Simply counting the number of women participating in a particular initiative is not a sufficient measure of effective gender equality.
“It’s more about validating the impact of their contributions,” says Janet Gurung, founder and executive director of Women for Change in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (WOCAN), which developed its own certification framework, the W+Standard, in 2014 to do just that.
Her W+ standard certifies projects that bring additional social and economic benefits to women involved in environmental, agricultural and economic development projects.
“The focus is on results and avoiding ‘pinkwashing.’ The idea is that this market-based approach will generate sufficient revenues to sustain, improve and scale up women’s empowerment project activities over the long term,” Gurung said in a speech at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington this month.
For example, projects certified in Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, Nepal and Vietnam are creating shared social value in six areas: time savings, health, education and knowledge, food security, income and assets, and leadership.
Associated W+ units represent quantifiable improvements made to women’s lives as a result of project activities, which are audited by a third-party verification organization based on W+ standard requirements. These units are then sold to companies, investors, or public agencies, enabling them to achieve their social responsibility goals. Projects that generate carbon credits can add W+ certification to meet the demand of buyers who want to support social impact in addition to environmental activities that reduce global warming emissions.
Replying to a question, Gurung said a key principle is that at least 20 per cent of the proceeds from the sale of W+ credits will be donated to women’s organisations working in the project areas.
Q: What was the inspiration for the W+ standard?
A: We did not see sufficient inclusion of gender and women in standards and certification systems around the world. Our own experience showed us that gender mainstreaming and capacity building alone would not achieve the desired outcome of gender integration in our projects. We needed to incentivize institutions and actors within our projects to take actions that would increase women’s empowerment and gender equality. WOCAN has always believed that women’s groups and collectives have a huge, unrealized potential to create and scale positive outcomes and solutions to climate change, food insecurity and poverty, but they are severely under-resourced and unrecognized. We started exploring ways to provide new sources of income directly to women’s organizations.
Q: How did that happen?
A: The answer emerged when we were learning about carbon measurement, standards and markets in 2014. We were impressed and thought this was a very rigorous way to monetize environmental impact and direct new capital to fund environmental projects. We wondered if we could do the same with women’s empowerment, and the rest is history. We are the first, and probably the only, women-specific framework that measures and monetizes women’s empowerment. We are not a label, we are a full standard and are seen as such.
Q: What is the W+ Standards Framework?
A: We provide metrics and procedures to quantify, verify, and monetize women’s empowerment outcomes within your projects and supply chains. In discussions with rural women in Kenya and Nepal, when we asked them what women’s empowerment means to them and how they would measure it, both groups listed the same six areas of women’s empowerment: time, health, education and knowledge, food security, income and assets, and leadership. Our team then developed ways to measure outcomes related to each of these areas. Projects should use at least one, but can use all six if they deem appropriate.
Q: Will this framework be put in place during the project or up front?
A: It is also used in project design. When a project is launched and thinking about how to incorporate women’s empowerment, the six domains provide a framework of metrics coupled with impact measurement. The basic premise is that projects measure results according to each domain, which are then independently verified. This is very similar to the structure of carbon markets. Within a given domain, one W+ credit is generated for every 10% of each women’s impact within that monitoring period. It can be used to assign values to climate, UN Sustainable Development Goals, or to create gender credits. W+ can also be combined with carbon units.
Q: Will women’s organizations benefit from W+?
A: What’s really important to WOCAN is that the associated revenues reach women’s organizations. We decided that that’s something we really want to achieve, and committed to giving back at least 20% of the revenue from each W+ unit sold as grants to women’s groups and organizations in the project area. These groups will decide how to spend these funds for climate adaptation and development activities.
Q: How does this actually work?
A: The process starts with consultations with women stakeholders in the project area. We discuss which of the six domain areas is most appropriate for the project; that is, the domain area where women themselves identify that impact is created. At this point, we also start discussing the mechanism for transferring that 20 percent, because when these units are sold, that 20 percent needs to go to women’s organizations in a credible and transparent way. We also conduct a gender analysis and add it to the project design document. This will give us a deeper understanding of the specific indicators that will be used to measure the domains. Indicators for each domain are proposed, but they need to be adapted to the specific circumstances of each project.
Q: How do you establish a baseline?
A: The team develops the survey measurement questions and provides baseline data. They hire and train local women surveyors to conduct the survey. Then, at a point determined by the project, they repeat the same survey, measure the results, and capture the rate of change. A report of the monitoring and results is produced and independently verified by a third party.
Q: What happens after validation?
A: WOCAN receives the verification report and can accordingly issue W+ credits to project developers (government agencies, private companies, development agencies, etc.) who can then sell the credits. The intention here is that the benefits go to the women who do the work, but also to the project developers. This must be profitable for the developers. We would like the developer to at least cover the costs of measurement and project activities. The buyer of the credits gets a verified outcome and a social benefit, which is increasingly being discussed among impact investors.
Q: Can you give us an example?
A: Our first project won an UNFCCC award. The Nepalese government was setting up small biogas units around the country, measuring their carbon emissions, and selling the carbon credits to European countries. This was simultaneously transforming women’s lives, but nobody noticed because they were only measuring carbon emissions. We applied the W+Time method to document the increase in women’s discretionary time by measuring the shift in time from low-value activities to high-value activities. The Nepal biogas program calculated a saving of 2.5 hours per day per woman, which was a big number. And this did not include the additional benefits to the forests where they were harvesting firewood.
Q: How did you use the time you saved?
A: That’s a very good question. The women used their newfound time to help with community activities, to spend time with their children, and to put more effort into their home gardens. We sold the credits, gave the money back to the women’s groups, and watched what they did with the money. They used the funds for what we call climate adaptation activities: restoring water sources, diversifying their agricultural systems and home gardens. These new activities required both time and money, and the women now had both.
Q: How might such an approach affect FOLUR’s gender results?
A: FOLUR implements environmental and food systems projects in many countries and works to empower women in a variety of ways. The World Bank, through its PROGREEN program, which works closely with FOLUR, is helping WOCAN develop training materials and other approaches aimed at building local capacity to apply the W+ criterion. The first step is to raise awareness and knowledge about the potential benefits of this approach. The second step is to identify enthusiastic project teams and sites that include local women’s groups and are willing to implement activities that empower women. For example, FOLUR project teams in Mexico and Ghana are reviewing the W+ criterion methodology and are in dialogue with government officials about the impact of applying it to improving the gender outcomes of their projects.
This story was originally posted by FOLUR, a GEF-funded Impact Programme.
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