Development Channel

Emerging Voices features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is by Kristen Cordell, gender advisor for the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs at USAID.   “When I was a young man, I held my own sister back from going to school.  I didn’t even know why I should let her go,” my colleague Nadir* recalled at a recent meeting at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). One might be surprised to hear that Nadir now serves as deputy director of the gender section at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) office in Kabul. Growing up in Afghanistan, he witnessed the unique challenges women in his family faced: restricted access to education, limited career opportunities, and domestic violence. These injustices eventually drove him to law school—to become an advocate for those who could not advocate for themselves. He later represented his aunt in her legal battle to end an abusive, forced marriage and supported his mother’s return to school at the age of forty. At USAID, Nadir devotes his time to addressing the immense gender gaps in opportunities and understanding that linger in Afghanistan. He is a true advocate for women’s empowerment, often at great risk to himself and his loved ones. Nadir serves as an example of the tremendous impact men can have on the lives of women in their families. Efforts to empower women cannot succeed if they do not engage the other half of the population: men. Who allows a daughter to attend her first day of primary school? Who drives a sister to her classes at a nearby university? Who helps with the children while a wife works late at the office? From the poorest farmer to the wealthiest businessman, men can and should be champions of women’s empowerment. Yet Nadir’s story also underscores the fundamental struggle in the project to empower Afghan women: convincing men to become active supporters. Rather than viewing women’s empowerment as a zero-sum game where men ultimately lose, all Afghans should consider it as a vehicle for advancing their country’s prosperity; increasing the opportunities women have to contribute to society leads to greater transparency, rising GDP, and decreased corruption. The strictures surrounding gender can be lifted, and those societal gains made, only when the majority of a country—men and women—fight for that change. By introducing and convincing more individuals to join the cause, supporters of women’s empowerment can encourage a “norm cascade,” where a critical mass of the population is reached, and a new norm—in this case, women’s unhindered involvement in the Afghan public space—is embraced. A forthcoming USAID study shows that much of the challenge in convincing men to become advocates for women lies in exposure to new ideas, new culture, new types of interaction. USAID’s recently launched Promote project, the U.S. government’s flagship effort to enhance women’s empowerment in Afghanistan, supports women through community outreach, business empowerment, coalition building, and reforming workplace dynamics. Promote strives to create an environment where obstacles to women’s participation in their country do not exist. The project takes into account the role of fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons in supporting women’s aspirations and integrates these men into every aspect of the project’s operations. The goal is not simply to convince fathers that their daughters should participate in Promote; rather, it is to persuade fathers to participate themselves. By engaging Afghan men directly, Promote hopes to give them a stake in the project’s success. Furthermore, Promote was designed to be fluid and responsive to the beliefs, opinions, and suggestions of beneficiaries, male participants, rights groups, Afghan leaders, academia, and the private sector.  As Assistant Administrator of the Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs Donald “Larry” Sampler said, it is a “platform, rather than a project.” Promote’s flexible, non-traditional mechanism allows not only for greater involvement—and thus buy-in—from Afghan participants, but also for buy-in from other international donors, ensuring the program will grow and prosper. Nadir recently became a father. When he talks about empowering Afghan women, he doesn’t think of norm cascades, flexible development platforms, or best practices for engaging men. Instead, he thinks about his daughter and his hopes for the country she will live in. *This name has been changed to protect the coauthor, who worked closely with Cordell on the preparation of this blog post. You can find out more about Promote (including how to get involved) at www.PromoteAfghanWomen.org.   

