AUGUST 2011 64874 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Giving Women a Bigger Voice in Rural China PATRICIA FERNANDES is a Social Development The Poor Rural Communities Development Project (PRCDP) is a rural development Specialist in the World Bank’s Social, Environmental and intervention covering some of the poorest communities in Guangxi, Sichuan, Rural Sustainable and Yunnan provinces in China. The project, which is led by the Chinese Development (EASER) Department. provincial and county project offices (PMO), reaches out to ethnic minority communities, usually in remote villages, and provides subgrants for basic infrastructure and loans for livelihood improvements. The project involves APPROVING MANAGER Magdolna Lovei, Manager, farmers in important decisions about which kinds of activities will be World Bank Social, Environmental implemented, and aims to ensure participation of both men and women in and Rural Sustainable Develop- ment (EASER) project design, implementation, and evaluation. Community members are brought together for discussions facilitated by the project team to talk about key challenges facing the community and to make sure that both women’s and men’s priorities are heard when it comes to deciding how village funds will be used. This SmartLesson describes how a simple “gender mainstreaming� approach was effectively adopted in targeted villages in rural China and highlighting the different ways men and women understand community priorities. Background the project’s community-based activities, and assisting the Chinese implementation team’s In the remote areas covered by PRCDP, efforts to increase that participation. Our communities have had their own ways of team learned how men and women accessed pooling resources and making decisions. This basic services, and what their respective roles often happens without much participation by were in decision-making at both the women. A key element of PRCDP was community and household level. We paid therefore to provide women in targeted areas attention to how the implementation with greater opportunities to speak up at arrangements proposed by communities village meetings and to have a greater role in would affect men and women differently. The project implementation. Slowly but key concern in this case was to ensure that consistently, this gender mainstreaming implementation arrangements did not place approach is producing positive change. an undue burden on women who already had a particularly heavy workload of agricultural Analysis activities and domestic chores. We sought to specifically understand: The initial gender analysis carried out by the team aimed to understand the barriers • How local customs, beliefs, and attitudes holding women back from greater limited women’s participation; participation in public discussions. Why weren’t women attending village meetings • How women’s economic and domestic and speaking up? The team used qualitative workloads posed important time constraints research methodologies such as participant on their participation in community activities; observation, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. These were either • How customs, policies, and laws limited separate discussions held with women only, or women’s access to resources. consultations held with groups that had an adequate balance of women and men As a result, some simple but important participants. Ultimately, the analysis was changes were made in the way planning aimed at increasing women’s participation in meetings at village level were conducted. SMARTLESSONS — AUGUST 2011 1 Planning and Implementation Collecting feedback from women during project implementation was very informative. It enabled the Once we had a detailed understanding of gender dynamics women to explain the difference between the original within communities, it was clear there needed to be project plan and the actual implementation. Women were changes in the usual village planning processes. The Chinese requested to state their satisfaction with the planning PMO, with help from World Bank and Department for process and to rate “how well they were involved in decision International Development (DFID) team, worked to ensure making.� that women were at the meetings and able to express their preferences about project investments. Hongshui Township Lessons Learned (Rongshui County) provides a good example. Miao (an ethnic minority group living in southern China) women 1) Gain a good understanding of gender-specific barriers don’t customarily have a big role in community affairs. The to beneficiary involvement in project activities. solution there was to have separate meetings with the women before the large plenary meetings with men. PRCDP found that the best way to understand why women Women were more confident about speaking up in the weren’t actively involved in village activities was to ask small groups without the men around. They were able to them using simple qualitative methods. Having this consolidate their ideas and priorities for project funds, and information available was key to making the necessary then were able to explain them more clearly later in the adjustments to project design. mixed-gender sessions. 2) Create a space for women’s perspectives to be heard: Another change was to have everyone vote as individuals Arrange separate consultations/planning meetings for rather than one vote per household, where traditionally women. the man would represent the household. An equal number of women and men participants were asked to vote for We saw that the small meetings gave women a chance to their preferred subproject using seeds of different colors organize their ideas and present their priorities clearly (yellow for women and white for men). Women showed a before attending the subsequent mixed-gender community stronger preference for the construction of social sessions. This made women more confident to speak up and infrastructure (health posts and schools), while the men to articulate their point of view in larger public meetings. tended to focus on livelihood activities and infrastructure works such as rural roads. By getting men and women to 3) Be aware that men and women focus on different vote separately on their preferences, facilitators were able things, and women’s priorities may be lost if the men to identify key differences in priorities. systematically represent the households in public discussions. Taking it one step further, the project teams made sure that one third of the people in village organizations overseeing Changing the way villagers voted on subprojects to “one implementation were women. It was important to make person – one vote� made a big difference in ensuring these sure that women were involved beyond the planning stage, different perspectives were taken into account. When so that they could benefit from the training provided in women had opportunity to vote themselves, we saw that financial management, procurement, and supervision of they tended to be more interested in health and education contractors and construction work during implementation. projects. Men voted more heavily for agricultural projects. In order to support local Chinese facilitators in this, a project 4) Create opportunities for women to participate in specific gender-check list was put in place as a step-by-step project activities and gain additional skills. guide for gender-sensitive community planning. In addition, a strong partnership with DFID—which provided grant In PRCDP this meant being aware of women’s specific time resources linked to the project— meant that the gender constraints and adjusting the time of training sessions to dimensions of project implementation were systematically ensure they could attend. reviewed during supervision, discussed with county and provincial counterparts, and captured systematically in 5) Check with the women to see how the project really progress reports. worked, and take corrective action as needed. Monitoring and Evaluation In this case women were involved in monitoring projects during the implementation phase. They were able to track Finally, a thorough methodology for participatory results and assess progress. Importantly, they could also monitoring and evaluation was adopted by PRDCP, with a report on how effectively they were able to participate in strong focus on assessing how men and women perceived project activities and to flag areas for improvement. their participation and their ability to engage in the community-level decision-making processes. Conclusion The Chinese PMO conducted specific interviews and focus A key lesson from PRCD, successfully led by the Chinese group discussions with women and men participants, as Leading Group for Poverty Reduction with the support of well as with poor and marginalized groups within the the World Bank and DFID, was to ensure that project design community, which provided useful insights into the quality was based on a good understanding of the local context. By of the facilitation. 2 SMARTLESSONS — AUGUST 2011 listening to beneficiaries and adopting a participatory approach, the project was able to introduce some important adjustments in the way village meetings were run and the project implemented, giving women a bigger voice. A critical insight from the project is that ensuring that men and women are able to benefit more equitably from project activities does not require complex interventions but rather well-targeted and above all simple adjustments that can be systematically monitored at field level. Close supervision and monitoring of these activities helped the implementing agency understand what worked and what didn’t so that corrective action could take place when necessary. DISCLAIMER SmartLessons is an awards program to share lessons learned in development-oriented advisory services and investment operations. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of IFC or its partner organizations, the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. IFC does not assume any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of the information contained in this document. Please see the terms and conditions at www.ifc.org/ smartlessons or contact the program at smartlessons@ifc.org. SMARTLESSONS — AUGUST 2011 3