Addressing Gender Considerations

• The teams were gender balanced.

• Workshop participants were not clear about how to approach this.
• Team was committed to looking at gender aspects but was not successful in reflecting that in the design document.
• Team would have appreciated technical gender expertise to feed into the design process for example through SIDA’s gender desk in Kenya.
• Targets within the programme document lacked gender disaggregation.

• ISSAT supported the team to review the draft programme document from a gender perspective.
• The assessment process did have a gender expert on board which enabled team to produce an assessment report which reflected gender issues. Those then were used for the design document.

• Team should have had more in-depth discussions about gender and policing in Kenya with SIDA and other international and national stakeholders.
• Team should have tapped into gender specific expertise throughout the design process.

• Gender-related questions were included in the questionnaires initially but slowly had to be omitted because there was no sufficient time to dedicate to that aspect. As a result gender was not reflected in the report.
• Gender aspects were not mentioned in the ToRs.

• Police team dealt with gender issues as an integral part of the main issues they were examining. For example: for personnel management: recruitment of females and males, retainment of females and males, etc.
• Also looked at the overall arching strategy that the police needs which will have gender as an aspect of it.

• Need to plan for time and resources to include gender considerations and this needs to be part of the ToRs.

• The evaluation had one question on gender aspects.

• The security sector & specifically the military branch is male-dominated. It was hard to get a woman’s perspective. We tried to get meetings with SPLA women without success and the questions asked to men about gender and specifically women were answered in very scant and rudimentary ways.

• Gender Mainstreaming imperatives were expressed more in policy statements without any evidence of implementation.

• Gender Mainstreaming should have been Included in the programme design phase.

- Practice what you preach in both approach, methodology and team selection: Ensuring a good balance of experience, expertise, regional knowledge and gender on the assessment team will only enhance the quality of the outcome.

- A major issue in this mission was that there were no gender experts in the team. This certainly limited attention to gender issues and their prominence in the work of the team.  

- Throughout the mission I managed to insist on the importance of gender as a critical transversal issue, if only because of the gender based violence that had partially triggered the widespread sentiment that SSR was imperative in Guinea.  I made the point over and over until, by the end of the mission gender had become a focal issue.  

- There is a need to make efforts to make a gender expert a member of assessment teams, and make gender an explicit dimension of the mission TORs.

- Ensuring a balanced representation in the workshops was problematic.

- The team carried out informal street interviews with women prior to the workshops. It was clear from the responses that the ideas voiced during the workshops were not representative of the views of all society (this exercise was also repeated to ensure general citizen views were taken into account during the validation workshop phase outside of the capital, as although citizens were invited to the workshops, they felt uncomfortable attending an event with senior police officers and therefore did not enter the meeting room).

- Be explicit in planning how to capture views from different groups and do not assume this will be taken into account by those planning the meetings (whether on the team or national partners).

• Gender issues were addressed in portions of the program, and the challenges faced by the fewer than 4% of PCP officers who are female were also raised.
• This matter was raised by UNDP prior to the workshop and the experts / consultants were able to adapt their presentations accordingly.

• In the future, a session on the practicalities of receiving / managing complaints from women and third party representatives could be developed. Also reaching women’s groups through media and marketing campaigns, is an issue that needs to be tackled.

• The process used for selection of participants is entirely left for the Mandator. The latter identifies potential candidates based on the relevance of their work and availability. In this training, among the 30 participants only 4 females were present.

• The females present were quite active during the training and shared their experience.

• ISSAT should play a more active role to push for higher female participation in future trainings. As is the case with military-civilian participation and Whole of government representation, gender-balance should be another issue to be highlighted with Mandators upon designing the training mission.

• Lack of female interlocutors within GoSS institutions: ISSAT Policy Advisor tried to get meetings majority male. The team had one woman on the technical team assigned to work with us. However, she had no official position in the MoD.

• Donors commitment to gender equality and women participation: Norway was very much committed to the objectives of gender equality and women participation. It made it clear that its programming will be designed to achieve the objectives set forth by 1325.
• Mixed mission team: Team was composed of 4 females and 2 males.
• Participation of female leader on mission set forth an important example: Norway’s Minister of Defence is a woman which sent an important and strong message to the Sudanese counterparts.

• Gender balance: specific attention was given for gender balance for the whole training and for distributing people on tables

• Issues for TNA attention: It would be useful for a TNA to include questions that would reflect any constraints related to the environment, culture, gender etc. that would impact to timing, attire, etc.  
• Gender balance: Gender balance among participants’ to be brought up during discussions with mandator as is the issue of military-civilian balance

• Encouraging the female participants: This training took place in a mostly male-dominated environment. The trainer encouraged the female participants to participate in the discussions and debates by directly calling upon them for their inputs.
• Balanced levels of participation: Males and females were equally represented in this workshop.

