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Framework:Gender-Responsive Public Services

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This framework has been produced by a taskforce under project three of the International Platform on Governance (strategic objective 2 of the People’s action to end poverty strategy). The taskforce consisted of Ojobo Atuluku, Garett Pratt, Melanie Hilton, Lillian Matsika, Nasir Aziz and Karen Ansbaek. Furthermore, contributions have been made by Tanvir Muntasim, Savior Mwambwa and Marcelo Montenegro. The framework has been through a consultation process with comments from members of the International Platform on Governance, the International Platform on Women’s Rights and relevant technical staff from the International Secretariat.

June 2016

cover photo: SuSiya, PaleStine: Celia PeterSon

Table of contents1. introduction 3

2. Governance principles for gender-responsive public services 2.1 Publicly funded 6 2.2 Publicly delivered 7 2.3 Transparent and gender-responsive budgeting 9 2.4 Accountable 11 2.5 Participatory 12 2.6 Decentralised 14 2.7 Effectively managed 15

2.8 Provided by sexism-free institutions 16

3. Quality criteria of gender-responsive public services 3.1 Available 17 3.2 Accessible 19 3.3 Acceptable 20

3.4 Adaptable 21 3.5 Safe 23

4. How we work 4.1 Our theory of change and human rights-based approach 23 4.2 Programming tools 25

photo: tana river, Kenya: JaKob Dall

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ActionAid is committed to advocating for human rights for all, prioritising work with women living in poverty. ActionAid is a feminist organisation that recognises that public services should meet the needs and priorities of different groups of people based on gender, age, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation and social context. ActionAid has found that women living in poverty often see access to good quality public services as an important route to better lives for themselves and for their communities, and that a lack of gender-responsive public services is both a source of inequality, and a major barrier to poor and excluded women enjoying their rights.

Improving public services is vital to making progress on the fulfilment of women’s rights to the city, the right to education, the right to a livelihood, the right to health, and many other social and economic rights. Public services have the transformative potential to create more equal societies, countering social and economic inequalities. Yet all too often, services are inadequate and do not fulfil women’s and girl’s human rights.

This paper explains the different dimensions that are essential for providing gender-re-sponsive public services, providing a framework that can be applied across countries, sectors and specific services. This framework is intended to be a common reference point for ActionAid and partners to explain what we mean by gender-responsive public services, and to guide analysis to focus advocacy efforts. These lessons about dimen-sions of governance and service quality reflect both an analysis of formal human rights standards, and years of experience working with people living in poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America on advocacy for gender-responsive public services.

There are two main dimensions to this analysis – first, the framework includes a guide to analysing the governance of public services from a human rights perspective. Ac-tionAid’s experience is that, behind shortcomings in the quality of public services and their responsiveness to the needs of different groups, are questions of governance and underlying issues of power. The opportunities to make improvements to service quality are enabled or constrained by the ways that processes of decision-making on public services unfold, and are shaped by formal, informal and hidden power. ActionAid has experience working with people living in poverty to understand how public services are paid for, what organisations deliver public services, what standards are agreed to by governments, how government service providers manage their own operations and staff, what accountability mechanisms are in place, and the avenues for people living in poverty to participate in and influence decisions on public service delivery.

1. Introduction

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ActionAid’s human rights-based approach leads us to analyse the power relations rein-forced by governance arrangements, and to support people living in poverty to develop solidarity and campaigns to shift power. To achieve gender-responsive public services, it is key to increase women’s and girls’ power in relation to decisions on public ser-vices. Improving the governance of public services does not guarantee that a service is gender responsive and of high quality, but it increases the chances that progress will be made over time.

We have broken down the different dimensions of democratic and just public service governance into eight principles:

• publiclyfunded • publiclydelivered • transparentandgender-responsive budgeting • accountable • participatory • decentralised • effectivelymanaged • sexism-freeinstitutions.

photo: bHaDai, inDia:ranJan raHi/aCtionaiD

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For each of these, the framework provides a short description of what we understand by the principle, why it is important, and some brief examples of ActionAid’s work to improve public service governance in this area. The sections also include some indicators that could help when analysing this aspect of public service governance in a specific situation.

Secondly, this framework analyses the different dimensions of quality of public services from a human-rights based perspective, with an emphasis on what quality means from a gender equality perspective. This perspective aims to summarise the essence of formal human rights standards as applied to public services, and thus is organised into four criteria: availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability. These criteria are adapted from the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the way we define them is based on the work of the first UN Special Rapporteur on Education, the late Katarina Tomasevski, (whose www.right-to-educa-tion.org website is now hosted by ActionAid). 

To these four ‘A’s we have added an ‘S’ for safe, since safety is a major concern for women in relation to public services. These five criteria are easy to refer to as a short-hand for communicating and assessing what human rights standards mean in practice for different public services, and are broadly applicable across different service sec-tors. Their shortcoming is that they are not as precise as reading actual human rights standards in full, and they do not have the legal standing of specific articles included in international covenants. They are presented with the idea that more precise analysis specific to a sector can and should be guided by careful reading of formal human rights instruments, and resource materials produced by ActionAid and other human rights-based organisations.

This series of governance principles and quality criteria constitute a broad position on what ActionAid sees as gender-responsive public services. The framework leads us to see how the governance and quality of services are interlinked. It also encourages us to see that there are multiple entry points for advocacy and improvement to public services. There is no ‘yes or no’ answer to the quality of governance or service delivery for public services.

One shortcoming of the framework is that it cannot tell us which public services to prioritise in a specific place. Well-governed and high quality public services should be judged in part by the degree to which they address gendered practical or strate-gic needs. A gender-responsive public service identifies that males and females (and specific groups of women and persons with different gender identities and sexual orientation) often have different – practical and strategic – needs and priorities for what services are provided, as well as how these services are provided.

Practical gender needs are the needs women identify in their socially accepted roles in society. Practical gender needs do not challenge, although they arise out of, gender division of labour and women’s subordinate position in society. Practical gender needs are a response to immediate and perceived necessity, identified within a specific con-text. They are practical in nature and often concern inadequacies in living conditions such as water provision, healthcare and employment.

