Unlocking the SII: A Guide to Decoding

the Strategic Impact Inquiry

What exactly does CARE do to empower women? Does it work? How do we know? And does it really hold the key to overcoming poverty?

If you have asked yourself these questions, you are not alone. In fact, through the Strategic Impact Inquiry (SII) on women’s empowerment, the entire organization has been asking these questions. Collectively, we started looking for answers back in January 2005. In October 2006, CARE completed the second of three planned phases of this SII. And – the good news – we are generating answers that can improve the way CARE works, the results of that work and the stories we can tell. The bad news: most folks in External Relations know little or nothing about what the SII has found. Given our crucial role in presenting CARE to the public and generating resources, this situation must be remedied.

SO, the basics…

This whole process is the work of CARE’s Impact Measurement and Learning Team (IMLT). It might be helpful to think of them as CARE’s Research and Development team, but instead of making diapers more absorbent or Post-It Notes stickier, they are working to improve CARE’s ability to fulfill our vision and mission. They chose to dedicate this inaugural SII to gender equity and women’s empowerment in part because it was a natural fit with CARE’s women’s communications platform. But that wasn’t the only reason: Across the entire spectrum of development actors there was and is growing momentum around women’s empowerment and its link to the fight against poverty. As CARE had spent 10 years investing steadily in that area, it made sense to examine what contributions CARE makes to women’s empowerment and the advancement of gender equity.

The nuts and bolts of the SII include: in-depth field research in some 25 sites, and mining data from reports and evaluations of completed projects, the C-PIN database (quantitative project data), and project proposals that have been funded since the adoption of CARE’s rights-based approach to programming. Over two years, the SII has benefited from the participation of more than 200 staff members, representing nearly all levels and divisions of the organization.

Defining empowerment: A bit like nailing Jell-O to the wall…

Naturally, an inquiry into impact on empowerment must begin with some definition of empowerment. But for this word, so fraught with meaning, Merriam-Webster is just no help. SII team leaders knew they could find well-respected, scholarly definitions of empowerment, but they resisted relying too heavily on academic interpretations of a life-changing experience. There was also expertise within CARE that could have been tapped to create “our” definition of empowerment.

But the team was committed to doing research that was itself empowering: Rather than turning project participants into “subjects” whose experiences would be evaluated by “experts,” the team designed studies that relied heavily on women’s participation. In particular, research teams wanted to understand how women themselves defined empowerment. The art of the research process in each site was properly combining knowledge we brought and knowledge provided by women and communities in order to create a more profound understanding of the path to empowerment.

The team concluded that there are valid, global indicators of empowerment – like a check list. (Items on this list include self-image, rights awareness and fulfillment, political representation, ability to negotiate with spouse and family.) But that list is incomplete and inadequate if it is not paired with a local definition that accounts for cultural, economic and political realities in a given context. By overlaying one perspective on the other to create a complete picture, CARE can develop strategies that have measurable, replicable impact on empowerment.

Unleashing our potential

The headline from the second phase of the SII is: CARE has made real and valuable contributions to women’s struggles to overcome poverty. But we have the potential to do much more.

Now, you may be thinking, “Duh. Of course we could do more. Give us more people and more money, we’ll do more.” But it’s not quite that simple. The SII has found that some of the practices embedded in development work – in staff, funders and communities themselves – may actually be holding us back. So, in fact, doing more of what we’re doing won’t lead to new breakthroughs on empowerment. We’ve got to capitalize on our best work and shed some of the habits of the past.

More on that…

CARE programs are expanding women’s assets, skills and attitudes, and fostering new social and political relations between women and men in households, communities and societies. CARE and our partners are considered adept at basic training, knowledge transfer and skill-building for women in all of our work: health, literacy, governance, human rights and more. In many places, CARE’s work to bring government officials, customary leaders and women together has led to new spaces for dialogue about women’s issues – such as female genital cutting, women’s and girls’ education, health, dowry, early marriage, work loads and more – where no such space existed in the past.

Over and over, in site after site, women said that the skills and confidence they had gained from contact with CARE programs were allowing them to play a stronger and more active role in the household, to talk with their husbands at a more equal level, to participate in public meetings and to enter the public sphere more broadly. We must celebrate these achievements as an organization but, more importantly, spread the word about how these changes are happening so that they can be replicated.So, in fact, we can confidently claim to be doing important things to advance women’s empowerment.

