANREM-Ecuador would benefit from the gender work of SANREM-Burkina, Faso. In Ecuador, they have taken a somewhat different approach to their work. There efforts include work done by seven local institutions, all based in Quito, and strong collaboration with a couple of U.S.-based institutions, especially the University of Georgia and Iowa State University.

SANREM-Ecuador has elaborated on a total of eight work plans among the institutions, with cross-institution collaboration built into each plan. Gender is the dominant focus in one work plan (HPI/Terranueva) and is included as a research variable explicitly in four other work plans. There is no institution-wide training on gender conducted in SANREM-Ecuador. However, Susan's work concerning the forest extractive economy intends to follow a strategy proposed by the two gender specialists at Terranueva. Susan plans to conduct "socialization" workshops and meetings to share information and resources on gender.