Are global gender norms shifting? Fascinating new research from World Bank

I’ve been thinking a bit about norms recently – how do the unwritten rules that guide so much of our behaviour and understanding of what is acceptable/right/normal etc evolve over time? Because they undoubtedly do – look at attitudes to slavery, women’s votes, racial equality or more recently child rights.

So in advance of International Women’s Day, I ploughed my way through a really important new World Bank study, On Norms and Agency: Conversations about Gender Equality with Women and Men in 20 Countries. Like the Bank’s path-breaking Voices of the Poor or the more recent Time to Listen, it’s an attempt to take the global temperature on a big topic through a process of rigorous and deep listening involving 4000 women and men around the developing world.

Such studies are lengthy, complex and expensive, but are incredibly revealing and useful, especially as they start to accumulate. We’re trying a mini version with the Life in a time of Food Price Volatility listening project – first year results out soon.

The report is 150 pages and pretty heavy going – subtle, nuanced and complex, and very hard to extract easy headlines. A close reading will yield much more than a skim, but for the time-poor blog reader, here are some of the findings that jumped out at me.

Bending not breaking: norms are evolving, but through guerrilla warfare more than open confrontation: ‘gender norms [are] changing, albeit slowly and incrementally, with new economic opportunity, markets, and urbanization….. Economic roles for women often creep into their domestic role and, in some places, younger men even take on some narrow domestic responsibilities. What is striking is the glacial pace of this change relative to the pace of change in contextual factors. Gender norms are being contested, bent, and relaxed, but not necessarily broken fully and changed. Younger people may delay compliance to a later point in time, but the norms and the expectations around them do not change.’

The impact of urbanization: Across the board, women are making more progress in urban than rural areas. Attitudes to equality are more favourable among both sexes; young women are more able to express dissatisfaction with marriage practices; and when asked for who is climbing the ladder of empowerment (see chart), in a large number of urban areas women are moving up as men fall (largely due to economic pressures). In contrast, this quote from an interviewee in rural South Africa captures the stasis in the countryside: the new gender laws “have changed nothing here. We do not have any job opportunities, our husbands assault us, and most of the time the tribal court favors the man. So really nothing has changed. These laws apply only to urban areas.”

Education is a major driver of shifting norms: Both parents’ and children’s attitudes to education seem to have gone through a major shift. Mothers, but fathers too, want their girls to be educated, and girls are now often keener on getting an education than boys (see chart). The old stereotype of ‘what’s the point of educating girls, they’ll just get married’ seems to be receding fast. Feels like in future many more countries could be following the UK in heading for a male education crisis (low expectations and performance).

Women’s time poverty: hardly a new finding, but striking nonetheless. The very notion of ‘free time’ seems to be confined to men. ‘Unlike men, women use their free or spare time to work; they simply shift activities. Women are the losers in the time distribution game.’

Could male roles be about to shift? Male roles have changed far less than female, but the authors find some grounds for optimism in ‘glimpses of ground-breaking changes in household cooperation, open dialogue, and even power sharing.’ However ‘the task of initiating more open dialogue is placed on men’ and there are hints of desperation in citing Poland and Serbia to make their case. One of the more interesting findings was ‘the polarizing dynamics of economic stress on men’s and women’s agency’: economic crisis drives women into the public arena and relaxes gender norms, Rosie the Riveter style. But men’s identity is so wholly bound up with being the breadwinner, that economic crisis triggers emotional turmoil. The result unfortunately is at least as likely to be destructive (drinking, abandonment, violence) as ‘hey, let me do the cooking for once’. Which reinforces the growing focus within the gender rights movement on the construction of masculinity.

Violence Against Women falling but slowly: (see chart)

What does all this mean for women’s ability to make choices? The report detects ‘a window to aspire’ in which ‘women have gained some autonomy to decide about their education, jobs, marriage (who and when), and reproduction, although they still are permanently challenged not to neglect their domestic duties. Men in the study are showing more willingness to consider sharing power (if not actually share it) and to release some control over household decisions to women. Shared decision-making means men have to bend constraining norms, but it introduces a better decision-making process into their households. And as these men and women change, they transform the traditional playing field in their communities. In the domestic sphere, the women are stealthily altering traditional definitions of duties and responsibilities associated with their expected roles, which may induce change in the norms or make them more flexible.’

Just how deep these changes go is reflected in adults’ sex preferences for children (see chart) – a remarkable degree of equality in whether would-be parents want daughters or sons. That feels hugely significant.

