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New Perspectives in Project Management
Topic 2: Projects, People and Participation: Introduction
to Gender-Equity, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI
February 2024
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Objectives
On completion of this topic, you should be able to:
• Begin to evaluate the benefits and challenges of understanding
your own unrecognised biases.
• Describe the challenges of engaging with women and members
of socially vulnerable groups in communities.
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The Dalai Lama
15 November, 2005.
Washington, D.C.
“I believe the 21st century can become the most important century of
human history. I think a new reality is emerging”.
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What are socially vulnerable groups (SVGs)?
World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) Guidance Note 14 – 12
provides for differentiated mitigation measures to protect ‘vulnerable’ people,
defined in GN14 – 12, footnote 18 as:
This disadvantaged or vulnerable status may stem from an individual’s
or group’s race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion,
national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. The client should
also consider factors such as gender, age, ethnicity, culture, literacy,
sickness, physical or mental disability, poverty or economic
disadvantage, and dependence on unique natural resources.
Generally consultants focus on - women, people with a disability, the elderly,
young people, children, and people of ethnic or religious minority groups.
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Human rights and social safeguards
The international resource development sector requires gender and human rights assessments of projects.
The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which supervises Australia’s aid projects,
requires social safeguards. The DFAT policy:
• sets out why DFAT applies specific safeguards.
• identifies safeguard principles to guide how DFAT manages environmental and social safeguards, including
when working with partners.
• sets out requirements for five key safeguards:
o Environmental protection
o Children, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups
o Displacement and resettlement
o Indigenous peoples
o Health and safety.
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Stakeholder Engagement and Community Consultation:
What are the challenges of engaging stakeholders and consulting with
rights-holders and communities?
Projects often fail to meet their objectives, return only limited value on
investment, and do not meet the needs of the target communities.
We need to understand the social, political and economic context of water
development projects. To do this we need to:
o Examine our unrecognised biases.
o Understand and value ‘gender’.
o Recognise the needs, interests and concerns of members of
‘socially vulnerable groups’ (SVGs).
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Traditional project
management
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21st century development project competencies (Helgadóttir 2007 (Helgadóttir
2007)
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Kurilpa Bridge, Brisbane
Innovative tensile design – creative thinking
Provides own solar power for lighting display –
creative, critical and logical thinking
Provides excess solar power to buildings at the
bridge’s footprint – logical and ethical thinking
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Rice terraces, Bali
Indigenous Knowledge(s)/
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
(TEK)
Use of local religious
leaders’/priests’ knowledge of water
Development of water project
reflecting Balinese love of curvilinear
design
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Toni Morrison [Link]
Toni Morrison – African-American
Nobel Prize winner for Literature
“If you're going to hold someone
down you're going to have to hold on
by the other end of the chain. You
are confined by your own
repression”.
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Harvard Implicit Association Test
Over 75% of the U.S. population has a faster response time when
male is paired with science, and female is paired with humanities –
no matter the order of the exercise.
Evaluate your implicit bias across a range of topics at Harvard
University’s site: [Link]
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New ways of thinking to consult with communities
Develop the skills to work in multi-disciplinary teams using trans-disciplinary
knowledge.
Recognise the value of co-operation and the communities who use it, e.g. PNG
drought.
Engage with communities and recognise and value Indigenous Knowledge(s)
(IK) and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).
Deliver long term value via:
- Leadership, and the confidence to put forward your ideas.
- An understanding of cognition, including your own and other people’s ways of thinking.
- Recognition of your own (unrecognised/unconscious) bias.
- Valuing the human rights of all citizens.
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What is ‘unrecognised bias’?
We receive 11 million bits of information every moment.
We can only consciously process 40 bits of information.
Unrecognised biases are a product of implicit associations and
values.
Implicit associations are how we categorise people.
- For example, women are better care-givers to children and the elderly,
men are good at science.
Values are the core goals, interests, and beliefs that inform what we
desire and strive to attain - values determine what we work for.
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Combatting ‘unrecognised bias’ – educate
yourself!
Values assessment, as part of a comprehensive leadership development
program, is an effective way to enable leaders/managers to become aware of
their unrecognized biases.
Use your training in academic critical thinking.
Question your knowledge via epistemology, i.e. how do we know what we
know?
Acknowledge your categorization of ‘others’ and how you think about social
difference.
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The young and
the elderly
Ensuring water reaches
the household
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Successful water project examples
Children’s playground – Brisbane South Bank.
Inclusion of Indigenous people in consultation processes – Murray Darling Basin Plan.
Inclusion of people with a disability – The Mali Water and Disabilities Study has worked to develop low-
cost alternatives to improve latrines and wells for disabled individuals in rural communities in south-eastern
Mali, Africa – see Norman, R. Water, Sanitation and Disability in Rural West Africa: Enhancing Access and
Use of WASH Facilities, The Hilton Report 2010.
Research shows that the additional cost to make a school latrine accessible to disabled people is 3%; to
retrofit is 28%.
The most cost-effective way is to incorporate accessibility into the design from the outset - this is known
as ‘inclusive design’.
Inclusive design means a user-friendly, child-friendly design which benefits all users, including adolescent
girls, small children, and children who are sick.
Location, distance and approach path accessibility also must be included in initial design.
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What can we do?
• Research examples and case studies of WASH projects in other countries
that are addressing women, people with a disability, and social inclusion
generally, especially in WASH projects.
• Engage in field research in the target communities so that you learn what are
the key needs, interests and concerns of all the community members.
• Ensure that projects are planned, designed and actioned using the research
data that has been obtained.
• Monitor and evaluate projects according to performance indicators that
assess the inclusion of women, people with a disability, and other socially
vulnerable groups.
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Why bother?:
Win-win examples
Sub-Saharan Africa.
The Barefoot College, India.
[Link]
development/2011/jun/24/india-barefoot-college-solar-
power-training
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So what happens
when things
go wrong?
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What happens when we fail to consult and plan with all
members of socially vulnerable groups?
We fail to involve all community members.
We may create a project no-one wants.
The community may never ‘own’ and thereby support the project.
We fail to respond to the diversity and culture of the communities the project is targeting.
We breach the human rights of women and members of socially vulnerable groups.
We entrench already existing oppressive social relationships.
We create the potential for commercial risk and potential reputational damage, to our
government agency or to our private corporation/ company, e.g.
- Barrick Gold in Western Province, PNG. - Encana Oil Pipeline, Ecuador.
- Narmada Dam system, India. - Campaigns against ‘fracking’ and
coal seam gas extraction, Australia.
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People demand to know whether
their water is fit for drinking.
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Example of disability inclusiveness, Nepal
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Small group exercise
Using the concept of socially inclusive design for a toilet block in a public park in
a rural township in Afghanistan, consider:
- Does everyone use a toilet in the same way?
- What about persons with a disability, children, the elderly, and
pregnant women?
- What else are toilet blocks in remote and/or rural communities used
for?
- Are there particular social groups whose needs must be recognised
for the project design to be socially inclusive?
Design a toilet block that is inclusive for all users.
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Small group exercise
Describe to your colleagues a project you have worked on that
targeted or impacted members of socially vulnerable groups.
Share with your colleagues the challenges you faced in working to
include them.
Make notes to share with the class.
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