FEWO Committee Report
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CHAPTER FIVE: ENABLING FACTORS FOR GENDER-BASED ANALYSIS
Many of the departments provided examples of lessons learned over the course of their involvement with gender-based analysis. From these shared experiences, the Committee has identified a number of factors which need to be in place in order to make gender-based analysis possible. These factors are discussed in greater detail in the following sections and include:
| • | the availability of data which allows for a gender analysis; |
| • | incorporating gender equality at all levels and in all types of activities, from policy formulation and dialogue through to program design and project planning, implementation, and assessment; |
| • | making room for voluntary sector input; |
| • | having organizational structures, procedures, and norms that promote gender equality; |
| • | commitment of staff at all levels; |
| • | the allocation of adequate resources, both human and financial; |
| • | the implementation of accountability mechanisms. |
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Another challenge is that there has not been a long history of research data collection and knowledge of women’s health and gender and health issues. It is a fairly new domain. Ms. Deanna St. Prix-Alexander (Executive Director, Women’s Health and Gender Analysis Bureau, Department of Health) |
Gender-based analysis requires the use of sex disaggregated data and qualitative information on gender differences and inequalities. The vast majority of information collected by Statistics Canada provides data which is disaggregated (i.e. broken down into data on men and data on women). Thus the Government of Canada has significant information from which to develop gender-sensitive policies and programs. In fact, witnesses have told the Committee that Statistics Canada is world-renowned for its work in the area of gender statistics, particularly in the area of unpaid work.
Additional data collection and use of existing data varies widely among departments. While HRSDC indicated that it has a wealth of data from a variety of regular surveys, others such as Health Canada indicated that there is a dearth of data on women’s health compared to men. Qualitative information on gender differences and inequalities can be obtained from a number of sources, including equality-seeking organizations and consultations with groups which represent diverse groups of men and women. However, most departments have no formalized way of accessing these sources.
B. GBA Throughout Policy-Making Process
Witnesses told the Committee that gender cannot be considered only at the end of the policy-making process, but needs to be incorporated from the outset. The different steps in the implementation of gender-based analysis are outlined in a training package developed by Status of Women Canada.11 These include: assessing the gender equality impacts of a given issue; incorporating outcomes, goals, objectives and indicators which reflect the diverse realities of men and women; developing and using gender-sensitive research; consulting with diverse groups of men and women to ensure that conclusions and proposals reflect diverse views; and engendering program delivery to ensure that criteria, communication plans, and service delivery all consider the potentially different impacts on men and women.
Witnesses have provided the Committee with examples of efforts to engender programs and policies throughout this process. CIC is working on identifying indicators it will use to monitor progress on the gender impacts of its work. CIC spoke to the importance of ensuring that gender was considered in the communication tools used by its department, such as reviewing the Welcome to Canada kits. CIDA is developing a new evaluation tool which will help it determine whether its programs are successfully reducing gender inequality.
While these examples were encouraging, the majority of departments which appeared were not able to convince the Committee that gender was being incorporated throughout the program and policy development process.
Gender-based analysis does not replace the need for a vibrant voluntary sector advocating for the needs of women. The Committee was concerned to hear that:
While the adoption of GBA created new and important opportunities for integrating gender into policy-making, the shift to GBA eroded women’s non-governmental organizations as legitimate intervenors in the policy process. This has meant in part that GBA has not been able to realize its full potential as an effective policy tool, given the absence of adequate participation by civil society actors.12
Commentators told the Committee that it was important to include women’s groups and equality-seeking organizations in the GBA process and to educate the voluntary sector on GBA. It is also important for departments to establish relationships with equality-seeking organizations and to incorporate consultation with these groups into the GBA process.
Few departments however have a formal or regular process for including any non-governmental organizations. When asked by the Committee, departments generally admitted that they consult on an ad hoc basis.
D. Organizational Structure, Procedures, and Norms
Some commentators, including several witnesses to this committee, indicated that gender-based analysis structures and mechanisms need to be both stable and positioned at a more central location within the bureaucracy, such as the Privy Council Office. The Committee recognizes that the Privy Council Office plays a role in the management of other horizontal policy issues, such as sustainable development and official languages. It suggests that central government agencies, such as the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Privy Council Office could play an important role in enforcing the application of gender-based analysis.
E. Commitment of Staff and Leadership
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If commitment does not come from the top — I’m talking about ministers, deputy ministers, and assistant deputy Ms. Florence Ievers (Coordinator, Status of Women Canada) |
The Committee heard that it is possible for departments to voluntarily implement gender-based analysis if there is strong leadership at a very senior level in the department. Citizenship and Immigration Canada reported that they were conducting GBA even before it was legislatively mandated, because the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration had directed the department to implement gender-based analysis.