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Strategic gender needs are the needs women identify because of their subordinate po-sition in society. They vary according to particular contexts, related to gender divisions of labour, power and control, and may include issues such as legal rights, domestic violence, equal wages and women’s control over their bodies. Meeting strategic gender needs helps women achieve greater equality and change existing roles, thereby chal-lenging their subordinate position. They are more long term and less immediately visible than practical gender needs.

Gender-responsive public services may address practical or strategic needs. ActionAid has been reflecting on whether we focus enough effort on gender-responsive public services that contribute to fulfilling strategic needs, and this focus will be further refined in the coming strategy period.

ActionAid’s experience is that improving public service governance and quality is a long journey – there is no single way to reach ideal public services for everyone, and in fact, public understanding of the destination is likely to evolve as economic and social circumstances change. For example, as countries urbanise, expectations of services in both rural and urban areas are likely to change.

Formal economic, social and cultural human rights standards include commitments that not only acknowledge that governments must make the best possible effort to fulfill these rights, but that all countries have room to improve their results. Individual countries start with very different levels of public service governance and service provi-sion, but civil society can always play an important role in shaping political dialogue around public services. Both formal and informal processes of public service govern-ance and associated public service quality reflect political decisions that are open to being challenged and questioned so that alternatives can be provided. This framework is a guide for identifying, prioritising and ultimately pursuing advocacy for change. The framework concludes with a short summary of how ActionAid put these ideas into practice through applying a human-rights based approach.

2. Governance principles for gender-responsive public services

2.1 publicly funded (tax)

It is important that as many essential services as possible are publicly funded, to ensure maximum possible access by the majority of people who need them. A publicly funded service can be defined as financially supported by a government or its agencies. These services are meant for all, and paid for largely through tax revenues raised by the government.

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Youth as Change Makers in the Middle East

A primary means of providing publicly funded services is to enhance domestic resource mobilisation, adopting a full range of progressive taxation measures so those who have more, pay more and those who have less, pay less. When progressive taxation is not in place, people living in poverty suffer from tax legislation favouring rich people over poor people.

For instance, many poor women pay a disproportionately large share of their income to the treasury through VAT, fees (e.g. market fees) and income taxes on low-paid jobs. In return, they get very little back in the form of medical care, hospitals, education and so on. When the treasury is missing resources because rich people and companies do not pay their fair share, governments resort to indirect taxes such as VAT, which affects people with low incomes much more than those with high incomes. Thus, tax policy design and implementation must actively seek to reduce income inequality, and provide opportunities for citizens to make their voices heard regarding tax policy and how revenue is spent.

Other ways of guaranteeing availability of domestic resources to provide public services is for governments to take urgent action to minimise tax expenditure, by significantly reducing unjustified tax incentives and exemptions, as well as reviewing tax treaties to ensure that countries are getting their fair share of revenue. Ensuring that governments raise tax revenue in a progressive manner is a critical element, which must receive sufficient attention. Commitments to raise tax/GDP ratios must be linked explicitly to tax equity (ensuring countries focus on the direct taxation of wealth, income and assets), as well as the removal of tax incentives and exemptions benefiting large corporate actors, alongside efforts to eliminate tax loopholes and improve enforcement.

For instance, ActionAid Zambia and partners have conducted research and advocacy on tax incentives, mineral royalty tax, employee income tax etc. leading to the government embarking on tax reforms in these areas, benefiting low-income groups and increasing corporate tax revenue.

indicators

•totaltaxrevenueraised over time

• tax/GDPratiosraised over time

• taxburdenforindividualsisprogressive (the more you

earn the more tax you pay)

• proportionofdirecttaxes (e.g. corporate taxes and

income tax) in government revenue increases over time

• taxburdenonpeopleliving in poverty decreases over time

• increasedratioofgovern-ment expenditure on social services against other competing sectors.

2.2 publicly delivered (anti-privatisation)

Essential services such as education, health, water and electricity, and public infrastructure such as roads and bridges, are expected to be delivered publicly through government institutions and employees. In most cases, this is enshrined in international covenants and national constitutions. Publicly delivered services should be publicly funded and publicly accountable.

However, in recent decades there has been a tendency towards dismantling public services and handing them over to private providers. This is based on an irrational expectation that the private sector, with a mandate of generating maximum profit, will take on responsibility for quality public services, delivering basic rights to all people – including those living in poverty. This perspective has long been held by international financial institutions such as the IMF and the OECD, but is now also emerging in

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the discussions of financing for development processes and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The current trends in privatisation and their impact on the right to essential services have been well documented1, providing a clear warning that privatisation too often risks supplanting public services instead of improving them. It is ActionAid’s experience that basic principles of human rights are often violated through privatisation. For example, school fees of private schools often leads to discrimination against girls due to the fact that parents tend to send boys over girls to school if they have to pay2.

Moreover, the human rights principle of equal opportunity is violated if only those who can pay have access. Rights to social justice and equity are also violated, since privatisation promotes structural exclusion of groups unable to afford fees, or who are too costly to reach (such as those with disabilities), potentially leading to increasingly fractured and unequal societies. Finally, for-profit companies running essential services often keep their costs down by underpaying workers or undermining their professional status, for example by employing untrained teachers as a cheap workforce3.

Also of issue are public-private partnerships, where some basic services (e.g. healthcare and electricity) are provided by such partnerships, which means taxpayers’ money still partly funds the service. Though regulating private providers is a state responsibility, it is often unrealistic for developing countries to put effective regulation in place, or to fully enact it. Moreover, public-private partnerships often suffer from low transparency and limited public scrutiny, which undermines their accountability. Finally, in the long run, public-private partnerships can be more expensive for governments than the direct delivery of public services, even if this needs to be financed by public borrowing.

