Resources

Activitists for Social Alternatives, an Indian NGO, began to use PRA in order to reach the poorest villagers. This report describes their experiences since 1990, under the specific areas where PRA workshops were conducted: tank rehabilitation, watershed development, herbal medicine, women's issues, health and income generation (non agro based). The "process" section of the annexures describes in detail the PRA methods used and findings (including diagrams and pictures): village modelling, trend change, seasonality and linkage activities were used to explore women's perspectives on health and social issues. The Gender PRA training workshop was attended by women from 22 villages - sharing their personal problems "developed a strong bond and solidarity which later led to the formation of a women's coordination committee". They took up issues like "eve teasing, child marriage, dowry, wage and deserted women" and "feeling the need for educating the public about the problems of women, planned for an International Women's Day celebration this year".

This report presents an overview of gender considerations in development and suggests analytical tools for development professionals in government, bilateral, international organisations and NGOs to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of project activities. Tools for gender analysis reveal how gender differences define people's rights, responsibilities and opportunities in resource management. The tools discussed include PRA methods as well as more conventional techniques. They offer ways of gathering data and analysing gender as a variable in household and community organisation for natural resource management. Each tool is illustrated with an application from ECOGEN research. The PRA tools discussed include wealth ranking, focus-group discussions, venn (or chapati) diagrams of village institutions, resource mapping, seasonal calendars and matrices. A new initiative, a Gender Analysis Matrix (GAM), was developed to test and to generate awareness of the impact of specific projects on gender roles and responsibilities.

This paper raises issues around PRA as an empowering process. For the poor, product matters more than process and "it is the functional, material gain which is the entry point, not the empowerment". PRA can be seen as "Orwellian manipulation" from the point of view of "elaborate processes imposed to secure participation". In practice, those "least familiar with Western cultural processes will be the most excluded and manipulated" - usually the women of a community. Any approach or technique has "differing meanings in differing geographical, cultural and temporal contexts", so PRA should also be seen as "context limited and context enhanced".

PRA is not "automatically gender sensitive" - there is a need to raise gender awareness first before PRA tools can be used to explore different perceptions and it is not enough simply to say that gender is important. A PRA and Gender training programme that took place in Brazil had three preparatory steps : defining gender, "formulating key questions in terms of gender-differentiated perspectives" and deciding which PRA methods would be most appropriate. During the fieldwork, problems were discussed in terms of gender - who and how issues had been raised. The article ends with a discussion of the benefits ("experiential learning of gender differences") and dangers (the trap of the "gender average") of linking PRA and gender.

This brief overview of a workshop on PRA and Gender held at IDS begins with the "unfortunate and astonishing" observation that "PRA so rarely incorporates a thorough gender-differentiated analysis". Since 1991, PRA has been more shaped by gender issues, resulting in a literature dealing with three main sets of issues: i) practical - is PRA "equally amenable for use by women and by men?" ii) analytical - "what understanding of gender is used to guide PRA?" iii) institutional - "how does the institution deal with the findings" of gender-sensitive PRA? The workshop raised experiences from diverse countries : this report summarises the issues discussed rather than presenting any case-studies.

"The gender equivalent to Chambers' poverty biases" is summarised as an ironic checklist of ways of "keeping women invisible in development planning" - eg Treat the household as a homogenous and harmonious group of people. Concepts for gender training for development planners are discussed : i) The distinction between "biological" sex and "socially constructed" gender ii) The different processes that construct gender in different cultures iii) Focus on the gender division of labour iv) Rethink the meaning of production in the light of our analysis of the gender division of labour v) Shift from planning for practical needs to strategies for empowerment. Such training should help to get away from "aggregated concepts of development that planners have worked with in the past".