Gender and organizational change

1
Gender and organizational change

• Lessons learned from NGOs in developing countries

2
Dimensions of change

• Institutionalizing gender infrastructure
• Changing organizational rules to provide equal
  incentives, and opportunities for women and men
  to be able to work
• Building cultural change and shared meaning of
  equitable gender relations
• Promoting gender equality in field programmes

3
Gender infrastructure

• Gender infrastructure is a structural change in
  the organisation that gives a committee/ unit
  responsibility for focusing on gender equality
  outcomes
• Set up to broad base responsibility for promoting
  gender equality internally
• Structural shift has to be accompanied by
  political shift
• Political shifts
• Using training as a forum to debate gender
• Alliances and joint programmes with senior
  managers of mainstream programmes
• Building the gender infrastructure in a support
  network
• Strengthening relations with like-minded external
  allies

4
Organizational rules

• Making the workplace habitable for women and men
• Most NGOs in rural development are overwhelmingly
  male. It is more convenient to hire men because
  they are more mobile, dont have domestic
  responsibilities, have more sexual freedom.
• Men are also seen as leaders and organizations
  give more incentives to male employees to train
  for leadership and become deicision-makers in the
  organisation

5
Changing rules

• Gender aware organizational change means changing
  the rules and introducing new measures to
• Recruit more women
• Facilitate their entry into the core business of
  the organisation
• Recognise and provide for womens reproductive
  role in order to retain women
• Make the workplace safe
• Promote women to leadership and decision-making
  roles

6
Cultural Change

• Changing rules can be done by administrative and
  management fiat
• But abiding by the new rules that provide
  incentives and opportunities to one gender on a
  routine basis requires cultural change in the
  organisation, shared meaning of gender equality,
  and willingness to change exclusionary practices.

7
Encouraging gender debate

• Fostering cultural change
• Create space within the organisation such as
  training and learning forums where people feel
  safe to express opinions, interact with
  colleagues and hear different viewpoints
• Construction of voice of those who want change
  
• Provide women staff space to organise
• Develop leadership and focused attention on
  issues of power and inequality
• External networking facilitates knowledge sharing
  and campaigning on social justice and gender
  equality

8
Promoting gender equality in field programmes

• Organisational change frameworks dont address
  what one does in field programmes
• It needs different technical and political tools
  to promote gender equality in programmes
• Integrationist Approach to gender mainstreaming
  gender analysis, planning, monitoring and
  evaluation
• Transformative or agenda setting approach
• Strengthening womens constituencies to
  organise women and give voice to their
  aspirations i.e. political organisation
• Constituency building and organisation as ends in
  themselves
• Wider advocacy on womens position and networking
  with others to bring pressure on public policies