This report is a synthesis of the results of a regional gender impact assessment funded by REDSO. Four missions were chosen for the study: REDSO itself, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania. Fieldwork carried out in Kenya, Uganda (for the REDSO Mission), Rwanda and Tanzania examined USAID-funded activities in three sectors: Health (with special emphasis on HIV/AIDS), Democracy and Governance, and Economic Growth. The team was charged with assessing “selected programs that are gender-based, gender-related or programs with a gender component.” This regional assessment was expected to help missions ensure that future
activities included gender considerations by demonstrating successes, missed opportunities and lower returns on results due to the absence of a strategic approach to mainstreaming gender. USAID’s history of dealing with gender dates back to the 1973 Percy Amendment, the 1976 creation of the Office of Women in Development and the landmark 1982 WID Policy Paper. Little by little, gender concerns were institutionalized. Then, in the mid-1990s, re-engineering assumed that gender already had been mainstreamed into the system, and, although it remained a formal requirement of the Automated Directives System (ADS), it was no longer emphasized within Agency reporting requirements. The present research was aimed at ascertaining how gender was faring under these changed assumptions and reporting procedures. Rather than gender mainstreaming, the team more often found a “partial de-institutionalization of gender.” A rapid appraisal methodology was used in the research, in fieldwork that extended from January 6 to February 17, 2002. Like all rapid appraisal methodologies, it relied on the principle of “triangulation” to establish the validity of data (see Appendix D): for every variable/issue on a short, tightly honed list, at least two sources of data are obtained, preferably using two different research techniques. The team undertook key informant interviews, focus groups, document analysis and observation, interviewing some 200 people (54% women and 46% men).