Beyond Head Counts: How to Measure African Women’s Political Influence

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Christine Chung

Studies of women’s political participation tend to focus on totting up MPs and cabinet ministers. A pilot investigation into women’s leadership in African governments and legislatures adds two new indicators to look at their influence, not just the numbers.

Around the world, the percentage of women in parliaments has almost doubled in the past 20 years. But that still means only 22.8 percent of all national parliamentarians were women as of June 2016. Despite pockets of progress on gender equality and women’s participation in public and political life, many countries are slow to improve on women’s political empowerment. To get the measure of the problem and work toward a solution requires comprehensive data. The Women in Politics Map by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and U.N. Women provides some numbers and global rankings for women in executive government and in parliament at regional and national levels. But other data is harder to come by.

To address that gap, the International Republican Institute (IRI) recently launched a pilot study of women’s political leadership in Africa. “Women’s Political Empowerment, Representation and Influence in Africa” is an index of women’s representation and leadership at the legislative and executive levels across 29 countries. Women & Girls Hub spoke with IRI’s Director for Global Initiatives and Senior Adviser on Gender Michelle Bekkering and Senior Applied Learning Specialist Matt Baker about how the study is different and what’s still missing.

Women & Girls Hub: Why is this study important?

Michelle Bekkering: Often when we’re talking about numbers, we’re talking more about representation. How many women occupy seats in the parliament? How many lead executive ministries? How many heads of state, etc.? However, that does not sufficiently capture the true complexity of gender equality, especially when we’re looking in the field of women’s political leadership. One of the things we noticed early on was the sheer numbers are not really telling the story, but the numbers are so vital.

Matt Baker: That was the bulk of the time that we spent, collecting this data. We collected two new indicators, information that hasn’t previously been systematically collected on African countries: the percentage of women who head up committees in parliaments and the percentage of the national budget that’s headed by women ministers. In many cases, we had to resort to some pretty creative means to get that data.

Women & Girls Hub: Can you give us an example of those creative means?

Baker: In some cases, we were talking to multiple different CSO [civil society organization] activists on the ground to have them find the information that isn’t necessarily online and have them scan or fax some of the requisite documents to help us validate the information. We have a pretty good regional presence and so that enabled us to gather information in places which ordinarily would be quite challenging.

The Women’s Democracy Network has a number of chapters in Africa, so we had access to a number of women who were involved in politics as well as in civil society on the ground in many of the countries that we sampled. We started out trying to get information on every single country in Africa, including North Africa. In the end, we were able to get 29 countries out of the 50-odd in the continent. Even that, just over 50 percent, was a challenge.

Women & Girls Hub: What were your main takeaways?

Baker: The rankings in and of themselves are interesting, but they’re a snapshot in time, and much of the data was from 2014. It can tell us countries like South Africa, Rwanda, Cape Verde and Uganda were at the top end, while countries like Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia were trailing at the bottom.

The most interesting thing was our ability to look a little bit deeper at the interactions between the data that we collected. What we found out validates much of what’s in the academic literature, in terms of more women in parliament being actually associated with more women in leadership roles on committees. That was one of the new indicators we collected. Similarly, we noted that there was a positive relationship between the percentage of women who headed up ministries and the percentage of the national budget managed by women.

Traditional gender roles still appear to play a pretty strong role in terms of what portfolios the women lead. For example, in 20 of the 29 countries that we looked at, women headed up ministries of social development, welfare or those related to family and children. They’re a lot less likely to be heading up ones related to defense and foreign affairs and the like.

The other thing that was interesting was to look at how the levels of democracy in each country interact with the rankings. Once you include a measure of democracy – and we used a policy measure that’s commonly used – we equally weighted the four indicators on the one hand and the level of democracy on the other. That showed that the rankings definitely adjusted. For example, Rwanda, which performs relatively well in the index that doesn’t include a [democracy] measure, drops down drastically. Which is perhaps not surprising, but at least it validates the fact that there is an interaction effect between the level of democracy and performance in terms of women’s ability to engage in the political process.

Women & Girls Hub: What are your next steps?

Bekkering: Ideally, we would undertake similar studies in the other regions so we could have a great global mapping of where women’s legislative and executive leadership and influence lie, but what we’d like to do is add more indicators. For instance, once we were going through this current pilot study, we recognized that we were really looking at representation from a descriptive lens. To the extent where women were present, they were in these positions of leadership. We’d like to take that to the next level and really look at what is substantive representation. Having women in both the executive and the legislature, to what extent are they able to really shape policy, or to enact and influence reform that directly benefits women and children as a group?