States’ delegation of their obligation to provide essential services to for-profit providers may be contrary to their international and national human rights obligations. Strong regulation needs to be in place to ensure that private delivery of essential services does not violate state obligations. Movements to resist unfettered privatisation are coalescing around the world. ActionAid has been working with its allies (teachers’ unions, public service unions) to ensure responsible, accountable and transparent gender-responsive public service delivery, especially in education.

ActionAid has also been working with human rights organisations to challenge the violation of international covenants related to public services being privatised, e.g. through treaty bodies in Geneva that have censured governments in Kenya and Ghana over how privatisation is undermining the right to education. ActionAid Liberia is at the forefront of advocacy efforts to stop the government from handing over the public education system to private providers. In Nepal, ActionAid is campaigning for the endorsement of a bill that will outlaw the current practice of operating schools under private ownership simply by registering at the Company Registrar’s Office.

indicators

•ratioofstudentsand patients in public schools and hospitals as opposed to private ones increasing over time (disaggregated by gender)

•ratiooftrainedteachersto untrained teachers in different levels of schools

•ratioofdoctorsinpublichospitals as opposed to

private ones increasing over time

•numberofPPPinitiativesfor essential public services decreasing over time.

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2.3 transparent and gender-responsive budgeting

Gender-responsive budgeting is a crucial tool to help create public services that promote gender equality. Budgets have the power to address deep-rooted gender inequalities, and can transform social and economic relations of power, inequality and exclusion. Budgets that fail to be gender responsive will perpetuate gender inequality.

Gender-responsive budgeting is a cyclical process of planning, programming and budgeting, similar to ActionAid’s process of reflection-action-reflection. As a first step towards creating gender-responsive budgets, governments should analyse existing gender inequalities. In undertaking this analysis, governments need to ask important questions:

• What drives inequality in social, political and economic spheres, who is affected by this inequality, and how? • What are the national and international policy instruments that foster gender equality, and how can these be incorporated into budgets and plans? • What are the country’s existing revenue (e.g. tax collection) processes, and how do they impact on gender inequality? • How do existing public services affect males, females and other gender identities?

Critical to the reflection-action-reflection cycle of gender-responsive budgeting is public participation –especially the participation of marginalised groups – in budget discussions, allocation and monitoring. ActionAid, through its participatory approaches encompassed in tools such as ELBAG (Economic literacy and budget accountability), cultivates public awareness on budgetary processes, as well as on spending (see section on Participation below).

Reflection or stocktaking needs to be embedded into a country’s annual budget cycle, to incorporate an assessment of changing social, cultural, economic and political dynamics around gender inequality. During this process, it needs to be considered who participates in the budget process, how are the priorities and needs of citizens determined, and how and at what point are women involved in identifying these issues, needs and priorities? During this process, countries may create additional legislation towards promoting gender equality, if these do not already exist. International policy instruments, such as the Beijing Platform for Action and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), are key global policy instruments that should be incorporated into country-specific gender-responsive budgeting frameworks.

The next step towards implementing gender-responsive budgets includes allocating budgets that respond to the needs and rights of different gender identities. In order to ensure gender responsiveness of budgetary processes, information should be gender disaggregated. For instance, in India, a gender-responsive budgeting classification was introduced for the 2005/06 financial year, which required ministries to draw up two lists

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– one showing all schemes or ‘demands for grants’ (and their associated allocations) where the beneficiaries would be 100% female, and the second showing schemes and demands where 30% or more of the benefit would go to females. In Peru, the Ministry of Women and Social Development was given the task of deciding how gender could be coded or tracked within the annual budget. A working group has been established under the Budget Commission of the Congress. This highlights that the process of gender-responsive budgeting is a political one as much as a technical one.

While gender-responsive budgeting does not necessarily mean allocation of more funds, it does mean allocation of more funds to sectors that have an impact on women and girls, such as education, health and safety and social welfare. Moreover, as in the case of developing government interventions to prevent and respond to sexual violence, multiple sectors may need to work together, and therefore a multi-sectoral budget will have to be in place.

Furthermore, gender equity is the first step towards gender equality. As illustrated below, the equal treatment of unequals is very much like the unequal treatment of equals. What this means is that in order to achieve gender equality, governments must prioritise public services for marginalised groups such as poor and excluded women, and let this be their guiding principle in the budgeting process.

Further to ensuring that transparent gender-responsive budgeting becomes systematically institutionalised into a country’s budget cycle, countries will have to adopt mechanisms within legislative processes that include monitoring and auditing of budget spending, and will also have to invest in gender-responsive public service management, which includes (among other initiatives) staff training on gender.

indicators

•participatoryneeds assessment carried out

• strategicplansdeveloped with full participation of

marginalised groups (based on sex, religion, ethnicity, caste, class, disability and other gender identities)

•budgetaryprocessesincludeparticipation of marginalised groups e.g. women, LGBTI

and people with disabilities

• nationalandlocalbudgets are gender disaggregated

•multi-sectoralbudgetsare used to respond to cross- cutting issues such as violence against women and unpaid care work

• additionalfundsareallocated to affirmative action programmes to benefit women and other marginalised groups.

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2.4 accountable

Accountability is a relationship through which public service providers and their staff are required to explain their decisions and performance, preferably against agreed standards, with rewards or sanctions resulting from their performance. Individuals or departments delivering public services should be held accountable by elected officials, by other government departments, or directly by the people who use their services.

Public accountability can only be made possible in a system that is transparent. Public engagement and accountability processes reinforce democratic relations between the public as rights holders and governments as duty bearers. Moreover, the public can only hold the government accountable when information is made available. Therefore, the right to information is a crucial element of accountability, and Right to Information Acts under existing laws can be used in accountability processes led by citizens and civil society. For instance, ActionAid Nepal partners are using the Right to Information Act to counter corruption exhibited by local authorities, e.g. when officials ask people to pay when they register land, even though the registration process is supposed to be free of charge.