A universal story, with no magic bullets: The report stresses ‘the universality and resilience of the norms that underpin gender roles’ across the 97 research sites. To their credit, the authors acknowledge that they failed to find equally universal solutions and interventions. But education, a focus on domestic violence, moral support for women, and well publicized and enforced legislation are held up as hopeful ways forward.

One nagging doubt – in focussing so much on people’s aspirations are we mistaking dreams for reality? Would we have got many of the same results if we had done this report a generation ago? The authors think not, but I’m not sure how certain they can be. But all in all, a fascinating, and cautiously encouraging survey.

International Women’s Day – what to celebrate, what to condemn?

It’s international women’s day today and the media and blogosphere are bouncing with ‘glass half full’ and ‘glass half empty’ discussions of the state of women’s rights. So let’s look at both halves of the glass (for a more pop version, this Independent on Sunday curtain-raiser is hard to beat, and I loved my friend Claire Melamed’s tirade against IWD cupcake feminism).

In the optimist camp, there are some encouraging signs at the international level, epitomised by the creation of UN Women in 2010 under the leadership of Michelle Bachelet, and the focus of the 2012 World Development Report on Gender Equality and Development. At a regional level, the African Union Protocol on the Rights of Women has been a significant rallying point for African women’s organizations.

That global recognition is reflected in huge progress in terms of legislation at national level. According to UN Women’s most recent ‘Progress of the World’s Women’ report:

‘In 1911 [the year of the first IWD], just two countries in the world allowed women to vote. A century later, that right is virtually universal and women are exercising greater influence in decision-making than ever before. Alongside women’s greater political influence, there has been a growing recognition of women’s rights, not only political and civil, but also economic, social and cultural rights. Today, 186 countries worldwide have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), signalling their commitment to meeting the human rights of women and girls, breaking down the barriers to gender equality and justice.’

Donors such as DFID have also moved to place greater emphasis on girls’ education and maternal mortality, among other themes. Debates have also grown around the gender impact of different religious institutions, with some seeing a ‘war on women’ emerging from many quarters, while others argued for wider recognition of different forms of ‘religious feminism’ operating in many faiths.

On the ground, there is huge progress in girls’ education and inspiring and fascinating news from all quarters. The mighty We Can campaign on violence against women in South Asia and the work of the numerous partners in Oxfam’s Raising Her Voice project are just a tiny part of a worldwide movement whose day it is today.

Moving from half full to half empty, there are doubts about some of the ‘progress’. To what extent is educating and employing women seen as a way of generating growth (women for development) rather than reshaping economic and financial systems to improve the rights, power and lives of women (development for women)? Feminist economists have had little success (at least, compared to their environmental counterparts) in mainstreaming issues such as the care economy, while the undoubted gains of the Arab Spring remain fragile and will depend for consolidation on the kind of political, social and economic norms that emerge in its wake.

Fully in the half empty category, there is the continuing disparity in the daily lives of men and women, who have increasing participation in the paid workforce even as they continue to  shoulder the bulk of care in the home (see cartoon from the World Bank/Water and Sanitation Program’s 2012 calendar [h/t Lucy Russell, via John Magrath])
And there remains of course a horrendous litany of horror stories, from acid attacks to FGM to maternal mortality, which unlike most other MDGs is scarcely falling. A thousand women die in childbirth every day, almost all of them avoidably and in low income countries.

Whether it is progress or protest that motivates you, gender equality is one of the great causes of the age, and Oxfam is pretty involved – a few examples:

A memorable comparison between Gender Mainstreaming and Basingstoke from a workshop report by Caroline Sweetman, editor of the excellent Gender and Development journal, and a video slot from gender guru Caroline Moser from the same workshop.

‘Gender equality: it’s your business’: A new gender briefing for business, also available in groovy ebook formats

And from the Raising Her Voice programme, a couple of video slices of life: a 6 minute taste of the daily struggle to confront domestic violence and build women’s participation in Honduras (I’m going there next week, so expect more on the blog)

And 5 minutes on women in Pakistan using the courts to get their voices heard on the zakat committees administering charitable funds

And for something more light hearted, nothing beats the unforgettable EQUALS video featuring James Bond. Respect Daniel Craig.

The World Bank gender team responds; lessons from successful women’s rights coalitions; male attitudes to violence against women: some reading for International Women’s Day

Some International Women’s Day reading at the wonky end of the spectrum.

