Thinking about gender concerns can also help project teams mitigate key risks such as GBV or unintended consequences associated with infrastructure projects.
a. Risks Related to Labor Influx and Civil Works
Construction of large-scale infrastructure projects such as highways or dams often involves the influx of a large pool of external labor and their "followers" into an area or community. There are documented instances where this large labor influx has been linked to adverse project impacts, including incidents of GBV and violence against children.31
The World Bank note Managing the Risks of Adverse Impacts on Communities from Temporary Project Induced Labor Influx (2016) lists three key principles to bear in mind:
i. Reduce labor influx by tapping into the local workforce;
ii. Assess and manage labor-influx risk based on appropriate instruments, namely the Environment and Social Impact Assessment, sector assessments, or other relevant studies; and
iii. Incorporate social and environmental mitigation measures into the civil works contract.
The same note also details several questions project planners should bear in mind when thinking about the possible consequences of labor influx:
• Will the project take place in a rural or urban environment?
• What is the scale of the labor influx?
• Does the local community have the capacity to absorb incoming workers, or will separate camp facilities be necessary?
• What is the geographic span of the project, and how many communities will project activities affect?
• Will the project be able to monitor implementation over the full span of the work?
To determine the project-related risks of GBV, infrastructure-project planners should also consider the following questions at the outset of project preparations:
• Are country-level rates of GBV higher than regional averages?32
• What are women's and men's attitudes to sexual harassment and GBV?
• What protections from violence does the existing legal framework provide women and children in the country of focus, particularly as related to i) child and early marriage; ii) domestic violence; iii) sexual harassment; and iv) marital rape?33
• Are there prevailing socio-cultural norms that minimize women's roles or participation in the public and private spheres?34
• Will the project take place in a fragile or conflict-affected environment?35
In addition to these points to bear in mind, planners should note that often national legislations fail to make sufficient legal provisions for the diverse forms of GBV (for example, physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence) as related to workplace environments; thus, the project will need to put in place sufficient mitigation measures to prevent such occurrences.
Box 11 provides an example of how to use procurement as a tool to mitigate GBV risks in infrastructure civil-works contracts. This is an interesting concept and way of using procurement as a tool.
Box 11: World Bank Vanuatu Aviation Project Considers Local Context and Introduces Codes of Conduct to Reduce Gender-Based Violence and Violence Against Children The eight small Pacific Island Countries (PIC8), including the Republic of Vanuatu, have some of the highest incidences of GBV in the world.36 Women in more than half of the PIC8 countries suffer from partner or non-partner violence, which has major traumatic and disempowering effects. GBV is often associated with poverty, poor health, lack of housing, and increased stress on children's development, education and nutrition.37 Bearing this local context in mind, the World Bank team preparing the Vanuatu Aviation Investment Project, which is designed to bring critical upgrades to improve the safety and efficiency of Vanuatu's aviation sector,38 decided to incorporate mechanisms in the project that limited the risks of GBV. They embedded provisions in bidding documents for runway civil works that require the contractor to take responsibility for implementation, enforcement and monitoring of a code of conduct covering GBV. Subsequently the project established "The Codes of Conduct and Action Plan to Prevent GBV as well as Violence Against Children (VAC)," which apply to this Vanuatu project, as well as work in Tuvalu and Samoa. The aim of these documents was to introduce: "a set of key definitions, core Codes of Conduct, and guidelines that establish mechanisms for preventing, reporting and addressing GBV and VAC within the work site and in its immediate surrounding communities. These Codes of Conduct are to be adopted by those working on the project and are meant to: (i) create common awareness about GBV and VAC; (ii) ensure a shared understanding that they have no place in the project; and, (iii) create a clear system for identifying, responding to, and sanctioning GBV and VAC incidents."39 Through the contractor, the project also established a working relationship with a local organization to manage referrals and service provisions for victims of GBV. The World Bank team that introduced this innovative idea into the project remarked that it was important to get client buy-in for the concept as well as contractor buy-in. With regards to getting the contractor buy-in, it was noted that this obligation would come at no cost to the contractor-the cost of this additional awareness building and training around GBV was built into the bill of quantity; thus, the cost of staff attending GBV and VAC training would not affect their bottom line.40 At the time of writing this primer, this approach of using codes of conduct was still being tested and monitored to ensure rigorous learning. In addition to this project, in October 2017, the World Bank Group incorporated enhancements to the environmental, social, health and safety aspects of its Standard Bidding Documents for Procurement of Works (among other standard procurement documents) to include additional provisions on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and GBV.41 |
b. Risks of Not Achieving the Development Aims or Service-Quality Standards of the Infrastructure Project
While no infrastructure project can please everyone, failure to conduct gender analysis upfront can lead to poor outcomes. One example in Zanzibar, where women were excluded from the stakeholder-consultation process, demonstrated the real effects of this. Due to existing socio-cultural norms, when electricity came to Uroa village, Zanzibar women were excluded from the process. As a result, spaces predominately used by men, such as the village mosque and the local fish market, were electrified, whereas those used by women, like the grain mill and the kindergarten, were not.42
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31 Some examples are mentioned in: Gupta, Geeta Rao and Sierra, Katherine, Working together to prevent sexual exploitation and abuse: recommendations for World Bank investment projects (English), World Bank Group, 2017.
32 This information may be available in country-level Demographic and Health Surveys conducted periodically by the World Health Organization (WHO), or by other international actors (http://dhsprogram.com/What-We-Do/Survey-Types/DHS.cfm).
33 These data have been aggregated and are available in the Women, Business and the Law dataset, a World Bank product that collects data on laws and regulations constraining women's entrepreneurship, employment and agency (http://wbl.worldbank.org/data/exploretopics/protecting-women-from-violence).
34 Information on the prevalence or strength of patriarchal norms that may serve to disempower women may be available across a range of sources, including the World Values Survey, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), Gallup, or stakeholder consultations and interviews, particularly with women's groups and organizations.
35 Global evidence indicates that incidence of GBV often increases before and during conflicts and persists even after conflicts end because, among other factors, exposure to conflict may contribute to greater tolerance for violence (IASC 2015).
36 Systematic Country Diagnostic for Eight Small Pacific Island Countries: Priorities for Ending Poverty and Boosting Shared Prosperity, World Bank, 2016. License: Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 IGO (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO).
37 Ibid.
38 See Vanuatu Aviation Investment Project Page for more information: http://projects.worldbank.org/P154149/?lang=en&tab=overview.
39 From the VAIP CoC and Action Plan.
40 This was discussed at an internal World Bank event on March 6, 2017. Some of this content may eventually be posted on the World Bank's Open Learning Campus: https://olc.worldbank.org/content/using-codes-conduct-prevent-and-respond-gender-based-violence-lessons-Pacific-islands-and/.
41 These documents can be found at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/products-and-services/brief/procurement-new-framework#SPD/.
42 Winther, Tanja, The impact of electricity: Development, desires and dilemmas, Berghahn Books, 2008.