ActionAid is supporting organised efforts on the part of citizens and civil society organisations to strengthen accountability mechanisms, and to use accountability tools to improve public service delivery, good governance and development outcomes. For example, ActionAid supports partners to lobby their elected representatives to improve public services, pressure local governments to make regular inspection visits to schools, facilitate communities to make their own assessment of school performance (against a charter of ten core aspects of the right to education), and to develop citizens’ reports and advocacy on that basis. ActionAid’s experience is that these organised efforts to increase accountability contribute to improvements in gender-responsive service delivery at the local level.

Such efforts should include an explicit focus on gender equality, meaning that ActionAid should support its partners to understand how standards apply to girls and women, especially within the most marginalised groups, supporting women and girl’s participation in accountability mechanisms, and suggesting public service improvements that are prioritised by, and will impact on, women and girls.

ActionAid has countless examples of improving accountability through advocacy using tools such as ELBAG, public expenditure tracking survey (PETS), community scorecards and social audits. Many country programmes work to empower people living in poverty to use existing accountability mechanisms, such as efforts in many countries to activate School Management Committees and other school oversight mechanisms. Another example is ActionAid India’s work to empower people to take part in the social accountability process for the national rural employment guarantee scheme.

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Others establish new accountability processes, such as ActionAid Mozambique’s promotion of civil society complaint boxes. To support the use of community scorecards, ActionAid Mozambique uses this alternative tool to ensure that mechanisms are in place for citizens to report corrupt practices. The idea behind the complaint boxes is that they should be used as an alternative to formal government complaint mechanisms, which ideally should be used to report illicit practices and corruption in the health sector and other public services. However official boxes are hardly used as people generally fear using them, several have experienced threats when reporting cases. Thus citizens were in need of a more anonymous way to report illicit practices and cases. As the complaint boxes are controlled by civil society organisations, people feel safer using them. Similar complaint boxes have also been used to capture evidence to be used for advocacy activities.

indicators

• clarityinroleswithin government structures regarding needs assessment, planning, resource allocation, expenditure management,

performance management, integrity and oversight

•levelofclarityandcomprehensiveness of

standards for public service provision including gender

disaggregated targets

•numberandtypeof accountability mechanisms

implemented and women’s participation

•transparencyandmechanisms of sanction in place for poor performance or misconduct by service providers

•levelofenforcementof sanctions for poor performance or misconduct.

2.5 participatory

While participation fosters transparent and accountable public service delivery, inclusive participation – or participation of citizens from diverse backgrounds – addresses the issue of differential vulnerability based on sex, gender identities, disability, marital status, caste and religion.

Consequently, gender-responsive public services can act as a lever for social change by transforming power structures that – as global trends indicate – are mostly held by males and male-led groups and institutions. Inclusive participation in needs assessment, prioritisation, planning, budgetary allocations, design, implementation and monitoring of public services leads to the institutionalisation of gender equality, reduces poverty and increases citizen’s welfare through a more equitable and efficient allocation of national resources.

An important starting point is to recognise that most existing official spaces for participation will not be occupied by representative groups – that the most marginalised are those who are likely to have least voice or engagement – and so active efforts need to be made to broaden participation and representation. Several ActionAid countries have in the last few years recognised that the representation of marginalised groups in governance spaces is of pivotal importance. ActionAid Mozambique has, for instance, since 2015 been working to increase local representation. Thus men and women living in poverty are now invited to the ‘National Development Observatory’ (official government space for dialogue with civil society) to raise their own needs and concerns.

ActionAid’s global approach to good governance is embedded in participatory techniques that nurture citizen-government interactions at all levels. ActionAid supports people living in poverty to actively use ‘invited spaces’ for participation, such as consultation meetings on local plans and budgets or national policies. ActionAid also works with communities and organisations to create spaces for public dialogue on public services, for example by initiating community meetings with elected officials or service delivery staff. For instance, ActionAid Nepal uses community scorecards

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to initiate structured, evidence-based conversations between communities and duty bearers such as school principals and teachers, health clinic staff and local government officers.

ActionAid Myanmar has trained a cadre of community volunteers, known as fellows, to facilitate community-led exercises that analyse various social, economic and political dimensions of power, which is then documented through a ‘village book’. Through inclusive participation, communities develop a dream map, which is then incorporated into township-level budgetary processes. ActionAid Myanmar has facilitated the development of over 1,200 village books countrywide; even the Ministry of Planning and other development partners have now adopted this approach.

photo: tana river, Kenya: JaKob Dall

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ActionAid Nigeria together with local partners worked with 180 communities – women, young people and people with disabilities in particular – to assess and prioritise public services to engage on with elected officers. Each community compiled its analysis and demands for services in a booklet referred to as the citizen’s charter of demand, which they then used to engage elected officials and government institutions on. The process of engagement is mostly through town hall meetings organised at local, state and national levels, and follow-ups.

Another example is ActionAid Cambodia’s ‘safe cities’ programme, which is working with women excluded from decision-making processes (sex workers, entertainment workers, trans-women) to help them contribute towards their Commune Development Plans and Commune Investment Plans. Security was a big issue for these women – especially coming home late from work – so now they have improved street lighting and increased police patrols, both of which have improved their safety.

indicators

• typesandappropriateness of invited and created spaces for civil society/citizen

dialogue with elected officials on public services

• levelofinclusionof marginalised women in invited spaces for dialogue on public services

• equalrepresentationof women in formal oversight

committees

• levelofinteractionbetween women and service providers/duty bearers on budgeting, planning and delivery of public services.

2.6 decentralised

Decentralisation entails the transfer of political power, decision-making and resources from central authorities to a local level of government, implying an increased autonomy and capacity to determine policy and use of resources at that level. The rationale for decentralisation is: that the lowest level of government that can perform functions efficiently and effectively should be the one to do so and; that the administration of public resources should be brought as close to the people as possible. Decentralisation reforms are promoted as a means of deepening democracy, improving the quality and effectiveness of the development process, and enhancing citizens’ participation in the governance mechanisms and development processes that affect their lives.

ActionAid views the decentralisation of governance as an opportunity to achieve a more participatory and inclusive mode of government, because it should contribute to deepening democratisation and empowerment of local institutions and citizens to hold duty bearers to account for delivering gender-responsive public services. Moreover, local political structures are often more accessible for women and people living in poverty in general than centralised ones.

