This report evaluates UN-HABITAT’s efforts in mainstreaming gender across its programmes and policies, and the appropriateness of its institutional arrangements and strategic partnerships for the promotion of gender equality in human settlements. In addition to the accountability objective, the purpose of the evaluation is to generate lessons to inform decisions about how institutional arrangements for gender mainstreaming and related strategic partnerships can be improved.
The evaluation involved a combination of methods, which included a literature review of sample policy and programme documents that were assessed for gender focus and analysis and face-to-face interviews with UN-HABITAT staff members plus a self-evaluation workshop with Gender Focal Points (GFPs) in Nairobi. A short field visit to Senegal and self-evaluation and email questionnaires with Regional Office Asia and Pacific (ROAP), Afghanistan and Pakistan gave regional and country perspectives, while telephone interviews and email questionnaires captured information from other UN agencies and partner organizations. Triangulation of data from different sources was used throughout to validate information.
Key Findings:
- The agency has sought to mainstream gender into core areas of its work. However, these efforts are not uniform in strength across the agency, and UN-HABITAT should give greater focus to how the results of its work can contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
- More coherent work on gender mainstreaming requires mutual strengthening of activities and sharing of knowledge within and across programmes and units, headquarters and regions, normative and operational work.
- UN-HABITAT has considerable gender mainstreaming resources in programmes, regions, country, units and in partnerships. The Gender Focal Point system is a strategic tool for promoting work on gender equality. This ‘decentralised’ model of a GMU and Gender Focal Points has not been adequately developed.
- UN-HABITAT texts display high-quality research and analysis. Its work on governance and safer cities stands out, along with work on joint tenure arrangements and Islamic law. There is a broad focus beyond that of female-headed households. Not all branches have undertaken such high quality analysis and there is frequently a disconnection between policy papers and operational work.
- In post-conflict work on land there is a need for active support for women’s land rights, in accordance with UNHABITAT’s own policy papers.
- Choice of partners affects the extent to which project work is gender sensitive. Partnerships are dynamic and fluctuate according to personalities and other factors. Partnerships need to be nurtured and conflicts addressed and one cannot assume that non-gender specific partners at country level will have skills to undertake gender analysis, gender-sensitive surveys and so on. Support to build capacity is required, not least at country level.