Firstly, an excellent response from its co-directors (Ana Ravenga and Sudhir Shetty) to my earlier post on this year’s World Development Report on Gender Equality, whose website goes live today. Secondly check out a couple of papers on the Developmental Leadership Program website. The DLP describes itself as providing ‘thinking and policy about the critical role played by leaders, elites and coalitions in the politics of development’. All of the papers follow a similar format, identifying ‘critical overarching themes’, factors that facilitate the formation of successful coalitions, the strategies the coalitions used for greater influence and some do’s and don’t’s for donors. Nice.

Structure and Agency in the Politics of a Women’s Rights Coalition in South Africa: The Making of the South African Sexual Offences Act, 2007 studies the National Working Group on Sexual Offences (NWGSO), established to influence the progressive reform of national rape laws. The NWGSO became the largest civil society coalition to have collaborated on law reform in South Africa and won substantial improvements in rape laws and attendant policies. The study identifies 11 overarching themes:

• ‘Critical junctures’ such as national political change may provide opportunities for civil society to redefine its rules of engagement with the state. Knowing when and how to seize such opportunities is crucial.
• Many factors account for the emergence of coalitions, including: new opportunities for political engagement during political transition; how local actors form collective initiatives and their motivation to initiate meaningful social change; the existence of prior networks and experience; the ability to mobilise popular civil society support; donor support.
• New spaces for policy influence may be opened through engaging in law reform. This study shows how the coalition’s extensive experience in women’s advocacy and in-depth understanding of the law contributed to their success.
• Strategies of ‘judicial/legislative advocacy’ can assist the process of legal reform, but success depends on the existence of a relatively free judiciary.
• Women’s coalitions may draw on and expand their elite networks and exploit political and institutional arrangements to build developmental partnerships.
• Co-operative networks between elite actors that span both civil society and government may initiate new processes of legal reform.
• The building of elite networks between national and international advocates at high-ranking meetings (such as UN Conferences) may have positive developmental outcomes – if the right people are involved.
• ‘Soft advocacy’ or ‘backstage politics’ may be more effective strategies where co-operative relationships exist between high-ranking state actors and civil society leaders.
• In dominant one-party states such as South Africa, ‘adversarial advocacy’ such as monitoring government’s fulfilment of laws and policies or criticising political elites in the media may antagonise the party and reduce engagement.
• A coalition’s leadership structures and functioning must be determined through consensual processes and not automatically assumed or enacted by its key figures.
• Competition over funding may lead to disruptive tensions and there are strong grounds for ensuring transparency about a coalition’s funding.

Working Politically Behind Red Lines: Structure and agency in a comparative study of women’s coalitions in Egypt and Jordan analyses six cases of collective initiatives to advance women’s rights in Egypt and Jordan between 2000 and 2010. It finds a mere 6 overarching themes:

• Coalitions to advance women’s equality are rare in the Middle East, challenged by a restrictive and professionalized political culture that discourages collective forms of agency.
• A constellation of factors, rather than a single factor, accounts for the emergence of coalitions. This constellation includes (but is not restricted to): a cause that touches on people’s lives, a politically opportune moment, and local actors that respond by mobilizing to form a collective initiative.
• Given that the space for influencing policy is restricted to a closed circle of elites, it is not the agency of the coalition alone that leads to policy influence. The key finding is that engaging in informal ‘backstage’ politics is equally, if not more, important than formal channels of engagement in these ‘closed’ political spaces. Policy influence heavily relies on informal relationships rather than strictly formal citizen-state engagements. The “formal” faces of advocacy [such as through petitions, conferences and media advocacy] play a secondary role to informal processes in eliciting change, which is often facilitated by informal, backdoor processes of negotiation and mediation between coalition leaders and key players.
• Moreover, informal networks and, often, prior relationships, are crucial for building the internal cohesion of a coalition; and they also help to reduce their vulnerability to external political threat.
• Influential coalitions are those that are able to build formal as well as informal links with the appropriate actors, establish the right kind of image locally and secure the right kind of support from international official and civil society actors.
• In all of the six case studies studied, strong linkages existed between international and national actors, hence highlighting the importance of understanding how international actors can play an enabling role to support coalitions. In five out of six coalitions studied, donors played a critical role at some point in the life of the coalition, in both positive and detrimental ways.

Finally (just to be contrarian), what about men? Oxfam publishes an interesting research report on ‘The Effects of Socialization on Gender Discrimination and Violence’, based on a set of interviews and focus groups with men in Lebanon’s Ballbek area. It reveals a collision between cultural norms (boys being raised to be violent law givers/honour defenders by both their mothers and fathers) and modernity (more women getting an education and going out to work, undermining men’s sense of superiority and power).