For this reason, ActionAid advocates for deepening decentralisation, and for implementing commitments to decentralisation to enable local governments to respond to local needs. For example, ActionAid Kenya and allies advocated for decentralisation of key public services, which was accepted in 2010, shifting significant power to elected bodies at the county level for service delivery in sectors including health and education.

Another important aspect is fiscal decentralisation, meaning how big a share of government resources is allocated to local government. In Zimbabwe the new constitution from 2013 stipulates that at least 5% of national revenue should be allocated to local government. However, these funds were not in fact disbursed to provincial councils in 2014 and 2015. ActionAid Zimbabwe is therefore advocating for implementation of decentralisation as stipulated in the constitution, including

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fiscal decentralisation. Efforts must however be made to ensure that such fiscal decentralisation does not entrench inequalities between regions/districts, or restrict the fundamental redistributive role of the state.

Decentralisation legislation and associated local governance procedures may also have important implications for gender equality. When advocating for decentralisation, it is necessary to do so through a gendered lens. For example, in Kenya, the 2010 constitution put into force a ‘not more than two-thirds’ gender rule, meaning that no more than two-thirds of the members of public bodies (both elected and appointed) shall be of the same gender. The constitution goes further to obligate the government to develop and pass policies and laws, including affirmative action programmes and policies to address the past discrimination that women have faced. In practice, one of the effects is that women are constitutionally secured one-third of seats in local bodies such as county assemblies.

indicators

• localgovernmentbodies are democratically elected

• legislationondecentralisation exists including fiscal decentralisation, gender equality, citizen participation, transparency and accountability to citizens

• localgovernmentshave authority and responsibility for public service provision

• localgovernmentstructures live up to legislation on civil society and citizen

participation e.g. right to information, public hearings

and social audits

• localplanningandbudgeting legislation

need to pay close attention to persistent gender inequalities, gender biases and the different needs of men and women, boys

and girls.

2.7 effectively managed

Public sector organisations require effective internal management systems and practices in order to provide gender-responsive public services. Key management factors that influence public service delivery include:

Organisational structure and coordination. The public sector often faces challenges in organising itself to deal with complex service delivery. For example, creating safe cities for women or ensuring the safety of girls in schools often requires a range of public service providers to coordinate with one another, and there may or may not be an effective forum or structure to make those links.

Financial management. The budget cycle depends on public services having many routine systems in place that work effectively in assigning budgets to specific units, for processing payments, for producing financial reports, and for internal auditing to uncover problems. Discussions on how financial resources should be spent can be undermined if these systems do not provide reliable information, or do not ensure that expenditure can be tracked on a timely basis. The larger questions of accountability and transparent and gender-responsive budgeting are very much dependent on these basic practices being in place. This requires government investment in financial systems, personnel, training and audits.

Human resource management. Effective public services should have effective human resource practices in place, resting on principles such as meritocracy, fairness and transparency. Staff should have clear job descriptions and performance expectations, and receive feedback and training to improve performance. Recruitment and promotion should be based on merit, with objective standards and transparency in decision-making in place. There should also be sanctions available within the public service for non-performance, utilised by managers when needed. Public services can also apply affirmative action policies, in order to ensure that public service staff reflect the diversity of the population. This can include a bias toward recruiting and training women, and

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developing them in a targeted way for promotions to higher decision-making positions. Gender-responsive recruitment and promotion policies can be a model of good practice for other employers.

Procurement. Purchasing goods or contracting services should be guided by globally accepted principles including: open competition; clear rules for sole-source contracting; integrity; transparency and a right to recourse when bidders or others see wrong-doing.

Monitoring and evaluation. Public services are often comfortable reporting on activities completed, but there are challenges in defining and assessing outcomes and impacts. These challenges are in part political – staff within public services are worried about the implications of measuring results, as are political leaders – as they may reveal weaknesses in delivery. Programmes to improve results-based management by public services should be encouraged. This presents opportunities to examine gender disaggregated results, for example, and to highlight gender inequality.

Values and ethics. Public services should have clear statements of the values and ethics expected of their own staff – with codes and disciplinary procedures to discourage practices such as influence peddling, private use of public property or conflict of interest. Public services should be encouraged to institute and implement these systems.

Gender mainstreaming. Public services should have explicit policies on gender mainstreaming, integrated into the other management practices detailed above. Loading responsibility for gender mainstreaming on to special units without integrating it into the mainstream management of organisations can often be a tokenistic move that does not produce measureable results.

indicators

• clarityofstructuresfor coordinating departments

responsible for service delivery

• trendsinauditfindings of service delivery units

• qualityofprocurement legislation and guidelines

• perceptionofpublic procurement transparency

• qualityofgovernment performance management systems

• rigouroflegislationand policies on influence peddling, private use of public property and conflict of interest

• levelofintegrationof gender responsiveness in governance management and performance systems.

2.8 sexism-free institutions

Institutional sexism refers to the way cultures and systems within organisations or structures e.g. the police force discriminate against women based on the notion that women are inferior to men. Institutional sexism perpetuates gender inequalities and obstructs women’s opportunities.

Institutional sexism is the result of explicit and implicit rules and assumptions that regulate behaviour to the disadvantage of women, and result in discrimination. In some cases, institutional sexism may be overt, but it can also result from ignorance and societal gender stereotyping that disadvantages women, and leads to routine processes within government institutions that neglect women’s needs and experiences.

For instance, institutional sexism within the criminal justice system leads to lack of response or a failure to investigate cases of gender-based violence. And if the city planning authority is institutionally sexist, it will be unlikely to employ women. Thus, without women’s analysis, the city will develop in a way that makes it dangerous for women to move around: there may not be street lighting in appropriate places, and public transport hubs may be far from women’s homes.

