Part II: women’s decision-making roles in local institutions Overall, in the 13 projects reviewed, whereas women have participated in the local institutions set up by the projects, they have either been absent, or have held very few positions in the institutional decision-making bodies. In Gabon, for example, half of the village association members are women, and, in the Wolem-Ntem region, this proportion reached 65%. Nevertheless, women were almost always under-represented at the decision-making levels of the village associations. In the LACOSREP project in Ghana, once again, even though women represented the majority of the water users association members, key positions were held by men. The exclusion of women from these key positions led to an unresponsiveness to their needs and to their inability to benefit from a number of social and economic opportunities. So, in the LACOSREP project, women’s exclusion from high positions in the water user associations led to an unequal distribution of land between men and women and to a weak flow of information towards women members on issues related to land and water distribution. In Burkina Faso, although women contributed much of their time to the construction of stone bounds on family plots and to other community activities, they were not involved in the consultation, training and decision-making that precede the building of stone bounds. It was the men who sat on the village committees, signed the agreements and decided where to build the stone bounds. In some projects, women participated very little in project activities and social institutions, such as in the Aguié project in Niger or the PSANG in Chad. If they did participate, their presence was a mere formality, often simply aimed at fulfilling project requirements. Some reports give us an idea of the possible reasons for this exclusion of women from decision-making roles. One is the absence of gender-aware planning during project design. For example, none of the projects examined for this review reserved a proportion of the decision-making positions for women, nor did any contemplate practical mechanisms to allow women to take part in decision-making, such as adjustments in meeting times and membership rules so as to meet women’s needs. Yet, although crucial, these actions alone would not have been sufficient to permit women to exercise decision-making: “strategies to increase women’s self-confidence and awareness of their rights are needed, in order for them to be more assertive in joining committees. For this . . . the presence of a gender-progressive NGO or a women’s organization is a major factor: membership makes women more self-confident, assertive and vocal in mixed gatherings”7. In this respect, the projects examined did little to engage relevant NGOs, where they existed. In the LACOSREP project in Ghana, for example, there were NGOs in the region that had demonstrated a capacity to work with women and that could have sensitized women on gender issues, but they were not contracted. A third element is still needed alongside gender-aware planning and a willingness to search for the right counterpart, however. Training must, indeed, not only be aimed at raising women’s gender awareness and self-esteem, but it must also aim to do so at the household and community level, thus contributing to making women’s activities more visible and generating in the community and among authorities more support for women’s activities. Although women do not hold key decision-making positions in the projects reviewed, there are strong indications that greater empowerment was fostered among women at three levels: personal (self-esteem), vis-à-vis the women’s family, particularly with respect to their husbands, and within the community. In Chad, for example, the women felt that the project had helped them “discover themselves” and had improved their status within the household thanks to the financial independence they achieved through project activities. In the SRDP project in Ghana, the development of businesses increased women’s self-confidence, and women’s social status in their community improved as men became used to their participation in meetings related to community welfare. In the SCIMP project in Ghana, all the women who generated income through project activities felt that they were being treated better by their husbands and that they “brought joy and happiness to the home”. In Niger, finally, the women who were interviewed felt that the project had helped them convince their husbands to let them participate in community activities such as training sessions and credit operations. In the women’s view, thanks to this, they had improved their social standing and felt more respected on a community level. These sorts of empowerment are not only beneficial and a success per se, but must be considered as important building blocks towards the greater participation of women in decision-making in the future. Naturally, the above refers essentially to mixed groups. In women’s groups, women have, of course, taken up decision-making roles, even though it is important to note who becomes the decision-maker. There is evidence suggesting that, in some cases, the poorest and most vulnerable women did not have equal access to these positions. In LACOSREP Ghana, for example, women’s groups tended to be dominated by elderly people who were also the ones participating in the training for executives and group credit management. The information they acquired, however, rarely filtered down to the other members of the group, and there was evidence that the link between the women members and their women representatives on mixed groups was weak. Poor women tended to be left out of groups, and group leaders generally excluded women who were perceived as incapable 7/ Andrea Cornwall, ‘Whose Voices? Whose Choices?: Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development’, World Development, Vol. 31, No. 8, 2003, page 1330.
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