Politics of the possible: gender mainstreaming and organisational change, experiences from the field

This paper takes an in-depth look at the experience of Novib partner organisations in the Middle East and South Asia who undertook the challenge of the Gender Focus Programme (GFP). The organisations were:

• GRAM Abhudhyaya Mandali and Gorakhpur Environmental Action Group (GEAG), India
• Prodipan, Bangladesh
• The Foundation for Participatory Action and Learning Methodologies (PALM), Sri Lanka
• Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), Palestinian Territories
• Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) Pakistan
• Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (CHA), Afghanistan.

The document recounts the analysis of their organisations, and the routes they chose to follow. The book presents field experiences of managing the politically sensitive agenda of promoting gender equality in NGOs, and negotiating the contradictions between using Organisational Development tools and promoting gender equality.

The authors demonstrate how organisational change for gender equality is an integral part of gender mainstreaming processes. As a decade of evidence suggests, gender mainstreaming is vulnerable to becoming technocratic and ineffective. These seven organisations, unable to separate entirely the internal change process from their external work as NGOs, experienced a spill over of gender justice concerns into their work in the field, with a variety of programme results.