Yet the SII also revealed myriad opportunities to achieve more meaningful change more quickly by addressing the forces beyond women themselves. All of the projects in the SII’s sample of country studies fall somewhere along a continuum of goodtogreat gender work. A few projects showed more significant breakthroughs[1], others more worrying blind spots, butmostsimply struggled to effectively address gender and power relations.

Some examples:A review of village savings and loan projects in three countries showed that microfinance projects alone don’t fully empower women. This type of project must be paired with broader livelihood and empowerment strategiesto have optimal impact on women’s economic and social well-being. In Ethiopia, when evaluators of the female genital cutting (FGC)[2] project focused just on counting the drop in FGC practices, they missed learning about important changes in community attitudes, ideas and aspirations. Those are important milestones on the road to FGC abandonment, and represent a positive result despite the persistence of FGC practices. In Bangladesh, the Rural Maintenance Program (RMP)[3] put CARE on the map of every district in the country. Yet itdidn’tachieveits true strategic potential to mobilize a women’s movement in Bangladesh, or to use CARE’s reach and reputation to try more innovative programs.

These brief examples, and the dozens like them that arise across the SII, show that the kinds of short-term, countable results development organizations tend to seek are just part of the picture. That’s not to say the achievements of a project like RMP aren’t important – they are. But in themselvesthey do not amount to impacts on such a deeply embedded cause of poverty as gender inequity. We must challenge ourselves to see the bigger picture if we hope to fully capitalize on the opportunities CARE is creating.

Good intentions aren’t enough…

CARE helps communities tackle the deeply embedded structures that perpetuate poverty and injustice. In doing so, we likely will encounter new tensions and risks. As an organization dedicated to tolerance, dignity and security, CARE is responsible for trying to anticipate potential harms and addressing any conflicts our programs do create.

For example, we can do more to help families and communities adjust to changing power dynamics. This would reduce the risk of retaliation against women who take on new roles. Also, we must include men, local elites, lawmakers – the powerful – so that women are not made solely responsible for their own empowerment. While it isalways easier to urge the less powerful to expand their capabilities than it is to persuade the more powerful to curb their abuses of power, our focus on women as agents of change increases women’s workloads and contributes to an identity crisis among men who see their traditional roles whittled away.

As we do all we can to avoid potential harms, we acknowledge the important story they tell. We cannot narrowly focus on tangible, measurable impacts in the hope that when heaped together they result in empowerment. Income does not in itself equal empowerment; nor do morbidity reductions, educational attainment or voting. These changes can be accomplished in ways that empower or disempower, that are sustainable or reversible. Any individual measure of progress can only be properly assessed and valued in the context of how it advances the whole.For example, a woman may gain greater economic opportunity from participating in a savings and loan group. But if her husband forces her to take loans for his benefit, or if she decides to go into debt to fund her daughter’s dowry, is participating in the group contributing to her empowerment?Taking a wider view will enable CARE to do the greatest good for the communities we serve.

What’s got to change?

The SII team has discovered both promise and unrealized potential in CARE’s work to empower women. To over-simplify: We should know better than to expect age-old structures of power to change because we teach women a few simple skills. So let’s imagine what we could do if we pushed CARE and encouraged our supporters tothink and do things differently. Here are some of the features the SII team would like CARE to embody as we move forward:

  • Unyielding Leadership: Leaders at all levels find and share creative ways to enact our stated policy commitments and advance a clear organizational goal regarding gender equity.
  • Bold Programming:Empowerment programs will embrace struggle, take responsible risks, learn and respond proactively as harms arise.
  • Talent and Partnerships are Maximized: We create the financial and organizational models that retain our best staff, partners and ideas across project cycles. We are savvy abouttechnology to ensure that our knowledge is constantly at the cutting edge of our field practice.
  • Knowledge and Learning Are our Hallmark. We foster open-ended learning processes, acknowledging that complex changes – poverty reduction or empowerment, for example – are difficult to enact and hard to measure. We develop metrics that meaningfully capture social change underway. Staff are rewarded for making reflection and critical thinking with all stakeholders a core aspect of CARE’s work. We disseminate our work at all levels to be transparent about our ideas, contribute to development knowledge and learn from others.

SII team leaders encourage us to look at this list optimistically – no feature is beyond our reach and many are already practiced somewhere within CARE.

