This article is written by Diana Galeano, a consultant with the Gender Coordination team for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity unit. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own.

  • The problem: Not integrating gender into the design of development projects can prevent equal access to project interventions and benefits.
  • Why it matters: Integrating gender into project design is critical to promoting sustainable and fair interventions that benefit women and men, maximising the impact on all members of society.
  • The solution: Start with gender for fair interventions, understand power dynamics, identify the real problem, make the most of gender data and consider hidden gender impacts. Integrate gender equality in development projects as a must-have forethought, not an optional afterthought.

Integrating gender equality into development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a cause that's near and dear to my heart.

From my experience, I've learned five lessons for integrating gender into project design:

Lesson 1: Start with gender for sustainable and fair interventions

Gender inequalities can prevent people from accessing and benefiting from project interventions. Addressing these inequalities from the onset is critical to ensuring equal access to project benefits.

For example, women's economic empowerment interventions can benefit families and communities. This is because women tend to reinvest in their families and communities.

But gender isn’t just about women. It’s also about men. In most LAC countries, achieving gender parity must address boys’ school underachievement. By closing this reverse gender gap, interventions can benefit boys and girls.

Lesson 2: Integrating gender is more than adding women or men as project participants

Go beyond participation. Understand gender norms and power dynamics that can influence project outcomes.

For instance, take a project aimed at improving access to credit for small business owners in the Caribbean. The project should consider that more women than men need collateral and more experience navigating the formal financial sector.

Lesson 3: Problem-finding is as vital as problem-solving

Assumptions can make it challenging to identify the real problem at first.

But we can overcome this by gathering data and analysing it. By doing so, we can uncover and align the challenge with the desired impact on the target project participants.

For example, a Covid-19 vaccination project in Peru found that vaccine hesitancy rates were higher among women than men. But another data source revealed lower vaccination rates among men than women. This was mainly because men’s work hours overlapped with the health centres’ hours, there were higher employment rates among men than women, and men dedicated more hours to paid work.

Lesson 4: Make the most of gender data – including its absence

Gender data is essential to identify gender gaps. But the absence of sex-disaggregated data shouldn’t hinder achieving gender equality.

Instead, it’s an opportunity to work with national governments to collect and analyse gender data.

One example of such a project is the data for decision-making in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). The project aims to make it easier to access gender data on poverty, welfare, employment, labour outcomes and human capital. This will help policymakers to make informed decisions that address gender inequalities.

Lesson 5: Projects that seem gender-neutral may still impact women and men differently

Gender equality cuts across health, education, transport, energy and many more sectors.

For instance, a green hydrogen project may sound complex and gender-neutral. But it can address two critical issues in the traditionally male-dominated industry. First, it can help to develop specialised talent in the green hydrogen field. Second, it can contribute to reducing the skills gender gap in the industry.

One way to achieve this is by offering educational programmes for women to pursue careers in the green hydrogen sector and other STEM fields.

Gender equality integration into project design is more than a checkbox or a token gesture.

It’s a collaborative effort with diverse stakeholders and governments from the start. By doing so, we can conduct valuable gender analysis, develop robust project designs, and make a more significant impact.

What are your lessons from gender integration in development projects? Please write me on LinkedIn!

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