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Therefore, ActionAid works against institutional sexism. For instance, ActionAid Ghana has been working with government institutions to stop violence against girls in schools. By stimulating close collaboration between the Ghana Police Service’s domestic violence and victim support unit, and the girls’ education unit of the Ghana Education Service, ActionAid Ghana managed to broker an agreement between the two that was formalised by a national level memorandum of understanding to tackle violence against girls. The memorandum identifies, promotes and institutionalises a confidential reporting system to track and respond to cases of violence against girls in schools. It also includes guidelines to facilitate the reduction of violence in schools, and to report and manage cases. As a follow-up to this advocacy process, ActionAid Ghana has been helping communities use the system and report cases of violence against girls in schools.4

indicators

• decision-makersand government officials at different levels are trained in women’s rights and gender

analysis, thus being made aware of patriarchal and gender stereotypical beliefs

• increasedratioofwomeningovernment jobs in different

sectors and at different levels

• policymakingsystemsin place that analyse the impact of policies on women, and based on this adjust policies and their implementation to promote gender equality.

3. Quality criteria of gender-responsivepublic services

3.1 available

The availability of gender-responsive public services can be assessed by analysing the quantitative supply of services and whether they are economically available to the whole population.

The overall questions regarding quantity are whether there are enough schools, health clinics, hospitals, clean water supplies and access to public transport, and whether governments are taking active steps to increase the supply of services to meet the needs of the population. This analysis can again be broken down into sub-standards, for example whether schools have enough teachers, classrooms, toilets or teaching materials. Such standards can then be measured using indicators to look for trends over time (see Right to Education Project, Indicators Selection Tool). When looking at longer-term availability, sustainability also needs to be taken into consideration, e.g. whether the supply of clean water is sustainable no matter what the season, and over many years. Issues of regularity of supply (e.g. water, electricity) would also be relevant.

Affordability is an important dimension of availability. Gender-responsive public services should be available to people from diverse economic backgrounds. When it comes to public services, these need to cater to the poorest of the poor, so if a service is not affordable it is de facto not available to people living in poverty. Global data indicates that children in the poorest households are four times more likely to be out of school compared to those in the richest households.

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According to the experience and values of ActionAid, a number of public services should be free in order to fulfil the human rights of people living in poverty. ActionAid has actively promoted the right to free primary education. The same approach should be applied to basic healthcare and many other public services. Allocation of public services should be based on urgency and need, as opposed to who can pay. Some public services such as electricity or public transport may come at a fee, but in order to make such public services live up to the criteria of availability, any fee should be affordable even for people living in poverty. In cases where governments do charge for a public service, there are policy measures such as fee reductions or exemptions that can be used to increase availability for people living in poverty.

Related to affordability is the issue of costs in terms of time. In many countries that have weak rule of law and institutional mechanisms, there are high ‘time costs’ when achieving public services, e.g. for survivors of violence when trying to report the perpetrator to the police, and later if the case goes to court. There is also a financial factor here, since services like this should be free, but often the police and other members of the criminal justice system will charge for their services, and even for receiving an initial report, so that women who have experienced violence are denied their right to justice.

Specific indicators of availability vary from one sector to another. For example, there should be a sufficient amount of clean water available within a given geographical area (e.g. a country, district or village), and there should be a regular supply of water over time, in other words enough clean water is available at any given time in a specific

photo: new DelHi, inDia: Poulomi baSu

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location. Moreover, clean water for consumption should be affordable or free of charge. If fees are so prohibitive that a poor household must sacrifice other essentials such as education, health services or food, or else use contaminated water, then individuals of that household are not enjoying their right to adequate water.5

Another example could be that education should be free and government funded with adequate infrastructure, teaching materials and teachers.6 Infrastructure inadequacy could be if there is a high percentage of schools that have a shortage of classrooms; that would constitute a problem regarding the availability of education. Also, schools without toilets and other sanitary hygiene are ‘pushing’ girls out, especially when they start menstruating. It is important to disaggregate the data for such indicators, particularly across regions, and for urban compared to rural schools, and public compared to private schools.7

3.2 accessible

Accessibility is a key qualifier for public services to be gender-responsive in meeting the differential needs of people, e.g. women and girls. Accessibility concerns the level of access and identifies who has access, thereby encompassing the human rights principle of non-discrimination. In order for public services to be accessible, public service delivery systems should not discriminate, and positive steps should be taken to reach the most marginalised. Two dimensions of accessibility are crucial to determining whether a service is gender responsive: physical accessibility and social accessibility.

Physical accessibility is a tangible indicator that takes into consideration the location or the distance of a public service from user groups, as well as access by differently-abled user groups. In many countries ActionAid works in, communities have to travel long distances in order to access basic services such as health and education, and few services offer sign language interpretation, ramps or other services needed by differently-abled members of the public. Physical accessibility also varies based on local and geographic contexts, and which may be affected by the location of services in rural, urban, conflict, post-conflict and disaster-affected communities. In order for public services to be accessible, they should be within a reasonable distance for all inhabitants.

Social accessibility is a decisive indicator when testing a service for its gender responsiveness. Social accessibility has the power to address deep-rooted gender inequalities that are framed by traditional beliefs and attitudes. In many countries, persons who identify as LBGTI, are HIV positive, sex workers, persons who are leprosy affected and persons with disabilities amongst others are socially ostracised. While shunned by their communities, accessing public services becomes almost impossible. Bearing in mind that public services are operated by people who come from the societies they work in, public service officials may be influenced by, and often exercise, social stereotypes allocated to stigmatised groups. Consequently, personal biases affect the accessibility of public services, and thereby impact on their overall gender responsiveness.

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Determining whether women or other marginalised groups have equal access to public services requires a range of measurements based on the types of discriminatory practices (e.g. refusing migrant workers access to a borehole) for each of the marginalised and vulnerable groups in the country.

An example of accessibility of public services within a specific sector could be that education is non-discriminatory, i.e. schools must not make any distinction in provision based on sex, race, colour, language, religion, political opinion, nationality, ethnicity, ability or any other status. Also, all children should be safe en route to and in school. Clear anti-bullying policies and confidential systems for reporting and addressing any form of abuse or violence should be in place.8

3.3 acceptable

Acceptability is the need for quality gender-responsive public services to respect culturally subjective views on what is and is not an acceptable service.

