The Moser Gender Planning Framework is a tool for gender analysis in development planning. It was developed by Caroline Moser. The goal is to free women from subordination and allow them to achieve equality, equity, and empowerment. [1]
The Moser Gender Planning Framework is a tool for gender analysis in development planning. It was developed by Caroline Moser. The goal is to free women from subordination and allow them to achieve equality, equity, and empowerment. [1]
Moser developed the Framework for a Gender and Development (GAD) approach to development planning in the 1980s while working at the Development Planning Unit (DPU) of the University of London. Working with Caren Levy, she expanded it into a methodology for gender policy and planning. Moser and Levy published A Theory and Method of Gender Planning – Meeting Women's Practical and Strategic Needs as a DPU working paper in 1986. [2] The framework is based on Moser's concepts of gender roles and gender needs, and her views on the ways policies should approach gender and development planning. [3]
The Moser framework follows the Gender and Development approach in emphasizing the importance of gender relations. As with the WID-based Harvard Analytical Framework, it includes collection of quantitative empirical facts. Going further, it investigates the reasons and processes that lead to conventions of access and control. The Moser Framework includes gender roles identification, gender needs assessment, disaggregating control of resources and decision making within the household, planning for balancing the triple role, distinguishing between different aims in interventions and involving women and gender-aware organizations in planning. [4] The framework acknowledges a political element to gender planning, and assumes that the process will have to deal with conflicts. [5]
The framework rests on three basic concepts: the triple role of women, practical and strategic gender needs and categories of WID/GAD policy approaches. The triple role consists of reproductive, productive and community-managing activities. Practical needs are ones that, if met, help women in current activities. Strategic needs are needs that, if met, transform the balance of power between men and women. Different categories of WID/GAD policy approach, which may or may not be appropriate, include welfare (top-down handouts), equity, anti-poverty, efficiency and empowerment. [2]
The framework provides six tools.
Although widely used, the framework has been subject to some criticism. The concept of gender roles may tend to obscure the concept of gender relationships. It may give a sense of a stable balance, acceptance of each person's normal activities and rights, when in fact there is ongoing negotiation, conflict and compromise. The framework does not consider evolution of the socioeconomic structure over time. The framework only addresses gender inequality and does not consider other types of inequality such as caste, class or race. [3]
Naila Kabeer has argued that the triple role concept obscures the distinction between activity and outcome. For example, the outcome of child care could be achieved by the mother at home, by a communal creche or through paid private or state facilities. These are very different in terms of their effect on women. [2]
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex, sex-based social structures, or gender identity. Most cultures use a gender binary, having two genders ; those who exist outside these groups fall under the umbrella term non-binary or genderqueer. Some societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman", such as the hijras of South Asia; these are often referred to as third genders.
Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources.
Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social development. Development communication engages stakeholders and policy makers, establishes conducive environments, assesses risks and opportunities and promotes information exchange to create positive social change via sustainable development. Development communication techniques include information dissemination and education, behavior change, social marketing, social mobilization, media advocacy, communication for social change, and community participation.
Education policy consists of the principles and government policies in the educational sphere as well as the collection of laws and rules that govern the operation of education systems.
Youth mainstreaming is a public policy concept. The Commonwealth of Nations describes it in this context:
National youth development is often the sole responsibility of the government ministry or department where the youth portfolio lies, whereas youth issues should be mainstreamed across various sectors and line ministries such as health, finance, economic development, housing, justice, foreign affairs, education, and agriculture.
Human development is the process characterized by the variation of material conditions. These conditions influence the possibilities of satisfying needs and desires. They also explore and realize the physical and psychic, biological and cultural, individual and social potentials of each person. It is also the name of the science that seeks to understand how and why the people of all ages and circumstances change or remain the same over time. It involves studies of the human condition with its core being the capability approach. The inequality adjusted Human Development Index is used as a way of measuring actual progress in human development by the United Nations. It is an alternative approach to a single focus on economic growth, and focused more on social justice, as a way of understanding progress.
Population Action International (PAI) is an international, non-governmental organization that uses research and advocacy to improve global access to family planning and reproductive health care. Its mission is to "ensure that every person has the right and access to sexual and reproductive health, so that humanity and the natural environment can exist in balance with fewer people living in poverty". PAI's headquarters is in Washington, D.C.
