The Power of Voice, Redux, on International Women's Day

US congresswoman Jeanette Rankin speaks
from the headquarters of the National American
Women Suffrage Association, 1917. Three years
later, American women had the right to vote.
Photo: Library of Congress.

Today celebrates International Women’s Day, a 104-year old tradition, honoring women’s social, economic, and political achievements and calling for greater equality and recognition of women’s rights. Its history dates back to the suffragette movement in the United States, when women took to the podiums and the streets, demanding the right to vote.    

You may remember that my first post for Her Blueprint, The Power of Voice, shared my experience introducing a public speaking training, grounded in the right to self-expression, to a group of Maasai and Kalenjin women in Kenya — and the transformative effect such training had on them and their community.  I'm aware of few development organizations that train rural women in public speaking. So in my own small way, I advocate for public speaking training for rural women in developing countries every chance I get.

Imagine my excitement, while recently conducting a gender analysis in Malawi,  when I happened upon a tool, the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, which, among other factors, measures women’s comfort in public speaking as a key contributor to women's empowerment.

Roda from Narok County, Kenya practices her public speaking skills.
Photo: Landesa/Deborah Espinosa

Launched by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, and USAID's Feed the Future Initiative, the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index is the first standardized tool to comprehensively measure women’s empowerment and inclusion in agriculture.  

Among other constraints, women’s comfort in public speaking is measured along with group membership under the “Community Leadership” domain. “Group membership is an important source of social capital, and this indicator measures whether a woman is a member of at least one group out of a wide range of social and economic organizations.”1 High rates of disempowerment in the Community Leadership domain may indicate social and cultural norms that discourage participation in activities outside the home.2

Among the countries included in the Index Baseline Report, discomfort in public speaking was among the top three greatest contributors to women’s disempowerment in 3 out of 13 countries: Bangladesh, Malawi, and Zambia. For all 13 countries, constraints in the Community Leadership domain, generally, comprise from 14% (Liberia) to 37% (Nepal) of all constraints contributing to women's disempowerment.    

Given the significant other domains that the WEAI measures, i.e., production decision-making, access to productive resources, control over use of income, and time allocation, I am excited that I now have support for asserting the importance of women's leadership in communities, including group membership and feeling comfortable speaking in public to women's empowerment.

So for all of you international development practitioners out there, how do we honor this year's International Women's Day theme of "Make it Happen?" How does your program or project support women in gaining confidence to speak in public? To share their stories? To advocate for their rights?  

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

                                                         ~ Maya Angelou

1  Measuring Progress Toward Empowerment: Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index: Baseline Report (2012).

2  Id.

Programs with Potential: Collective Voice and Sense of Self

Women across the world rarely have an opportunity
to voice their opinion about an issue that
matters to them.  Photo: Deborah Espinosa

For those of us who are women’s rights advocates and activists with ready access to advocacy platforms and tools, we have constant opportunities to learn about, launch, and participate in advocacy campaigns to voice our opinions about issues that matter to us. 

In communities across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, however, women face a far different reality, where advocating for themselves and their community is unheard of or they lack the confidence, opportunities, and/or tools to engage. As a result, community members are often deprived of their voice, rights, and power; government remains unresponsive; and vital needs go unmet.    

   
Thankfully, many development organizations are addressing this lack of civic engagement, and by extension, sense of powerlessness, by supporting community members' right to voice their opinions and realize their rights. These programs are intended to inspire and facilitate positive dialogue between communities and authorities to hold government accountable. Often these local programs feed into national, regional, and even global advocacy efforts.   

One notable example is World Vision International's Citizen Voice and Action (CVA) approach, which World Vision has implemented so far in 43 countries through 411 programs. First piloted in 2005, CVA is an approach to improve the relationship between local government and communities and thereby improve delivery of basic public services such as healthcare and education.[1] A cornerstone of the approach is to educate about citizen and government rights and obligations. Check out the short video to the right to learn more.

A study of the impact of the CVA methodology in Ugandan communities, by Oxford University and Makerere University, found that in 100 primary schools in these CVA communities, there was an 8 to 10 percent increase in pupil attendance compared to control communities and a 13 percent reduction in teacher absenteeism.[2] CVA in Uganda also generated significant improvements in the delivery of health care services, as presented in this video.  

Similarly, CARE International uses a "bottom up" approach to their advocacy programs, particularly by women, grounded in human rights. Tools include raising awareness about rights, budget monitoring, public hearings, social audits, and community score cards in sectors such as health, education, food security, and natural resource management.  

For example, in Bangladesh, a CARE program resulted in groups of extremely poor people successfully advocating for access to public resources such as land and water bodies, enabling them to use those resources for collective livelihood opportunities.[3]  And on the issue of gender-based violence (GBV), CARE and its partners implemented the Great Lakes Advocacy Initiative (GLAI) using an evidence-based advocacy model to increase protection for women and girls against GBV in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  At its core, the GLAI relies on linkages between grassroots and global efforts. Underlying the model is the premise that greater participation by women in decisionmaking strengthens civil society and promotes gender equality, helping to address the underlying causes of GBV. The initiative demonstrated the effectiveness of linking grassroots advocates to policy makers, resulting in increased political participation by women at the grassroots and district levels, an increase in the reporting of GBV cases and, in some areas, a decline in the incidence of GBV.[4]   

Many other organizations implement local advocacy programming, including Family Care International, which works with indigenous women in Latin America and Partners for Democratic Change, which works with youth in Yemen.  Many of these organizations share their advocacy tools online, including WaterAid, CARE, and World Vision. A list of Useful Advocacy Resources is also available online.