The specific factors that make a gender-responsive public service acceptable or not acceptable to specific groups are very context specific. Following the principle of participation in governing public services increases the chances that users will be able to articulate what is acceptable and what is not, and to inform decisions with their views. ActionAid should take an extra interest in promoting the participation of women and girls in defining what makes public services acceptable to them.

While acceptability is an important principle, it should not be confused with defending discrimination or exclusion on cultural grounds, on gender or other forms of discrimination. For example, the Supreme Court of Nepal has outlawed the practice of chhaupadi (compelling menstruating women to live in secluded and unsafe huts outside the home), and directed the government to formulate laws against it, but further action must be taken to change behaviour and practice. Government provision of huts outside villages for the use of menstruating women would not be an ‘acceptable’ gender-responsive public service, because it re-enforces discrimination against women.

An example of what constitutes an acceptable public service within a specific sector is that of education, which should be relevant, culturally appropriate and of quality. The curriculum should not discriminate and should relate to the social, cultural, environmental, economic and linguistic context of learners. ActionAid’s handbook on Rights in Schools provides further ideas on how to make learning relevant and culturally appropriate. This can include producing learning materials related to the local context, and promoting mother-tongue instruction for linguistic minorities.

Another example is that, in order to be acceptable, health facilities, goods and services should respect medical ethics, and be gender-sensitive and culturally appropriate. According to General Comment 14 to the ICESCR from the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, health services should be, “respectful of the culture of

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individuals, minorities, peoples and communities, sensitive to gender and life-cycle requirements, as well as being designed to respect confidentiality and improve the health status of those concerned”. Participatory processes should reveal what these standards mean to particular groups – to men, women, boys and girls from different cultural backgrounds, religions, sexual orientation or other minority groups within communities – and help empower groups to advocate for health services that are more acceptable from their perspective.

Regarding public services related to water, public service providers must also ensure that public services are acceptable to different groups within communities, especially to women and girls. It is useful to consider consumer acceptability, which includes the characteristics of the water (e.g. odour, taste and colour) as well as procedural considerations (e.g. the behaviour of water suppliers towards individuals within the community). It is also important to consider cultural acceptability, which refers to subjective perceptions based on the culture of individuals, minority groups and communities. It is difficult to generalise about what makes a service culturally acceptable. For instance, some groups might find it inappropriate to drink water from a tap rather than from a river, while others might refuse to drink water that has been chemically treated or drink water from a borehole close to a graveyard.9

The principle of acceptability can be applied to other public services, such as nutrition programmes and school lunch programmes, where food must be culturally acceptable, or to housing programmes, in which the location must be viewed as culturally adequate.

3.4 adaptable

Adaptability is key to ensuring that gender-responsive public services are delivered regardless of the prevailing context which may shift due to (1) changing social, economic and political trends, (2) urban and rural settings, (3) the generational gap, and (4) conflict and climate-related or natural disasters.Adaptability is founded on the promise and commitment that governments make to the public that services that meet their needs will be provided.

Changing social, economic and political trends should be reflected in public service delivery. As indicated in previous sections of this framework, the development and delivery of gender-responsive public services is progressive. In incorporating people’s ‘needs’ into how budgets are allocated, governments should undertake a regular analysis of the impact of services on gender equality, while simultaneously assessing emerging needs. Public services should be updated or adapted to meet these new needs. For instance, many governments across Africa and Asia have established women and child desks at police stations to encourage women and children to report cases of violence. While trained officers staff these stations, and are able to document cases reported by women and children, an emerging need may be safe house facilities, legal aid and/or psychosocial support. Governments may then update/adapt this service to include these new needs, which should be incorporated into budget allocations.

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Urban and rural settings pose different challenges in terms of public service delivery. Generally, services located in rural areas are few, and often far from public reach. Moreover, urban areas in developing countries have witnessed a growth in population as people migrate from rural sites in search of more lucrative job opportunities. Consequently, governments may think of adapting existing services to meet variable needs based on the location of their target populations. An example of adapting to a rural setting is the case of India’s National Rural Health Mission scheme. Even though the government has established local health clinics, these are often located far from villages. So to adapt to this situation, the government has established the Rajiv Gandhi Medical Mobile Unit in Rajasthan.10

An example of the need to adapt in an urban setting is government health clinics in the high migrant area of Hlaingthayar in Yangon, Myanmar, which operate from Monday to Friday. The problem is, men and women cannot access these facilities as they work in factories from Monday to Saturday. In this case, the government should adapt the existing service so that it is open on Sundays.

The generational gap is especially important when considering raising people’s awareness on the availability of a particular public service. Mobile phone applications may be developed for outreach to youth groups, while governments may have to think of more conventional models of public outreach for older members of society, which may include radio programming.

Conflict, climate-related and natural disasters pose challenges for every government in delivering basic public services. For instance, children in conflict situations are more likely to miss school.11 In this case the government will have to adapt public service delivery, and may opt to work through local civil society organisations and other key stakeholders to deliver services. In the case of climate-related and natural disasters, even though governments may not be aware of an impending disaster, they should factor in the impact of disasters when designing public services.

In countries prone to climate-related disasters such as floods and cyclones, governments can set aside an annual budget for emergency preparedness and response (while also catering to long-term needs). In these instances, delivery of health services is crucial, especially in trying to contain the outbreak of diseases. For instance, cyclone Pam caused country-wide devastation in Vanuatu in March 2015. In order to ensure that women and girls had access to basic needs including sanitary supplies, ActionAid encouraged local communities to establish women and children centres that were run by community volunteers. Through these centres, women could access basic information and also discuss their emerging needs. These centres also served as distribution points for basic supplies.

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4. How we work4.1 our theory of change and human rights-based approach

ActionAid’s approach to promoting gender-responsive public services is a human rights-based approach (HRBA). This approach is summarised here, but explained in more detail in the HRBA handbook. The organisation engaged in a structured reflection on this approach in 2015, and many examples of good practice are linked to promoting gender-responsive public services.