That would require us developing new indicators to look at, again, beyond the descriptive numbers and looking more substantially at how are they exerting that influence.

Girls Take a Place at the Table to Discuss U.N.’s 2030 Agenda

This article originally appeared Oct. 12 on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list. By Christine Chung

The U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals promise gender equality, but a panel marking the International Day of the Girl agreed that achieving the goals requires monitoring and active participation by girls to make sure governments deliver.

In Geneva, there was no missing the fact that yesterday was International Day of the Girl. Various U.N. offices usually reserved for dignitaries, like those of the director-general and the UNICEF Geneva liaison, were taken over by girls, while a flash mob of young women and their supporters gathered at the Place des Nations in front of the square’s iconic statue of a giant three-legged chair.

To mark the day, Plan International organized a panel featuring young activists from Zambia and Germany, U.N. officials, and Colombia’s ambassador, to discuss how girls fit into the U.N.’s 2030 agenda.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in September 2015, comprises 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 associated targets for people, planet and prosperity. According to Alfonso Barragues, director of the U.N. Population Fund in Geneva, the main difference between the SDGs and the Millennium Development Goals, which were set out in 2000 with a 2015 deadline, is “a paradigm change.”

“The MDGs were an aid contract between developed and developing countries,” Barragues told the panel. “The SDGs are a social contract, so it’s an agenda for girls and their generation.” Panel members agreed that a key tool in carrying out that agenda is data.

The fifth SDG specifically aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Speaking on the panel, Ngandu, a young woman from Zambia, laid out the prejudices she faces every day. “To be a girl in Zambia is to be a second-class citizen,” she said. “People believe that boys are more knowledgeable than girls.”

“Girls face human rights challenges that are enormous, massive, but their situation is essentially invisible,” Barragues told Women & Girls Hub. “This is an invisibility that takes place in front of our eyes.”

As part of the panel, Anne-Birgitte Albrectsen, CEO of Plan International, said that “the invisible girl is the first barrier to be broken.” Plan International’s new report, “Counting the Invisible,” shows how data not only reflects gender differences and inequalities, but also provides girls and those advocating for their rights a useful tool to demand accountability. “The SDGs are not a framework but a promise,” said Albrectsen. “Promises need to be monitored. Everyone needs to hold their governments to account.”

Barragues referred to data as a fundamental tool, saying, “Emphasis on data would kill several birds with one stone: for planning, evidence-based advocacy and ultimately strengthening the social movements of girls.”

After an audience member commented on the difficulties in addressing the needs of sex-trafficking victims, the panel moderator, U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore, noted the challenge of giving attention to both data and the voices of those whose experiences it aims to quantify.

“We can’t measure everything. At the end of the day, we have to address the root causes, not just the symptoms, which are easier to measure,” said Barragues. “Social norms and attitudes that come from patriarchal views that women are inferior, these create the power imbalances that put girls at a disadvantage.”

Gender bias is ingrained in the measurement process, resulting not only in the lack of data but even in “bad” data, write contributors Mayra Buvinic and Ruth Levine in “Counting the Invisible.” One consequence is that data can misrepresent reality so that women appear more dependent and less productive than they actually are, which in turn influences policy decisions.

In addition to the importance of gathering better data, the panel also discussed investing in quality education and facilitating active participation by girls in policy discussions as keys to empowerment. Speakers both on the panel and in the audience noted that a solution to gender inequity can only be achieved with the participation of boys and men.

“We should empower women, but we can’t leave men behind,” said Luca, a young woman from Germany on the panel. “We rise, and we take them with us.”

Barragues said there are promising efforts to involve men in the process of empowering women and girls. He points to the International Geneva Gender Champions, an initiative launched by the U.N. Office at Geneva and the United States Mission to the U.N.

“These are heads of agencies and organizations and ambassadors committing to advancing gender equality in the work of the international community in Geneva,” he said. “For example, the initiative promotes panel parity at those events organized by the U.N. There are over 150 champions already mobilized, including the high commissioner for human rights. In fact, the majority are men, which is helpful to promote men’s engagement on gender equality, but is also telling in terms of who holds rank. Ultimately, we are striving to see parity in all areas.”

Shining a Light on Invisible Girls and Women: Why Gender Data Matters

This article originally appeared on the Women & Girls Hub of News Deeply, and you can find the original here. For important news about issues that affect women and girls in the developing world, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list.