The collective voice. Andhra Pradesh, India.  Photo: Deborah Espinosa

What all of these programs have in common is they create opportunities for individuals to contribute their unique voice and collectively advocate for a better world. As one CVA participant in India explained, "Earlier I used to remain behind my burqa. But I found my voice because of the [CVA] training."[5]

In my October post, The Power of Voice, I shared the story of Wanjiku and the courage and confidence that arose when Wanjiku learned of her human right to self-expression, combined with basic training on the art of public speaking. I had the privilege of witnessing not only her transformation, but that of her community, with positive impacts beyond all expectations. It is for this reason that I am so excited about these more comprehensive local advocacy programs. Opportunities to stand up together with our neighbors with a collective voice on an issue that matters to us not only benefits our community, but leaves a lasting impression on our sense of self. 

“Finally I was able to see that if I had a contribution I wanted to make, I must do it, despite what others said. That I was OK the way I was. That it was all right to be strong.” 
                                                                                  ~Wangari Maathai

[1] World Vision. Citizen Voice and Action: World Vision's Approach to Social Accountability

[2] World Vision.  Citizen Voice and Action: Civic Demand for Better Health and Education Services .
[3] Hinton, R. 2011. Inclusive Governance: Transforming Livelihood Experience from CARE Bangladesh. 

[4] CARE. 2014. Strengthening Women's Voice: Evidence-Based Advocacy from the Grassroots to the Global.

[5] World Vision India.  WV India CVA Video. 

  

The Power of Voice

Wanjiku[1] has little formal schooling.  She goes about her daily life with a baby on her back and several more at her dusty feet. She tends the crops, cooks the meals, collects the water, and tries to ensure that her children get more of an education than she did.  

Depending on the wishes of her husband, Wanjiku may or may not go to the market, be involved in a women’s group, or handle cash. She may or may not participate in household decision making and rarely owns the land that is the main source of her family’s livelihood.

Women and girls in her remote village are seen but not heard — an all-too-common custom in traditionally patriarchal communities.

But not anymore in one community in Kenya.  

A Justice trainee practices her public speaking skills,
guided by Justice Project staff.  Photo: Landesa/Deborah Espinosa 

You see, Wanjiku now knows that Kenya’s Constitution, which Kenyans adopted by national referendum in August 2010, guarantees her — and every person — the right to freely express him- or herself, a right that includes the freedom to seek, receive, or impart information or ideas and the freedom of artistic creativity (art. 33).  (The right to self-expression is also within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)  And along with learning about her rights, Wanjiku was trained in the art of public speaking — a simple curriculum grounded in the right to voice her opinion.  The training included techniques and tips on how to speak in public as well as opportunities to practice speaking on a subject of importance to her.  

Wanjiku learned and practiced during a USAID-supported project called, Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in the Mau Forest, Kenya (aka the Kenya Justice Project), designed and implemented by the international NGO Landesa. The Kenya Justice Project piloted a model for improving women’s access to "informal justice" related to land, meaning the all-male, village institutions that resolve disputes but have a reputation for holding entrenched biases against women. Much to our surprise, two months after the pilot’s end, the community elected — for the first time in its history — 14 women as elders, serving alongside male elders resolving disputes. One year later, 22 women were serving as elders alongside men.  

A Justice trainee shares her knowledge of women's
rights in Kenya's Constitution. Wanjiku resides
in all of us. Photo: Landesa/Deborah Espinosa

The women had decided on their own to run for election. No doubt, there are many factors that contributed to this outcome.  

This was the first time I’d included public speaking in the design of a women’s rights project, and so at the end of the first training session, I asked the women to share their thoughts about whether training on the right to self-expression and public speaking was worth including again in a project design.  Every woman in the room eagerly raised her hand, offering to share her opinion. Up until that point in the project, we’d never had full participation in a single session.

As the women shared with us how they felt, I was struck by the fact that along with the women’s timidity and discomfort, a glimmer of pride shined through. They explained how growing up as girls they were not supposed to speak directly to an adult. And so they believed that their opinions were unimportant, and certainly never worth sharing. The room shook with potential.   

Although the short-term impact evaluation did not try to measure a causal relationship between project outcomes and the public speaking activity, specifically, I am convinced that this activity was a critical component to the success of the pilot. Knowledge of their constitutional rights to express themselves, combined with practicing public speaking in a safe and supportive environment, gave the women Justice trainees the courage to dare step out of their comfort zones. And dare to reach for one of the most powerful positions within their community — an elder resolving disputes.      

The community has made many other advances supporting women's rights and empowerment, including greater awareness among men and women of their constitutional rights to land; procedural improvements in elders' resolution of disputes; a requirement of spousal consent for land transactions; and, most recently, an increase in economic development, led by women in the community. 

Wanjiku’s courage to find her own voice is the inspiration for this column on the relationship between the arts (in its many, many forms) and women’s rights and empowerment. This column is certainly a step out of my own comfort zone.  Along the way, please share your voice — we have a lot to learn from each other!

[1] In Kenya, "Wanjiku" is an iconic representation of the "ordinary, Kenyan citizen," the common person. "Her power rests in her ordinariness."