While ActionAid’s HRBA is continuously evolving to reflect shifting geo-political trends and local contexts around inequality and rights, ActionAid’s belief in ‘the power of people’ to analyse and confront unequal power dynamics – when power is held by a few, which exacerbates poverty and injustice – underpins our overall approach. Building on international human rights instruments, ActionAid’s theory of change, “believes that

3.5 safe

The lack of safety in the provision of public services puts women in a situation of vulnerability, and limits their rights both within cities and elsewhere. The fear of violence and the actual violence that women experience is a severe issue that needs to be understood and tackled when promoting gender-responsive public services.

To address this, we need to identify and assess the situation of violence against women in public spaces. There is a lack of disaggregated data on violence against women in both the public and private spheres. This information is crucial to identify the needs and the appropriate responses and policies needed to transform public services in a gender responsive way.

In terms of addressing women’s safety in urban spaces and public spaces in general, the provision of gender-responsive public services means ensuring adequate street lighting around factories and bus stops, the adequate provision of clean water so women are not at risk of attack by having to travel far from their homes, and reliable, gender sensitive policing and judicial systems, as well as safe public transport.

Public services should in general be accessed without the risk of physical threats and other safety concerns. This is particularly relevant for women, who face the risk of threats or harassment in public spaces. For example, when considering public transport, it is ActionAid’s experience that women face intimidation, harassment, verbal or even physical/sexual violence when using these services. Therefore, women often shy away from public transport, which limits their access to other public services such as healthcare or education, as well as economic opportunities such as jobs or market access.

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an end to poverty and injustice can be achieved through purposeful individual and collective action, led by the active agency of people living in poverty and supported by solidarity, credible rights-based alternatives and campaigns that address the structural causes and consequences of poverty.”12

In advancing its mission, ActionAid stands with people living in poverty and those most marginalised. Eight principles espoused in ActionAid’s HRBA reinforce the organisation’s concerted efforts towards achieving its goals:

1. putting people in poverty first and building their awareness of rights 2. analysing and confronting unequal power 3. Aavancing women’s rights 4. building partnerships 5. being accountable and transparent 6. monitoring, evaluating and evidencing our impact 7. linking work across levels to ensure we address structural change 8. being solutions orientated and promoting credible alternatives.

Driving these principles is the combined synergy of ‘empowerment’, ‘campaigning’ and ‘solidarity’ so that women, men, young people or children living in poverty are supported to organise themselves and mobilise to demand their rights, while uniting in a politically supportive relationship that crosses geographical boundaries. ‘Empowerment’ is at the heart of our approach to change. In ActionAid’s thinking, human rights can only be realised if people living in poverty have active agency. This requires the fundamental elements of building critical awareness; building individual and collective action through supporting and strengthening organisations and movements; monitoring public policies and budgets, and developing communication skills and creating platforms.

‘Campaigning’ creates and harnesses people’s power around a simple and powerful demand, in order to achieve a measurable political or social change to the structural causes of poverty. ‘Solidarity’ is geared to supporting and sustaining a movement for change in which people living in poverty take the lead. Additionally, solidarity is the connection to people and organisations who are not necessarily facing the same conditions, but who are compassionate to the struggles of people living in poverty.

While working with the most marginalised groups, ActionAid places women at the centre of its work. The eradication of poverty and injustice will simply not be possible without securing equality and rights for women. We understand that women living in poverty face greater oppression because they face discrimination arising from their poverty and their gender. Causes for female poverty can be different.

Gender power dynamics that are often embedded in social and cultural practices and supported by patriarchal structures often limit women’s participation in decision-making, increase violence against women, deny women the rights to their bodies and commit them to undertaking unpaid care work responsibilities. Furthermore, regressive policies, social and cultural norms, customary laws, weak institutional mechanisms and a lack of affirmative action policies continue to cement social power imbalances that overwhelmingly favour men.

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4.2 programming tools

ActionAid has experience applying a variety of adaptable reflection-action tools to facilitate our HRBA approach and work on accountability related to public services. While these tools are not unique to ActionAid, we have invested effort in building and renewing the skills of our staff and partners in participatory tools over time. There are a number of resources regarding specific tools that can be applied to facilitate empowerment, solidarity and campaigning on gender-responsive public services such as: • The reflection-action approach • Economic literacy and budget accountability in governance (ELBAG) handbook • Using evidence to establish accountability sourcebook • Promoting rights in schools resource kit • Tax power campaign toolkit.

ActionAid is also developing a networked toolbox that will allow online sharing of experiences on how to apply different tools for different purposes – including promoting gender-responsive public services – with plans to launch the toolbox in 2016.

1 Protecting the right to education against commercialization - Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, 2015

2 Protecting the right to education against commercialization - Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, 2015, p. 10

3 EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015, UNESCO, p. 216

4 Stop violence against girls in schools – success stories, ActionAid, 2013, p. 37

5 WHO, http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/humanrights/en/index2.html

6 Promoting rights in schools: providing quality public education, ActionAid, 2011

7 Indicators Selection Tool, Right to Education Project, 2016

8 Promoting rights in schools: providing quality public education, ActionAid, 2011

9 The AAAQ framework and the right to water, The Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2014, p. 21

10 http://www.nrhmrajasthan.nic.in/MMU%20Status%201.htm

11 Goal 2 of the Millennium Development Goals, which aimed at achieving universal primary education for boys and girls by 2015, reported that in countries affected by conflict, the proportion of out of school children increased from 30% (in 1999) to 36% (in 2012).

12 People’s action to end poverty, ActionAid’s strategy 2012-2017, p.4

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actionaid is a global movement of people working togetherto achieve greater human rights for all and defeat poverty.We believe people in poverty have the power within themto create change for themselves, their families and communities.ActionAid is a catalyst for that change.

International Registration number: 27264198Website: actionaid.orgTelephone: +27 11 731 4500