Last week, Mercy, Abigail, Ohemaa, Nana and I spent two days in Mampong, where we conducted a new type of gender auditing. Mercy (one of my favorite co-workers) recently attended a workshop on gender auditing, a process that evaluates the gender equity and sensitivity of an organization. Her conclusion was that such audits are helpful, but also extremely costly and time-consuming, making them impossible to carry out in most institutions.
She decided to design a new type of gender auditing, modeled on "Participatory Learning and Action," which is used in most of our programs here. Basically PLAs involve discussions with stakeholders to determine the roots of the problem (say of girls' under-enrollment in schools), as well ways to tackle these. The community determines how best to address the issue, and makes a plan of how, when and with what resources they will achieve their targets.
Mercy's idea was to develop a way of conducting an audit rapidly and effectively, without hiring a consultant and asking people to fill out a lengthy survey. In each school, we split staff into two groups, one working with a group of students, and the other with teachers. Unfortunately, I was unable to follow most of the kiddie sessions as they were conducted in Twi. The adult session was very interesting though. Mercy started by asking faculty what the gender situation was in the school. Initially, everyone insisted that the school was very equitable and sensitive with regards to gender. Mercy then asked the teachers what "gender" meant. When they responded "sex," she asked why we had two words for it then, and what the difference was. After much discussion, interested teachers came to explain "gender" in terms of culture, upbringing and social roles, as opposed to the "sex" determined by birth.
Mercy then asked teachers to go through their day, talking about the different roles that boys and girls, and men and women are given both in their homes and at school. As teachers responded, it became apparent that gender roles are very clearly defined. Men pay the bills, weed, put up buildings, discipline children, and pound the fu-fu. Women, on the other hand, cook, clean, sweep, do laundry, fetch water, and take care of children.
Similarly, at school, boys are in charge of cleaning the blackboard and weeding while girls are in charge of sweeping, scrubbing urinals, fetching water, doing dishes and running errands for teachers. Boys are more truant and perform better, particularly in "subjects with figures." They hold most leadership roles, and are more severely punished by teachers. Girls are less confident and assertive, and frequently sleep during class (perhaps a consequence of all their home and school duties!) Teachers pay more attention to boys, assuming that they have more of a future than women.
It was amazing to see Mercy lead the teachers' from their initial conviction of gender sensitivity to the recognition of the very unequal treatment that girls and boys receive. And she did so in a way that was not accusatory or condescending. By the end of the session, teachers seemed eager to change things, as they suggested way to improve the situation, each committing themselves to a specific target, deadline, and monitoring indicators.
Mercy is one of my favorite "aunties" (and I have many here!). She is dedicated and extremely good at what she does.
The trip was also a lot of fun. There were five ladies and a driver in the car to and from Mampong, and within Mampong there were six of us and a driver (Mavis lives in Mampong.) We got "tight" very quickly.
Again, I was quite the attraction in schools and had to go hang out with the kids at times so that they would not disrupt the sessions (I felt pretty foolish). I also ate my first whole fu-fu bowl!!