Caroline Olivia Nonesi Moser is an academic specializing in social policy and urban social anthropology. She is primarily known for her field-based approach to research on the informal sector generally - but particularly aspects such as poverty, violence, asset vulnerability and strategies for accumulation in the urban setting. Gender analysis is central to her approach. She has looked at many countries, but the Americas have been her main interest. Countries studied closely include Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Jamaica.
The Women's Issues Network of Belize is the only network of organizations in Belize whose focus is on the empowerment of women. The network currently has 11 member agencies countrywide.
The Harvard Analytical Framework, also called the Gender Roles Framework, is one of the earliest frameworks for understanding differences between men and women in their participation in the economy. Framework-based gender analysis has great importance in helping policy makers understand the economic case for allocating development resources to women as well as men.
Gender analysis is a type of socio-economic analysis that uncovers how gender relations affect a development problem. The aim may just be to show that gender relations will probably affect the solution, or to show how they will affect the solution and what could be done. Gender analysis frameworks provide a step-by-step methodology for conducting gender analysis.
Catherine A. Overholt is a health economist who has assisted many development agencies with gender issues, health economics, case writing and case method training. She is part of the team that developed the Gender Analysis Framework (1984) in cooperation with the Harvard Institute for International Development and the USAID Office of Women in Development.
Women in development is an approach of development projects that emerged in the 1960s, calling for treatment of women's issues in development projects. It is the integration of women into the global economies by improving their status and assisting in total development. Later, the Gender and development (GAD) approach proposed more emphasis on gender relations rather than seeing women's issues in isolation.
Gender and development is an interdisciplinary field of research and applied study that implements a feminist approach to understanding and addressing the disparate impact that economic development and globalization have on people based upon their location, gender, class background, and other socio-political identities. A strictly economic approach to development views a country's development in quantitative terms such as job creation, inflation control, and high employment – all of which aim to improve the ‘economic wellbeing’ of a country and the subsequent quality of life for its people. In terms of economic development, quality of life is defined as access to necessary rights and resources including but not limited to quality education, medical facilities, affordable housing, clean environments, and low crime rate. Gender and development considers many of these same factors; however, gender and development emphasizes efforts towards understanding how multifaceted these issues are in the entangled context of culture, government, and globalization. Accounting for this need, gender and development implements ethnographic research, research that studies a specific culture or group of people by physically immersing the researcher into the environment and daily routine of those being studied, in order to comprehensively understand how development policy and practices affect the everyday life of targeted groups or areas.
Sara Hlupekile Longwe is a consultant on gender and development based in Lusaka, Zambia. She was the chairperson of FEMNET between 1997 and 2003. She is the author of the Longwe Framework for Gender Analysis. Longwe describes herself as a radical feminist activist.
Sexual and reproductive health and rights or SRHR is the concept of human rights applied to sexuality and reproduction. It is a combination of four fields that in some contexts are more or less distinct from each other, but less so or not at all in other contexts. These four fields are sexual health, sexual rights, reproductive health and reproductive rights. In the concept of SRHR, these four fields are treated as separate but inherently intertwined.
Policy monitoring comes a range of activities describing and analyzing the development and implementation of policies, identifying potential gaps in the process, outlining areas for improvement, and holding policy implementers accountable for their activities.
Gender budgeting means preparing budgets or analyzing them from a gender perspective. Also referred to as gender-sensitive budgeting, this practice does not entail dividing budgets for women. It aims at dealing with budgetary gender inequality issues, including gender hierarchies and the discrepancies between women's and men's salaries. At its core, gender budgeting is a feminist policy with a primary goal of re-orienting the allocation of public resources, advocating for an advanced decision-making role for women in important issues, and securing equity in the distribution of resources between men and women. Gender budgeting allows governments to promote equality through fiscal policies by taking analyses of a budget's differing impacts on the sexes as well as setting goals or targets for equality and allocating funds to support those goals. This practice does not always target intentional discrimination, but rather forces an awareness of the effects of financial schemes on all genders.
Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) is a term adopted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It refers to Article 6 of the Convention's original text (1992), focusing on six priority areas: education, training, public awareness, public participation, public access to information, and international cooperation on these issues. The implementation of all six areas has been identified as the pivotal factor for everyone to understand and participate in solving the complex challenges presented by climate change. The importance of ACE is reflected in other international frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals ; the Global Action Programme for Education for Sustainable Development ; the Aarhus Convention (2011); the Escazú Agreement (2018) and the Bali Guidelines (2010).
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