Gender Based Violence: GBV was addressed, however with many donors currently focusing on this area it was recommended that although the EU be aware of the situation, but could not make an added value impact. There were many other areas of military justice that also need to be addressed where greater impact could be made.

Gender Review: The team lacked a gender expert and could have benefited from having an external member of the team to review the ToR,and provide advice to the team prior to deployment, as well as review the report to raise questions that the team may have missed in order to mitigate this input deficiency.

• Lack of knowledge: “Gender” was used to mean “women” by the nationals
• “Gender” was also used without any depth of meaning or link to specific activities within action plans
• Although it was mentioned verbally at most times, it was clear that real knowledge did not exist as to the concept or to its approaches.

• Entry points were suggested: While working with the National Technical Committee, indications to gender without any proper significance were highlighted, encouraging members to think through every single activity highlighting aspects that are significant to men, women, girls, boys and elderly without automatically using the term. Given limited time on mission and the volume of activities, the mission could only suggest entry points encouraging actors to think for themselves about them, trying to make the concept closer to their reality as opposed to a foreign “empty” term.

• Training and capacity development: Mainstream gender considerations in the SSR capacity development activity recommended above.
• Focus on the context and do not simply state theories.
• Organize on-the-job coaching for the different ministerial sectors on how to pay attention the various needs of men and women through their specific daily tasks and how to deal with them concretely.

• Female Police Officers: Need of more women police officers in mission, hence a stronger commitment from Police Contributing Countries
• Gender Equality Awareness: General lack of understanding about what is gender issues

• Gender focal points were identified in each UNPOL post, a mix of men and women were appointed as focal points
• Collaboration: Worked jointly with the Mission Gender Unit

• Gender equality v/s women empowerment: Need to better define gender, because of a lack of knowledge many think that "gender" means "women"
• Keep up with the actual momentum but be more specific when need be
• Cultural awareness: Try to stay away form an approach of "one size fits it all".

• Availability of female police advisors: The police pillar was unable to attract one female police advisor

• Gender Parity: There was a good representation of men and women within the Justice and Human Rights Pillars

• None

None

• The team took specific measures to meet with women members of parliament; in such an environment, it can be difficult to organize such meetings, but the team managed well.

None

• Gender considerations were made in a very generic way for the regional proposal, adding language to the proposal more as an obligation than a real reflection of the needs of that community.

• Gender considerations for the community policing proposal were more directly incorporated into the program. Indicators of success included the degree and nature of women's participation; that is to say, it was not merely a measure of how many women participated in activities, but also the impact those activities had.

• Often proposal solicitations will require inclusion of consideration for gender. Rather than mainstreaming this community into proposals, a token activity is often proposed to "check the box" on gender. For programs where appropriate, it might be worth including a gender specialist on the team to help ensure this issue receive the attention it deserves.

• There was some resistance from conservative officers regarding a policy of full gender equality in the armed forces, especially with respect to combat posts.

• The Constitution prohibited discrimination on grounds of gender. In addition, women had served with distinction in the armed wings of the liberation movements. The new government therefore insisted on full gender equality in the armed forces and did not seriously entertain the counter-arguments.

None

• Specific funding instruments were designed to look at issues of women and girls. That worked well to help integrate women and girls' needs into the DDR process.

• There was not enough gender sensitivity within the Trust Fund group and the international partner group.

• Ensure when Trust Funds are designed, a gender  advisor gets the opportunity to contribute to the operation. Gender considerations need to be addressed from the outset of a project.

• Gender is about women and men: A challenge to the study were the two dimensions of gender in homicides in Guatemala. On one hand, the vast majority of men were victims (around 90%) and perpetrators. However, the homicides of women many times involved sexual torture and violence. By applying a gender lens the study could reflect these different aspects.

• Mixed team: By having a heterogeneous team, from the whole security sector with different experiences and fairly well-mixed between women and men, high quality was assured. Also, the benefit of having a Minister of Interior being female, like the Swedish Ambassador, decreased the risk of making the political dialogue male-dominated.

None

• No gender balance: There was no representation of women at the workshop either on the part of the Technical Working Group or the Swiss.

• Recognition: Gender was recognised as an impotant topic to include in the DGMMA curriculum and it was also recognised as a cross cutting theme through a number of other topics.
• Current accomplishments: The Technical Working Group were quite proud to highlight the achievements in gender representation that southern Sudan has made in comparison to the East Africa region, making promising mainstreaming in the future.

• Foster discussion: Greater gender representation needs to be established at future workshops and in the development of the DGMMA in general. The Technical Working Group could also benefit from an open discussion on gender mainstreaming to identify how it can fit across topics in the curriculm.