Gender - Introduction

Gender vs Sex

Often times, gender and sex is used interchangeably but this could be far from the reality. Sex refers to the biological attributions such as male, female and intersex. Gender, on the other hand is the socially and culturally constructed roles, behaviors and identifies and are not biologically defined. According to Energia, gender can be defined as "socially defined roles, privileges, attributes and relationships between men and women which are learned and not biologically determined”.

Hence, there are different gender roles in different contexts which determines how men and women act and express themselves. These roles are influenced and defined by:

• socioeconomic factors (e.g. culture, traditions, poverty);
  
• natural and man-made disasters (e.g. war, famine);
  
• technical development (new machinery)
  
• religion and others.

Gender Relations

Refers to the rights, responsibilities and identities of men and women in relation to one another.

Gender Identify vs Sex Orientation

Gender identify is how one feels and expresses themselves and can be same or different as one's sex. One could identify oneself as male, female, trans, gender queer or gender non-confirming.

Sexual Orientation is to whom you are attracted to and would like to have a relationship with. Some sexual orientation include: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual and pansexual

Gender Equality vs Gender Equity

Gender equality means equal rights, opportunities and status of men and women. For achieving gender equality, we need to ensure equity to the same rights, opportunities and status and recognize that men and women do not have the same starting point. This could be due to the deeply rooted limited patriarchal beliefs and societal norms, among other things. Thus, gender equity is the process to achieve gender equality by ensuring fair and just access to equal rights, opportunities and status for both men and women.

E.g, To promote equal access to solar irrigation in a project, distributing equal number of solar pumps to both men and women is not enough. It is necessary to address the inter-lying societal/economic/financial constraints that both men and women have and see how best to address them so that the both parties can benefit equally from the solar pumps.

Empowerment

According to UNICER, “Empowerment is about women, men, girls and boys taking control over their lives: setting their own agendas, developing skills (including life skills), building self-confidence, solving problems and developing self-reliance.”

Gender Roles

Gender roles can be defined as expectations based on one's sex. For eg, male are expected to be masculine and display qualities such as strength and power whereas female are expected to be emotional and affectionate. Gender roles also extend towards the type of work male and female perform. For eg.  women are expected to do the household chores whereas certain jobs such as engineering, mechanics are more male dominated.

Gender roles are not static but rather exists in a continuum and change with the above mentioned factors, They can also vary within the same household, society and country. For eg, a poor woman might have to do the household duties as well as work in the agricultural fields whereas a rich woman might have servants to do both the work. Also, a married woman might work in the house as well as look after the children while an unmarried woman might mostly help with the household duties. Before world war, women were not working in factories in Europe but during the world wars, due to lack of manpower for factories, women started working in factories changing the earlier gender norms.

The gender roles can roughly divided into three categories as shown in the table below:

Gender Needs

The gender needs can be broadly summarized into two categories:

1. Practical needs: refers to basic needs such as food, water, shelter and clothing.
2. Strategic needs: refers to long-term needs that will transform as well as challenge the gender roles between men and women in the society

Gender Blind vs Gender based discrimination

Projects and programmes are gender blind when they do not take into account the gendered roles and responsibilities of men and women in specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts.

Gender based discrimination refer to decisions that favor one gender over another and leads to gender inequaliy

Gender Equity Continuum

Gender equity continuum refers to the switch from gender inequity to gender equity and how to achieve it.

Gender Analysis

It is the first step towards understanding the inequalities that exists between men and women to achieve gender mainstreaming.

Gender analysis can be defined as, "collection and analysis of quantitative data (numbers, percentages, proportions, ratios) and qualitative information (preferences, beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, values, scope, etc.) through gender lens".

Gender Mainstreaming

Gender gap refers to how men and women are affected differently by the socioeconomic, political and cultural factors. It does not exist in isolation in society but is a combination of different factors. Thus, gender mainstreaming is needed to address the gender gap and ensure that men and women benefit equally. It involves integration of gender perspective into the preparation, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes to achieve gender equality.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council has defined gender mainstreaming as “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 the policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated”.

Gender Parity

It refers to the relative equality between men and women in terms of numbers and proportion. For e.g number of male and female headed households with access to electricity.