Another crucial change that will be harder to effect is donor attitudes and expectations. For decades, the priorities of donor governments and multilaterals (like the World Bank, UNICEF and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria)have influenced the development goals and strategies that organizations like CARE pursue. The main focus has been on delivering predetermined outputs and not, for example, learning that those outputs and strategies to achieve them might be inappropriate or even harmful.

In light of this need to change relationships with donors and the desire to lessen CARE’s dependence on U.S. government funding, the SII team is excited to engage with External Relations. The Patsy Collins Trust Fund Initiative is one innovative model of funding that not only allows but mandates a broad view of empowerment and a process of learning over time to improve project impact. But this is only one model from one donor – the SII team and the organization as a whole are eager to think about other possibilities that will allow CARE to align our work more closely with our vision.

So, back to those questions at the beginning…

What exactly does CARE do to empower women?

CARE shares knowledge, builds skills and helps women create new spaces to participate in their communities and societies. We do this across a wide array of issues, including sexual and reproductive health, education, economic development, rights awareness and emergency preparedness.

Does it work?

Yes, CARE’s work has yielded important empowerment gains for millions. In particular, women have realized improved self-image, new capabilities and broader aspirations. Women tell us that the skills and confidence they gained from CARE programs allow them to play a stronger and more active role in their households, to talk with their husbands at a more equal level, to participate in public meetings, and to enter the public sphere more broadly.

How do we know?

CARE’s strategic impact inquiry into women’s empowerment has shed new light on our work. Not content to rush or review one or two “success stories,” CARE has undertaken substantive research across the globe and across our programming sectors. We invited outside scholars and experts to scrutinize our methods and our findings. We endeavored to make the research process empowering for women themselves and challenged ourselves to truly listen to their assessments of our work. They told us that, beyond savings and clinics, they seek a voice in their households, respectful and supportive relationships with men, a chance to raise sensitive subjects in their communities, lives free from violence, changes in harmful practices such as early marriage and dowry. They are looking to us for help in turning their incremental gains into lasting, structural change: true empowerment.

And does it really hold the key to overcoming poverty?

We believe that changing the systems that oppress women is crucial to overcoming poverty. CARE has committed to fostering that kind of change, but we must work to change the internal and external systems that keep us focused on achieving quantifiable results and stopping there. The good news is, the SII has found examples for us to learn from. There are projects that have taken concrete, measurable benefits for women and leveraged them as entry points for a strategy that addresses the larger forces shaping gender inequity. If we pursue these successful practices more broadly, we will be a world-class organization in service to the poor that helps women and families secure important short-term gains, but pursues – as our donors mandate – the more ambitions long-term goal of altering power structures that sustain poverty.

WOW! This is fascinating and exciting. Where can I get more information?

We’re glad you asked, because there is more to say than six pages could hold. But we wanted to keep this brief and invite you to carve out the time to introduce yourself to this important process underway at CARE. If you’ve made it this far, we know you have made that time. Thank you.

The SII team is asking CARE as an organization to rise to the challenge of making a true impact on women’s empowerment. Each of you can make important contributions, and we hope you are eager to seize the opportunity.

For more information, you can contact your ER representatives to the SII: Gretchen Lyons (), Karen Robbins () and Fairuz Taqi-Eddin (). You can also contact the SII Coordinator, Elisa Martinez () or head of IMLT, Kent Glenzer (). For additional reading on your own, there are lots of great resources in the IMLT folder on the portal. (Divisions → Program → Program Resources and Learning → IMLT) You may also want to review the White Paper on Women’s Empowerment, the Unifying Framework and CARE’s new strategic plan.

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[1] The CASHE project in India is a good example. CASHE was started in 2000 as a microfinance initiativewith local implementing partners. There were three tiers to the implementing strategy. At the local level, CASHE provided the partners with an extremely efficient savings-based model to use in organizing women’s microfinance groups. At the second tier district level, the village self-help groups (SHGs) federated, and the project worked to improve their access to capital and related support from various kinds of financial institutions. Finally, at the state level, the project addressed policy and legal issues related to the existence and resource access of these SHG federations. As a result of this methodology CASHE has worked with over 300,000 women in the six years of its existence. Collectively, these three levels of empowerment have served to reduce levels of poverty and improve the quality of life in areas where the SHG federations had been most active and successful.