While demonstrating “measurable outcomes” is de rigueur in development assistance circles, a recent report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reveals that U.S. agencies have failed to provide a comprehensive assessment confirming that the gains Afghan women have made—which these agencies tout and take credit for—are actually traceable to U.S. assistance. The use of gender indicators in global governance has been on the rise. In July 2012, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, and Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton teamed up to highlight the importance of gender data in promoting what Kim calls “smart economics.” Taking a page from corporate management, international and national development agencies now regularly crunch the numbers as part of the wave of “evidence-based management” that has seeped from private to public sector, strengthening the accountability and efficacy of development assistance.  However, SIGAR—the U.S. government’s main oversight authority for the use of Afghanistan reconstruction funding—reports that despite heavy investment from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Departments of State and Defense in programs to support Afghan women, the extent and efficacy of this investment is unclear. What is clear is that women and girls have made remarkable progress in Afghanistan since the toppling of the Taliban. Gains have occurred in a variety of sectors: in education, where girls’ primary school enrollment has skyrocketed to over 80 percent in 2011, compared to virtually zero in 2001; in health, where maternal mortality has fallen from 1,600 deaths per 100,000 births in 2001 to 327 per 100,000 births in 2013; and in political participation, where around three hundred female candidates—more than ever before—ran for provincial council seats in the 2014 election. As I’ve remarked before, however, these gains remain fragile. Support from the United States and Afghanistan’s other allies and donors could be critical in maintaining these strides as the country navigates its nascent security and political transitions. The SIGAR report notes that while U.S. agencies monitor and evaluate at the program or project level, these agencies have not “compiled an agency-level assessment of the impact these efforts have had on the lives of Afghan women, in accordance with [the government’s own] best practices.” Various U.S. agencies have made women’s rights, or at least consideration of a gender perspective, a priority in Afghanistan. In 2011, the United States published the National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security (NAP) emphasizing the importance of empowering women to prevent conflict and directing the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice, USAID, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), among other agencies, to take up this challenge. Building on the NAP, the goal of empowering women was incorporated into U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, and in 2012, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul published a gender strategy echoing this call to action. Together, USAID, the State Department, and the Defense Department collectively reported spending at least $64.8 million on 652 projects, programs, and initiatives to support Afghan women in fiscal years 2011 through 2013. Yet, SIGAR found an additional $850.5 million spent on 17 projects for USAID and the State Department, and the specific amount of funds within these projects that directly supported Afghan women could not be identified. This failure occurred in spite of the explicit inclusion of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in the gender strategies of USAID and the State Department—both crafted in March 2012—and in the U.S. NAP. Furthermore, SIGAR noted fragmentation in agency responsibility for projects and programs to benefit Afghan women. For example, within both the Departments of Defense and State, there are multiple offices responsible for implementing, tracking, and reporting on efforts related to Afghan women, but no single office in either department could summarize the full extent of their department’s programming. SIGAR writes that “USAID officials told us that although gender equality and female empowerment policy goals are integrated into all of their programs, it was not possible to track funding by gender in the agency’s financial management system.” In order to ensure effective programs and that women’s progress in Afghanistan does not stagnate, or worse, backtrack, evaluation is critical to U.S. programming.

Earlier this month, the United States and NATO lowered the flags over their mission in Kabul in the first of two ceremonies that mark the end of the international combat mission in Afghanistan. Over the next few weeks, foreign troops in Afghanistan will be transitioning to a training and support role. To discuss the future of Afghan security and the Afghan people—particularly women and girls—after this momentous event, I hosted a roundtable with Dr. Barnett Rubin, director and senior fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation, and Rina Amiri, a senior mediator at the United Nations. Our conversation focused on how stability in Afghanistan is not only relevant to U.S. national security interests, but also critical for the future opportunities, prosperity, and rights of Afghan women. In order for Afghan women to be part of the public sphere, including working outside the home or attending school, stability and security on the ground is paramount. Yet the traditional definition of security—in this context, one that focuses solely on the presence of foreign troops or the readiness of the Afghan security forces—is insufficient to understand the needs of Afghan women and girls after 2014. Establishing an environment where Afghan women can thrive requires the United States to embrace a wider definition of security that includes economic security, human security, and inclusive security. Since at least the Cold War, policymakers have come to realize that economic strength contributes equally, if not more, than strategic position and political influence to the establishment of lasting stability and security. As such, economic security is especially critical in peacebuilding and postconflict reconstruction. Mass poverty and lack of economic opportunity allow extremism to flourish; encouraging economic growth, therefore, can help prevent future outbreaks of conflict. The participation of women in the economy is an important element of generating growth and thus of economic security. Not only is women’s economic inclusion critical for their own empowerment, but it also correlates with better economic and social outcomes. When women earn money, they pay their incomes forward into their communities, families, and children, reinvesting 90 percent of it. Moreover, girls with higher levels of education marry later, have smaller families, and experience reduced incidences of HIV/AIDS, minimizing the potential for poverty for their children. A child whose mother can read is 50 percent more likely to survive past the age of five, and each extra year of a mother’s schooling reduces the probability of an infant dying by 5 percent to 10 percent. Thus, educating mothers is an essential investment in the next generation, with economic and social benefits that have cumulative consequences for stability. In the past two decades, the definition of security has broadened even further. Human security, as defined by the 1994 UN Human Development Report, is the “protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression, and environmental hazards.” Again, focusing on the personal safety of individuals and families limits the probability of violence and extremism taking hold. The minimization of these ills—especially disease, crime, and environmental hazards—is critical for the mobility of women. Without public safety, women’s access to school, employment, and more outside the home is greatly decreased, thus limiting their opportunities for empowerment and advancement. More recently, the security definition has expanded to include inclusive security, referring to a “diverse, citizen-driven approach to global stability,” as defined by Swanee Hunt in a 2001 Foreign Policy article. Hunt’s security framework emphasizes women’s agency, rather than their vulnerability, and argues that women play a critical role in establishing lasting peace. Women are often at the center of popular protest movements and civil society groups, making their participation in postconflict negotiations and other political processes invaluable. As these factors become accepted as critical to security in the twenty-first century, the United States and NATO should seek to support Afghans as they establish this fullest sense of security in Afghanistan. Embracing this multifaceted definition of security and furthering women’s empowerment will then pay further dividends: ensuring more long-lasting stability and a more secure future for all.