By Zahra Sethna

On International Day of the Girl, girls are demonstrating their ability to change the world. Yet more needs to be done to make all girls visible, including gathering meaningful data about their lives, writes Plan International’s Zahra Sethna.

It’s hard to ignore a girl like Masline. An 18-year-old student at a school just outside of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, she is smart, confident and determined. Talking about her hobbies makes her smile. She loves to write poetry and is especially inspired by Shakespeare’s Othello.

Masline is a great example of what happens when girls are empowered to reach their potential. She sailed through her secondary school exams with top marks, and once she finishes her current course of study she would like to become a teacher and act as a role model for other girls.

The sad truth, however, is that around the world there are millions of girls who don’t have the opportunity to fulfill their dreams like Masline.

In a recent qualitative research study of vulnerable girls in Zimbabwe, 81 percent of the 121 girls Plan International spoke to said that at one point or another they had to drop out of school, either temporarily or permanently. Most of the time this was because they couldn’t afford tuition and school fees. Once out of school, they said it was hard to go back and doubly hard to fight off the pressure they faced to get married and lessen the financial strain on their families.

When girls drop out of school and get married as children, they often become invisible to governments and policymakers because their realities are not being captured in official data and statistics. They become much easier to overlook and more vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and violence.

The plight of invisible girls is the focus of our new report, “Counting the Invisible,” which makes the case that improved data on the barriers facing girls and women is essential to achieve true equality.

How Data Can Help

Just having more data will not make all the difference to these girls. Data alone can’t change the world, but when data is collected and analyzed in the right way, they certainly can help make change possible. The insights it reveals can help inform policy and program choices. It can identify needs and challenges and help lead us to the groups of people who face the biggest barriers to realizing their rights, such as rural communities, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities. It can provide the evidence advocates need to press for change. And it can show us what works and what does not, so we can be sure to invest in the solutions that really transform lives.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a municipality wants to address the barriers girls face in getting to school. The municipality puts public transportation options in place so girls don’t have to walk long distances, and then it measures how many girls have access to that public transportation. Still, the problem persists – many girls still walk long distances or fail to attend school.

What this municipality failed to do was talk to the girls themselves to fully understand the challenges they face. If they had done some qualitative research, they might have learned that many girls are afraid for their safety in public. In Nicaragua, 65 percent of the girls we spoke to said they do not feel safe on public transportation and 59 percent do not feel safe walking on their own in public places. If girls don’t feel safe riding the bus or walking by themselves in public, having access to public transportation has little meaning in their lives.

When data reveals the scope and scale of an issue, it becomes harder for policymakers to avoid taking action.

That much-needed context is one part of the problem. Sparse data is another. For example, a lack of data on how much time women spend on unpaid household work has led to a misguided impression that women in developing countries have free time to spend on training programs or other well-intentioned community development interventions. When built on an inaccurate assumption of how much time women can afford to spend participating, these interventions often see high dropout rates and low returns on investment.

When data reveals the scope and scale of an issue, it becomes harder for policymakers to avoid taking action. Advocacy efforts in Kiribati, a small island nation in the Pacific Ocean, led the government to conduct its first study on violence against women and children in 2008. Until then, gender-based violence was considered an issue to be dealt with in private. There were no policies or laws in place and little clarity as to how police were expected to respond.

When the results of the study were released in 2010, the nation was shocked to learn that nearly 70 percent of women who had ever been partnered said they had experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner. On the back of these findings, some significant legal and social changes were made. This included a new national law, training for police and healthcare providers, changes to school curricula to teach children about respectful relationships and gender equality, services for survivors of violence, and special police units trained to deal with domestic violence. Data can, as this example shows, be a powerful force for change.

That’s why Plan International has joined with a group of like-minded partners to develop an independent measure to track progress for girls and women from now until 2030. This new initiative will produce an assessment that aims to become the leading source of information for advocates, activists, governments, civil society partners and others working to achieve gender equality.

By measuring and monitoring progress and gaps for girls and women, partners will hold governments and other stakeholders accountable for delivering on the commitments they have made. Partners will also complement existing data with original qualitative and perceptions data that more fully reflects girls’ and women’s realities and highlights their right to influence decisions affecting their lives.

The partnership has a simple vision: a world in which every girl and woman counts and is counted. A world in which every girl can, like Masline, learn, lead their own lives, make decisions about their future and, ultimately, thrive.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Women & Girls Hub.