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Afghanistan is facing the devastating effects of almost forty years of war, increasing poverty and natural disasters, all of which were amplified by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of 2021, almost 17 million Afghan people needed humanitarian assistance. Afghan women and girls are particularly affected by this humanitarian crisis.
Gender specific impacts include increasing levels of insecurity, restricted mobility, an escalation of violence targeting women and girls, the additional burden of care due to COVID-19 and deeply entrenched discriminatory social and gender norms. Women and girls must be directly involved in all stages of humanitarian planning and response to ensure an effective response to their needs and priorities.
This Tip Sheet provides concrete tips/instructions on strengthening the participation of women and girls in surveys, assessments, and feedback mechanisms.
The following 11 TIPS can help ensure that women and girls’ voices are directly heard during community-based needs assessments. The tips also support assessments yielding sufficiently disaggregated data for an in-depth gender-analysis and for broader response-wide collective analysis:
1 . Apply ‘Do No Harm’ principle in tools and data collection methodologies: Minimizing the risks of physical, psychological and social harm toward women as well as provision of privacy, anonymity and the right to withdraw from the research must be considered during the planning and executing of the assessments.This includes not sharing information that could be misleading.
The development of data collection methodologies and tools for community-based needs assessments and feedback mechanisms presupposes a familiarity with local Afghan culture, community structures, social norms and traditions. (e.g. ethnic, gender composition of surveying team, language of communication, time and appropriate venue). The safe participation of women and girls in community assessments requires the application of gender specific ethics and safety protocols, arranging safe and private places where women can ask and answer questions, and the ensuring the confidentiality of respondents at the center of the data collection process. If local norms suggest that consent from a male household member is also required to interview a woman, such consent should be sought, in addition to the woman’s direct informed consent prior to the interview.
2 . Design community dialogues that build mutual trust and provide an opportunity for collaborative action: Community acceptance of the assessment purpose and process as well as people who carry it out play an important role in meaningful community engagement during assessments. In the Afghan context, ensuring the direct participation of women and girls, particularly those associated with the marginalize groups and women with disabilities, in community dialogues and /or discussion on gender issues requires establishing trust with the communities before these dialogues begin. Dialogues can be an opportunity for collaboration with community members to jointly reflect and potentially to initiate collective action. Partners engaged in programming or planning new programming in the communities where they initiate dialogue, can use the trust they have built to engage in new dialogue. Organizations providing information to the humanitarian community to inform future programming, will need to spend more time with the community to explain why it is valuable to participate.
3 . Engage with and seek relevant approvals from local structures of influence: Update community elders, religious leaders and members of Community Committees (Shura), Community Development Councils and School Management Committee, on the assessment’s purpose, and the importance of the involving of women and girls in the process. Seeking relevant approvals for the data collection process and highlighting the criticality of women’s participation helps protect women participants from potential backlash and fosters enhanced community ownership of the process. Involving community elders in discussion on women’s participation also fosters community wide recognition of women and girls’ key role in informing community priorities. Keeping men informed and encourage their involvement in women focused activities help to strengthen women voices, as men listening to women views can be a first step towards transformational change.
4 . Engage women’s rights organizations and women’s networks in the data collection, analysis and dissemination: Women and girls should be given an opportunity to engage in the planning, implementation, and analysis of data collection activities. Consult local women’s organizations and networks on how to identify and mobilize women for participation in needs assessments and feedback mechanisms. Local women’s organizations and networks can provide important insights on how, when and where women can be reached.
The humanitarian response of women’s organizations is effective according to traditional humanitarian criteria related to satisfy minimum humanitarian standards. Women organization carry out humanitarian assistance program in a timely manner and according to internally recognized humanitarian standards.
5 . Composition of data collection teams must be gender balanced: Women may be more comfortable speaking to another woman and may answer questions differently depending on whether asked by a man or a woman, due to the gender power imbalance, familiarity with talking openly with women and reluctance to engage with a man who is not a family member. Data collection teams must include women. In doing so, it is important to ensure that measures are introduced to protect women data collectors from potential harassment or backlash. Securing community leaders’ engagement in the data collection process is vital for protection.
6 . Schedule meeting times in consultation with women leaders: The time that women spend on household tasks and caring for family members may impact women’s ability to participate in data collection. This may mean that women are unavailable at certain times of the day. A 2021 time use survey by UN Women5 shows that women in Afghanistan spend more than two-thirds of their time on unpaid household and care work. A (2020) UN Women – IRC survey on gender impacts of COVID-19 highlighted that unpaid domestic work increased for women due to COVID-19,6 with the largest impact experienced by women Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and returnees. Data collection should be scheduled at whatever time is convenient for the participants in these different groups. Local women leaders can advise on what time may work best. As time constraints along with overburdening women with additional tasks make it difficult for women to participate in assessment actively.
7 . Location for the dialogues must be accessible, safe and culturally appropriate: Choose a venue for conducting surveys, individual interviews or focus-group discussions, that is safely accessible for women and where all invited participants will feel comfortable. Consider the specific access needs of women and girls with disabilities and of the elderly. Consult with the local women elders and women leaders on the best location. Considering the existing group dynamics among community leaders, once a site is selected, the organizer should ensure avoiding busy streets or markets. Where local norms require, the venue should offer a safe space for women and girls. An appropriate location for breastfeeding mothers that offers facilities for women with care responsibilities for small children may be required. Where women require a mahram to reach a meeting venue, the costs for such movements should be budgeted.
The mahram should not enter the area where the women are being interviewed.
8 . For remote data collection, work with women community focal points to bridge gendered barriers to access to technology: Women’s access to phones or computers is limited in many areas of Afghanistan, therefore, assessments conducted via phone or online tools may exclude women’s meaningful participation. In the REACH rapid Communications Assessment to support COVID-19 Response for 2020,7 only 5.6% of women indicated that internet was a source of information, compared to 23.2% of men. 76% of informants indicated women did not have as much access to phones as men. In the 2020 UN Women-IRC survey, 26% of women said their main source of information were their family and community. Local community structures, including women’s shuras, women-led CSOs, and the Department of Women Affairs at provincial levels can help bridge this gap by letting women use their own computers and phones to access survey platforms.
9 . Disaggregate data to capture gender and demographic diversities: Data captured in a disaggregated way, taking into account factors such as their ethnicity, age, location, income, education, and disability, among others is necessary to meaningfully analyse the capacity and needs of different groups of respondents. Assess social and gender norms and identify how they impact on different groups of women during data analysis and interpretation.
10 . Establish a feedback mechanism that empowers women and girls to provide updates on their own priorities and needs: Promote options for women and girls to provide feedback on the gender-responsiveness of humanitarian response plans. Empower them to voice their views on the effectiveness of interventions. Ensure that feedback mechanisms are easily accessible to women. Women may feel safer using confidential hotlines or texts to lodge an anonymous complaint. Women may be less likely to have access to a phone so be sure to adapt any feedback mechanisms to the local community context. Information should be provided to all participants and community leaders on how to register any complaints. The AAP Working Group in Afghanistan can provide guidance on feedback-complaint-response communication channels, procedures and tools.
11 . Enhance capacity of enumerators and supervisors on gender equality and women’s rights: Ensure gender-awareness training on basic concepts of gender, GBV, PSEA and the guiding principles for GBV prevention and response is provided for all – women and men – involved. In case there are insufficient qualified women, consider providing additional training for women candidates to improve the gender balance without compromising data quality.