Power of partnership conference: Presentation: Negotiating gender norms: Women's participation in anti-poverty programmes

1. Negotiating Gender Norms:
Women’s Participation in Anti-
Poverty Programmes
Sahida Khondaker,
Sohela Nazneen,
Maheen Sultan

2. Rationale and Focus
Rationale:
• There is a gap on how gender norms influence women and
men’s access to formal institutions and Literature largely
explore intra-household negotiations and negotiation of
community norms and there is disjuncture between anti-
poverty literature, literature on labour force participation and
governance literature and social norms
Focus:
• How gender norms influence women’s access to and
participation in anti-poverty programmes (both safety nets
and public works)?
• How women and men negotiate these gender norms?

3. Research Context and Method
• Three regions: char, non char, forest (2 villages in each area, one
with high literacy and close to town; and another with low literacy
and far away from town). Paper is based in Qualitative interviews
with 28 women; 13 men and Supplemented by data from survey
which covered 450 households.
• Areas were chosen where a large majority were below a poverty
line. Existence of various safety net schemes and public work
schemes –
-Safety Net: widow, old age, VGD, VGF,
-PW: 100 days, 40days
• These are insights not generalizable conclusions

4. Negotiating gender Norms:
Knowledge and Women’s articipation
• Knowledge about schemes
- men know more than women
– women interviewees knew more about safety net than public work
• Participating in public work schemes
Women’s participation determined by following factors :
a) Intra-household work redistribution
b) Cost of accessing the scheme and overall earnings from the schemes
c) What is ‘good’ about public work that makes it suitable for women (regular
wage, specific time; alternative work opportunity differs by gender)

5. Negotiating Gender Norms:
What Matters at the Public Work Site
• Gendered ideas about the kind of work suitable for
women
-’lighter work’ allocated for women
• Gender wage gap?
-mandatory inclusion and clause on equal wage
-all interviewees agreed about the above
- Views differ about equal wages in public work schemes and
wage gap in other work
• Gendered Provisions
- Child-care provision missing – although done elsewhere!
- Childcare by others at site
- Toilets

6. Safety nets as supporting women’s
economic contribution in the family
• Story of old grandmother who supported grandson’s upbringing
through old age allowance (According to polly’s story, her grand
mother in law up bring her husband when his father abandon him
after her mother death. The main earning source of her
grandmother in law was old age scheme
• Old age and widow allowance as allowing old people to be
independent and have self respect as well as to be well-regarded by
their families
• VGD/VGF seen as important economic contributions that women are
making to the household income.
• Seen by some as welfare and by others as a right

7. Negotiating Gender Norms:
Has anything changed?
• Views on women participating in public work outside the
household?
- Seen as ‘honorable’ as work provided by the state
- Resistance limited
- Different from what it was like when RMP and other programmes were
implemented
• Men doing childcare/ household chores
- childcare acceptable by some younger men but not other types of chores
• What kind of work women do?
- ’lighter work’ for women/ regularity of wage/ specific time period/ less
freedom of choice
• Women’s interactions in ‘informal processes’
- some interactions are gendered (paying bribe, who pays, what kind of
payment)

8. Negotiating Gender Norms:
Where Next (Research and Policy)?
• Engaging women in paid work
-Legitimacy of the state initiative: State as norm changer.
- At these sites women and their families prefer these schemes in
areas where alternatives are few
- Policy: increase women’s participation in these specific regions;
address ‘informal practices’ and corruption issues
• Addressing gender related concerns
-Wage gaps, childcare, toilets, security to name a few
• Sticky ‘norms’ and what is malleable
-family plays an important role in contesting community norms on
gender (around purdah, what kind of work is appropriate) .
-Family needs or economic priorities as driving compromises with
norms.