UNDP-IKEA Project for Promoting Women's Empowerment

Based on the successful implementation of a rights-based pilot project on Strengthening Women's Social, Economic and Political Empowerment in Jaunpur, Mirzapur and SantRavidas Nagar Districts of Uttar Pradesh (UP), in 2009, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) now plans to scale up this intervention in seven Districts across the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. The project strategy is rights based and is founded on the recognition that a strong women's empowerment approach that combines all dimensions- social, economic, political and legal can transform cyclic poverty by equipping women to realize their untapped potential by collectivizing, earning incomes and accessing rights and Government services.

As a first step in the process of up-scaling, UNDP has initiated a planning phase to develop a detailed project proposal and action plan, based on a robust situation analysis and multi-stakeholder consultations. The findings and recommendations of the resultant Situation Analysis Report will feed into a Project Proposal to be developed for the seven Districts – Banaskantha and Patan in Gujarat, Jalna, Yavatmal and Wardha in Maharashtra and Dungarpur and Udaipur in Rajasthan.

Scope of the assignment

NRMC has been hired by the UNDP to undertake following tasks in the assignment :

a. Undertake a Situation Analysis covering an assessment of the social, economic, political and legal context leading to a detailing of the context at different levels- state, district and village and also contributing to the problem analysis. The situation analysis has been conducted using the following tools

b. Undertake an interim baseline covering the project districts on important indicators with a small sample size to provide rough quantitative estimates for indicators of women empowerment from the project districts to be included in the project proposal

c. Identify critical areas for project design and strategy intervention for improving social, economic, legal and political empowerment of women in the cotton growing areas in the 3 states using

The expected outputs will feed into detailing the project objective, outputs, project strategy, action plan and sustainability plan

d. Develop a results framework for activity planning and suggest project management requirements using

Approach and Methodology Adopted

The overall process of preparing the Project LFA and Proposal involved the following steps:

Process Steps for Design of the Proposal

Undertaking Situation Analysis

In order to undertake situation analysis a thorough secondary review and primary survey was undertaken in selected villages in the seven districts of three states. Secondary data analysis entailed a review and analysis of relevant literature from the Project States on gender, women empowerment, workforce in cotton cultivation, migration in agricultural labour sector, sectors impacting women's livelihoods, etc. Apart from defining the context and informing the problem analysis, the secondary data analysis helped in identifying the best practices in empowerment of poor women in the social, economic, political and legal aspects that can be adopted in the project context and identifying opportunities for convergence with various other initiatives that would lead to better outcomes for the project. The secondary review also helped in finalizing the research instruments for subsequent field visits.

Primary studies were conducted in sample villages of the seven Project Districts to collect quantitative and qualitative information at the community and institutional levels. The surveys looked at the situation of women in the sample villages with respect to the different dimensions of women's empowerment- social, economic, political, and legal.

Stakeholder Consultations

Two state level workshops (one in Ahmedabad and another in Pune) were organized to brief the stakeholders on UNDP's understanding of the project, outcomes of the UNDP-IKEA women empowerment project in UP, draft situation analysis by NRMC of women's empowerment in the Project districts in the two States, and eliciting feedback from stakeholders on problem analysis and possible Project interventions. After a brief presentation on the key findings and observations of the situation analysis study in the two States by NRMC, the stakeholders were divided into Social, Economic and Political & Legal Empowerment groups to seek inputs for problem identification, root cause analysis and scope for probable interventions. In the process potential intervention practices were also discussed and linked to the overarching issues.

Developing Proposal and Budget for the Programme

The Stakeholder consultation workshop outcomes have been used to develop a Project Planning Matrix and nested LFAs detailing the state-wise hierarchy of objectives with Objectively Verifiable Indicators for each Objective, Means of Verification and Important Assumptions, Risks and Risk Mitigation Measures. The main proposal also defines the project approach and strategy, institutional arrangements, project management structures and processes. The proposal is still in the draft stage and final discussions with UNDP will happen in early January to finalize the project proposal.