FEWO Committee Report
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CHAPTER ONE: OVERVIEW OF GENDER-BASED ANALYSIS
A. What Is Gender-based Analysis?
There is a widespread belief in Canada that women have achieved equality with men. Although much progress has been made over the past decades, however, women in Canada continue to earn less than men, to experience higher levels of poverty, and to be disproportionately affected by domestic violence. The inequalities are even more marked for certain groups in Canada, such as Aboriginal women.
Addressing this equality gap requires a dual approach: developing policies, programs and legislation that are women-specific as well as ensuring that legislation, programs and policies which are not specifically targeted for women do not inadvertently maintain or exacerbate any equality gap. This process is known as gender-based analysis (GBA) and is defined by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as:
assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in any area and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.1
Gender-based analysis also recognizes that not all women are the same. As a result, it examines the impact of policies and programs on diverse groups of women and men.
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We don't just analyze only on the basis of a gender distinction, men or women, we also say that not all men and not all women are the same. There are differences within and among women and differences within and among groups of men, and you need to take some of those dimensions into account as well. Ms. Sandra Harder (Director, Gender-Based Analysis, Strategic Policy and Partnership Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration) |
Ten years ago, at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women held in Beijing, nations developed an ambitious political declaration and platform for action outlining objectives and actions required to achieve greater equality between women and men. In adopting the Beijing Platform for Action, governments throughout the world committed themselves to effective integration of a gender perspective throughout their operations, policies, planning and decision making. Governments also adopted the obligation to carry out gender impact assessments of the effects of government bills or political decisions on women and men before decisions could be taken.
In Canada, the federal government has put in place two five-year plans on gender equality, the Federal Plan on Gender Equality (1995-2000) and the Agenda for Gender Equality (2000-2005). Gender-based analysis has been a key component of both these action plans. In Canada’s 1995 action plan for implementing the Beijing Platform for Action, known as the Federal Plan for Gender Equality, the Canadian government adopted a policy requiring federal departments and agencies to conduct gender-based analysis of policies and legislation. While each department is responsible for conducting gender-based analysis, Status of Women Canada provides training and support for GBA activities in its role as the agency responsible for gender equality.
However, the use of gender-based analysis across government departments has been uneven. While some departments have well-established gender equality or GBA units, others have none in place. Moreover, Status of Women Canada reports that the lack of binding obligations to conduct gender-based analysis, internal resistance and the lack of shared responsibility have led, over time, to a decreased interdepartmental capacity to ensure gender equality.2
The decision to study GBA was taken by the Standing Committee on the Status of Women after meeting with multiple equality-seeking organizations throughout the fall of 2004 to determine issues crucial to Canadian women. Several groups told the Committee that program and policy changes throughout the past decade had had significant, yet unintentional, negative impacts on women. As an example, they pointed to the changes in the fiscal arrangements between the federal and provincial/territorial governments, under the 1995 Budget Implementation Act and the ensuing cut-backs to social assistance levels in a number of provinces. Because this testimony of representatives of equality-seeking organizations and women’s groups led the Committee to explore the issue of gender-based analysis, this report incorporates some of the views expressed in earlier roundtables.
Through this study on gender-based analysis, the Committee explored:
| • | how gender-based analysis is implemented in federal government departments |
| • | emerging and ongoing challenges to the implementation of gender-based analysis; and |
| • | the adequacy of current accountability mechanisms for gender-based analysis. |
To accomplish this, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women invited departments who have well-established GBA programs, as well as those who have minimal GBA capacity, to speak to the challenges of incorporating GBA in programs, policies and legislation. The Committee also invited witnesses who could provide examples of mechanisms currently in place in the federal government to coordinate horizontal policy goals, such as employment equity, that could provide a parallel to GBA.
The Committee understands that GBA is a tool to work toward greater equality between men and women, and not an end in itself. In embarking on this study, Committee members noted that they wanted to see concrete translation of gender-based analysis into improvements in the lives of women — not only changes in how government operates, but a difference in the ultimate results. It is hoped that implementation of the Committee’s recommendations will lead to better policy-making that ultimately will close the equality gap for good.
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… The fact that a gender analysis is done does not mean it's going to be reflected in the actual policy outcome. There's an issue around what weight we give to that and, when there is an issue around competing interest, how that decision is made. Often that decision can be made at a political level or at a bureaucratic level. Ms. Karen Green (Acting Executive Director, Corporate Services, Department of Justice) |
Some of the differences between women and men are biological and others arise from the different social expectations for men and women in a given society. For example, women in Canada take on a greater share of unpaid caregiving in this country. This is not a biologically determined phenomenon, but arises from the expected social behaviour of women and men in Canada.
