Summer is now in full swing in DC! While everyone is complaining about the heat and humidity, I find the weather rather nostalgic. I grew up in the city of Calcutta in India which had surprisingly similar weather. To add to that, the air pollution courtesy the Canadian forest fires further has me feeling very much at home.
As I was wrapping up my deliverables on the child stunting project, I was ready for my next assignment. Given my interest in gender, my supervisor staffed me onto a project in the MENA region aimed at improving female labor force participation through behavior change communication. I was thrilled to be finally assigned on a full-blown gender project! Moreover, I was responsible for preparing the entire final report for the project – from the data analysis to the interpretation and recommendation. I was nervous yet very excited about the opportunity at the same time.
The intervention was aimed at bringing about behavior change conducive to women entering the labor force through effective communication. Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) is the strategic use of communication approaches to promote changes in knowledge, attitudes, norms, beliefs, and behaviors.[1] There is growing evidence of how tested SBCC approaches can bring about desired changes in individual and community-level behavior.
I had previously worked on evaluating interventions where SBCC was used to bring about behavior change towards clean cooking adoption in India. I was interested in how SBCC could be used in the gender space, particularly in the MENA context which is vastly different and complex. Additionally, I was curious about the design of SBCC campaigns – something I had less exposure to having been more on the evaluation side of interventions so far. Since I would be reporting on the entire cycle of the project – including problem diagnosis, project design, implementation, and evaluation – I would have a new vantage and perspective into SBCC campaigns.
Diving into the project, I began to study the context of female labor force participation in MENA. According to recent estimates, the MENA region registered a FLFP rate of 18%, which is significantly lower than the global average of 52.6%.[2] The existing patriarchal structure and traditional gender roles were a leading cause for women’s low participation in the workforce. The intervention recognized the importance of addressing these social norms and attitudes about gender roles particularly among men to create enabling environments at home and the workplace for women to work.
I found this very interesting. In a lot of my research work, I have found that women have been the primary recipients of gender interventions. Even in child nutrition projects, mothers have been the primary targets of programs aimed at the health and well-being of children. These reinforce traditional gender roles and alienate men even further from progressive gender narratives and behaviors. Given this, I really appreciated the intervention focusing particularly on men in the MENA to bring about positive behaviors for increased female labor force participation.
____
[1] SBCC Implementation Kits. https://sbccimplementationkits.org/sbcc-in-emergencies/learn-about-sbcc-and-emergencies/what-is-social-and-behavior-change-communication/
[2] World Bank Data Dashboard, 2021
Comments