Promising Approaches to Engendering Development

The Promising Approaches to Engendering Development series showcases projects, research, and other World Bank Group activities that use innovative gender-responsive approaches to address gender inequalities

Participatory Approaches to Increasing Women’s Voice in CDD Projects: Examples from Indonesia, December, 2004 (PDF 138KB)

Both the Kecamatan Development Projects (KDP) and the Water and Sanitation for Low Income Communities Projects (WSLIC) in Indonesia have successfully used transparency tools and regulations to ensure that women have access to community decision –making processes, have their infrastructure needs met and have a stake in project success. These transparency tools include holding separate meetings for women, social mapping of households to ensure new infrastructure is located near poor or female-headed households, and ensuring that women and men have equal representation and voting power in infrastructure maintenance and decision-making committees.

Using a recent example from Cambodia, this note illustrates the advantages of using a gender-disaggregated benefit-incidence analysis when conducting a public expenditure review and designing public expenditure programs.  The use of this analysis technique, together with household survey data, enabled Cambodia’s Public Expenditure Review (IFAPER) to identify appropriate priorities for resource allocation and ways to manage expenditures more effectively, including the identification of ways to cost-effectively increase female lower secondary education enrollments and create alternative financing mechanisms for women in the health and agricultural sectors.

Andhra Pradesh Collective Enterprise and Action,  June 2004 (PDF 141KB)

The Velugu program to empower poor women in rural Andhra Pradesh, India is the focus of this note, which describes an approach to empowerment that focuses on collective enterprises and action by women's self-help groups

This note describes a rural transport project in Peru that, by involving rural women in its design and implementation, was able to enhance social outcomes and poverty reduction, promote market participation and increase gender equality. By ensuring that at least 20 percent of road committees members, 10 percent of road maintenance micro-enterprise members and 30 percent of direct beneficiaries in Local Development Window projects were women, the project enabled women to play a central role in community decision-making and ensured that transport systems heavily used by women, such as pedestrian tracks, were repaired and improved.

Beyond 'One-Size fits all":  Equitable Downsizing in Vietnam, March 2004 (PDF 207KB)

This newsletter highlights experiences of PRSC-supported gender sensitive downsizing in Vietnam, using the Excel-based Downsizing Options Simulation Exercise tool.

Land and Use Rights and Gender Equality in Vietnam, September 2003 (PDF 554KB)

A pilot project in north central Vietnam has instituted an approach to land titling that gives both women and men rights to use land. In an economy transitioning from collectives to smaller family farms, the project has increased opportunities for rural families to use their most productive asset to generate income, and has promoted a gender-responsive, low cost, and decentralized method of land titling.

Electricity, Productivity, and Empowerment in Char Montaz, August 2002 (PDF 818KB)

Char Montaz, an isolated rural island in southern Bangladesh is the setting for a model project to deliver low-cost renewable energy services. The project has popularized the use of renewable energy, accelerated this isolated community’s access to modern lighting, and empowered women.