Professor Pauline Rankin from Carleton University identified the importance of having strong leadership on gender-based analysis:
To be successful, gender-based analysis needs strong champions. It needs strong champions at the political level and it needs strong champions within the highest level of Canadian bureaucracy. I think those champions are pivotal to whether or not gender-based analysis works.
The importance of leadership is particularly evident in the case of the Department of Finance, where the commitment made by the Minister of Finance in February 2005 to ensure that budget proposals contained a gender analysis does not appear to have been translated into meaningful action by the Department. Thus, it would appear that voluntary implementation of GBA at this time requires both political leadership and the commitment of senior departmental officials.
The Committee has heard that as departmental priorities shift, departments are reorganized, and leadership changes, the pressure on departments and agencies to ensure that gender considerations are taken into consideration is likely to fluctuate. In addition, departmental descriptions of gender units indicated that most are buried in departmental hierarchies, far away from the direct gaze of senior officials such as assistant deputy ministers or deputy ministers.
Thus, although it has been possible to implement a program of gender-based analysis based on strong leadership in this area at senior levels, reliance on the commitment of staff and or political leaders does not ensure the continuity of gender-based analysis within an organization.
F. Human and Financial Resources
Departments which conduct gender-based analysis have indicated that the costs associated with GBA are minimal, consisting of a few staff positions, the development of training materials, and the implementation of training. Gender-based analysis is not a specialized additional service, but is meant to be integrated into the regular work of the department. As a result, the main cost associated with GBA is the training of staff.
CIDA, and Citizenship and Immigration Canada told the Committee that training their staff in GBA is key to successful implementation. Both of these organizations have adapted the tools and training developed by Status of Women Canada to be more relevant to the staff who are being called upon to implement GBA, and have delivered training to large numbers of staff. As the representative from CIC told the Committee:
It has taken time to have people with expertise in the Department know how to do it [gender-based analysis] and to talk to program managers who know their programs, start to make those links, and then say that they understand. It becomes part of your everyday management. Gender-based analysis is something you should be doing automatically, but it takes a lot of training and a lot of examples of real life before people start to think about it.13
Several of the witnesses before the Committee noted that departments and agencies would be more likely to do gender-based analysis if they could somehow be held accountable for the efforts they were taking to ensure that gender was being considered in the policy and program development process. Currently, most departments have no mechanisms to ensure that gender is considered, let alone implemented.
Only one department has a legislative requirement to report on gender equality. The 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) contained a requirement for Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to report on GBA activities in its annual report to Parliament.
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is well-respected for its gender mainstreaming activities and it has developed its own internal accountability mechanisms to promote GBA. These include:
| • | Agency guidelines for project planning and reporting which call for the completion of a gender equality assessment form, which must be filled by managers with one of the departments equality specialists, who must sign off on it. |
| • | Annual performance reports include identification of gender equality results and a requirement to report on how projects are promoting gender equality; |
| • | A performance assessment framework, focusing on the development results achieved, is in the final stages of development. It will help assess agency performance on gender equality. |
The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada reports that, although it had been active in GBA prior to the legislative requirement to report to Parliament annually on the gender implications of the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the reporting requirement has had a beneficial impact on gender-based analysis in that department:
I think in the long run Citizenship and Immigration Canada has been blessed by having it (gender-based analysis) in our legislation, because it means we absolutely have to do an annual report. Once you have the annual report, then you have that formal accountability and it then becomes like any of the other things where we have a formal accountability… We have a list of things we know we will do; then that list automatically becomes part of the deputy minister’s way of evaluating our performance.14
The need to examine accountability for gender-based analysis was summarized by the deputy head of Status of Women Canada in her presentation to this committee:
Presently there is no formal authority or levers to ensure compliance of the 1995 GBA policy. The exception to the rule… was the introduction of the [Immigration and Refugee Protection Act] with its legislative requirement to report annually to Parliament. The need for greater accountability on gender equality in general with the Government of Canada and the slow progress of implementing GBA across the government were identified by the United Nations’ CEDAW committee in 2003 as areas that needed improvement.15
| 11 | Canada. Status of Women Canada. An Integrated Approach to Gender-Based Analysis: Information Kit. “Training”. |
| 12 | FEWO, Evidence, Pauline Rankin, 24 February 2005, 1520. |
| 13 | FEWO, Evidence, Rosaline Frith, 17 February 2005, 1550. |
| 14 | Ibid., 1625. |
| 15 | FEWO, Evidence, Florence Ievers, 10 February 2005, 1530. |