Dismantling Bias: Lessons Learning from Grameen Foundation's Gender and Power Dynamics Trainings

Dismantling Bias: Lessons Learning from Grameen Foundation's Gender and Power Dynamics Trainings with Women and Girls Empowered (WAGE) Programs
July 22, 2023
To foster gender equality and empower women at the personal and organizational level, Grameen Foundation provided Gender and Power Dynamics (GPD) trainings between 2020 and 2022 to key managerial, technical, and administrative staff of WAGE’s implementing partner organizations (including microfinance institutions (MFIs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Honduras, El Salvador, Ghana, Eswatini, and Timor-Leste. Using participatory methodologies, the GPD trainings led participants through critical self-reflection and analysis to enable the articulation of proposals for change at personal and organizational levels. Participants were empowered to examine the connections between gender inequality, power dynamics, GBV, and women’s economic empowerment (WEE) by tackling the harmful gender norms that restrict women’s involvement in society. Using an intersectional approach, the trainings provided a framework for analyzing these issues, allowing participants to gain insights into the complex relationships and interdependencies among gender norms, power structures, GBV, and women’s empowerment.
To support the WAGE consortium learning agenda question that sought to understand successful ways to design and implement women’s empowerment programs that apply the principles of a) do no harm/safeguarding; and b) diversity and inclusion, an evaluation of the GPD trainings was conducted to determine whether the GPD methodology is effective at sensitizing implementers on the target learning agenda issues. The completion of the evaluation was followed by an event that took place on June 22, 2023 to share key findings and lessons learned from the GPD methodology. Event panelists included Awal Ahmed Kariama, Executive Director, Rural Initiatives for Self-Empowerment Ghana (RISE), Bobbi Gray, Sr. Research Director, Grameen Foundation USA, and Amelia Kuklewicz, Vice President Programs, Grameen Foundation USA.