Gender is the culturally specific set of characteristics that identifies the social behaviour of women and men and the relationship between them. Gender, therefore, refers not simply to women or men, but to the relationship between them, and the way it is socially constructed. Because it is a relational term, gender must include women and men.3
It is easy to understand that policies and programs which support caregivers have a direct impact on women. What is more difficult to understand is the potential impact of programs and policies of general application on women while considering the implications of the caregiving roles which are predominantly taken on by women. This is where gender-based analysis becomes a useful tool. Of course, the development of programs and policies which take into consideration the implication of caregiving roles also benefits men who are caregivers — thus gender-based analysis is not only about improving the status of women.
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In terms of the parental leave benefits, I think there are some lessons that are quite telling. To provide just a few statistics, after the changes were made in 2000, we calculated that in 2000-2001 about 180,000 people took parental benefits. That number increased after the changes to about 211,000 parents in 2001-2002, which is an increase of about 18%. About 90% of the new parental claims were from women, but what is quite telling from the changes is that the claims from men increased by almost 80% over that same period, from 13,000 to over 23,000 a year later. Moving in that direction has allowed men to be able to take more responsibility in caregiving during the first year of the child's life, which, based on what we're hearing internationally, is a step in the right direction. Mr. Les Linklater (Director General, Strategy and Intergovernmental Resources, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development) |
When legislation, policies and programs are developed, there are certain assumptions about whether they will have different impacts on men and women. Gender-neutral policies are based on the assumption that everyone is affected by policies, programs and legislation in the same way regardless of gender. Gender-specific policies are designed specifically for one gender, usually in response to existing inequalities.
The purpose of gender-based analysis is the development of gender-integrated policy, where gender considerations are integrated into each step of the policy-development process, and the resulting programs and policies take into consideration the gendered realities of women and men.
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Gender and Cardiovascular Disease Historically, considerations of sex and gender differences have not been considered in research on most diseases. This omission has had far-reaching consequences for accurate diagnosis, effective treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) for women. Using male norms and standards for CVD results in numerous and potentially fatal “pitfalls” in both diagnosis and treatment (Legato, 1998). Evidence-based research is required to understand and respond to the significant sex- and gender-based factors that combine to affect cardiovascular health. For example, we are learning that sex-based factors affect the presentation of symptoms of myocardial infarctions. Gender-related factors affect when women and men seek treatment as well as the responses of health practitioners to men and women presenting with cardiac symptoms. The combined effects of sex and gender, in interaction with other health determinants, affect health status, health system responses and eventual health outcomes. |
Gender-based analysis asks questions such as:
| • | Does this policy/program/trend improve the well-being of women/men? |
| • | What resources does a person need to benefit from this policy/program/trend? Do women and men have equal access to the resources needed to benefit? |
| • | What is the level and type/quality of women’s and men’s participation in the policy/program/trend? Has this changed over time? |
| • | Who controls the decision-making processes related to this policy/program/trend? |
| • | Who controls/owns the resources related to this policy/program/trend? |
| • | Does this policy/program/trend have any unexpected negative impacts on women and/or men? |
| • | Does this policy/program/trend benefit men more than women (or vice versa)? If so, why?4 |
As the deputy head of Status of Women Canada told the Committee:
The starting point [for gender-based analysis] is a gender-neutral policy or program, where the different socio-economic realities between men and women have gone unnoticed. This is where we see the value added of gender-based analysis.5
The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) provided examples of innovative programming decisions which arose where the gender-based analysis of apparently gender-neutral funding initiatives highlighted differential impacts on men and women. The following example of GBA which CIDA gave to the Committee6 highlights this concept in a concrete way.
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An Example of GBA from the In Bangladesh, where CIDA had engaged in a program to build roads, widows are among the poorest of the poor. Based on the analysis of what was going on generally in Bangladesh in the context of destitute widows, the decision was made to hire only destitute widows to build the roads. Along with that, there was training on small enterprise development. So out of that project, not only were roads built by women, who then had income, but they were also trained in micro-enterprise. |
The Committee heard that there is great potential for gender-based analysis to lead to improved policy-making in areas which are not usually defined as “women’s” issues — areas such as the budget, fiscal policy, trade and defence. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, however, the actual implementation of gender-based analysis in gender-neutral policy areas is generally weak in federal government departments and agencies at this time.
| 1 | E/1997/L.3O, Para. 4; adopted by ECOSOC on 17 July 1997. |
| 2 | Standing Committee on the Status of Women (FEWO), Evidence, Florence Ievers, 10 February 2005, 1535. |
| 3 | Canada. Status of Women Canada. Gender-based Analysis: A Guide for Policy-Making (revised edition, 1998) available on-line at http://www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/gbaguide/gbaguide_e.html#1_1 . |
| 4 | This list of questions is taken from the following information kit: Canada. Status of Women Canada. An Integrated Approach to Gender-Based Analysis: Information Kit. “What is GBA”. |
| 5 | FEWO, Evidence, Florence Ievers, 10 February 2005, 1535. |
| 6 | FEWO, Evidence, Julie Delahanty, 22 February 2005, 1615. |