A user’s guide to measuring gender-sensitive basic service delivery

The delivery of gender-sensitive basic services for women is a prerequisite for development. However, the the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved unless and until women are able to contribute to and benefit from development on equal par with men. This guide aims to help national stakeholders as well as donors and international actors involved in service delivery measurements and programmes to improve the measurements of basic services delivery in various areas of governance.

The paper highlights the following findings:

• While there is general agreement that governments are obligated to provide basic services, there has been much less agreement on what kinds of services are required. Some, such as education and health, are generally included, but others, such as welfare services, are considered ‘basic’ by some agencies and governments but not by others.
• Women face many more obstacles than men in accessing current systems of governance. These include women’s lower levels of literacy, lack of exposure to politics and policy issues, lack of participation in decision-making and local government planning processes, and low levels of representation in organisations and institutions.
• Behind these obstacles lie more entrenched barriers, particularly the impact of very patriarchal societies and traditional beliefs about masculinity and femininity that bar women from participation in decision-making at every level, and women’s lack of access to and control over resources.
• There is an overall lack of gender indicators and indicators of services delivery in both gender and governance databases and assessments.

This paper recommends that governments and development organisations:

• Target gender balance among enumerators and among supervisors, both as an equal opportunity/ women’s rights issue and because the sex of the enumerator and supervisor is likely to affect the gender sensitivity of data. If there are insufficient qualified women, consider providing additional training for women candidates to improve the gender balance without compromising data quality.
• Recognise that gender-sensitive indicators need gender-sensitive data, but most data are collected by methods that were developed before there was a general awareness that women and men have different roles, needs and priorities.
• Target senior management for specific gender awareness-raising to ensure management support for integrating a gender perspective and ensure that women’s participation is informed and supported to enable their independent views and concerns to be captured.