Women's Empowerment in Rural Community-Driven Development Projects
Community-driven development (CDD) interventions rest on the principle of empowering communities. Yet, the gender-specific impacts of CDD, especially on empowerment, have not received due attention in evaluation and, more generally, in the theoreti...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/917631485554140658/Womens-empowerment-in-rural-community-driven-development-projects http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25968 |
| Summary: | Community-driven development (CDD)
interventions rest on the principle of empowering
communities. Yet, the gender-specific impacts of CDD,
especially on empowerment, have not received due attention
in evaluation and, more generally, in the theoretical and
empirical literature. This report explores evidence of how
the CDD approach can create and enhance participation and
decision making when women, as well as men, are to be
included in the “community” voice and choice. It reviews the
theoretical and empirical literature and analyzes World
Bank–supported CDD projects. Its intent is to help
practitioners who implement CDD interventions more
explicitly define, discuss, and integrate gender-relevant
elements in the design of CDD projects; be more effective in
implementing and monitoring features that may affect men and
women differently; and identify meaningful indicators and
information to assess gender impacts. Findings of this
report include: i) it is important to bring it out
empowerment explicitly in the results chain of the project;
ii) the design of CDD projects could benefit from being
informed by gender-specific needs assessments to identify
the constraints that women face in the rural space; iii) It
is useful to think of empowerment along the three categories
of economic, political, and social empowerment to identify
the mechanisms CDD interventions can leverage, and to
identify direct and indirect effects; iv) the importance of
defining in CDD projects which dimensions can be affected,
through which channels, and how these effects can be
measured; v) participation needs to be measured in a
comprehensive way by the use of multiple indicators; vi) CDD
interventions should better frame what they can impact both
in the short and the long term, and vii) the learning
potential of what works to increase women’s empowerment can
be improved through more systematic assessment, reporting
and evaluation. |
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