The 4th International Workshop
on the Evaluation of Social Development,
Does empowerment start at
home?
And if so how will we recognise
it?
By Rick Davies[1], revised Tuesday, 18 April 2000
1. Where to look?
Oakley (1999) has provided a helpful overview of
common approaches to empowerment in development, and the key issues involved in
monitoring and evaluating empowerment. In the first section of this overview,
which focuses upon the concept of empowerment, James (1999) refers to a growing
scepticism about the use of the concept:
"Notions of
sharing power, of stakeholders, of participation and representation and so on
seem to refer increasingly to the self contained the world of projects
themselves: the external structures of land holding and subsistence economy
which have perhaps been disrupted, of political and military formations which
have shaped and still shape the forms of social life in a region, tend to fade
from view in the world of development speak."
Contrary to James I would like to argue in
favour of such a focus, and even argue that perhaps as a trend it has not gone
far enough. The reason for taking this line is however a concern about a
similar type of myopia that James is concerned about. Organisations can easily
become caught up in (and carried away by) their own rhetoric, regardless of
which end of the political spectrum they place themselves. A more self-critical
examination of organisational behaviour may be useful. Maybe we need to learn
to crawl before we can learn to walk, and fly (e.g. address wider political and
military formations).
I would suggest that
the most appropriate way to assess achievements with empowerment is to start at
home, with the organisation that wants to empower others. Referred to hereafter
as an NGO, for convenience sake. We should start by examining an NGOs'
immediate relationships, especially with the people it is trying to empower. We
should also look at relationships between staff within that NGO and that NGOs'
relationships with its own donors and supporters.
There are three
reasons for taking this position. Firstly, economy of effort. All of this
information should be close at hand, and thus much easier to access compared to
information about their client's relationship with other individuals and
organisations. Secondly, empowerment in this relationship should be the easiest
to achieve. An NGO espousing empowerment should be able to act in those terms
at least within its own span of management control. We should expect results here
before anywhere else. Thirdly, the experience of empowerment in this
relationship should provide a useful model of what can be done, effecting
clients' expectations of other organisations. Ideally this experience should
help them to be empowered in relationships with other significant people and
institutions in their lives. On the other hand, if empowerment cannot be
achieved here then what sort of confidence can clients have in their
relationships with much less altruistic organisations?
We can take the same argument one step back, to
the relationships between senior and junior staff within the assisting NGOs. We
could make a second assumption that if field staff within an NGO are empowered
in relationship to their superiors, then we might expect that that they in turn
will be able to be empowering in their relationships with their immediate
clients. A third and more provisional assumption can be made. That is, the
state of an NGO's relationship with its donors and significant government
authorities may reflect its capacity for empowerment of others. My caution here
is due to the fact that NGOs are usually located in a network of relationships
with other organisations, not in a simple dominating hierarchy.
These statements are assumptions, which should
be treated as hypotheses to be tested, not obvious truths. They could form the
basis of a useful research project. More immediately, they may stimulate a
discussion in a meeting like this, which might suggest how useful such a
research project would be. At best, their usefulness would become immediately
apparent and people would go straight ahead and put these ideas to work in a
practical way.
Proximate versus proxy indicators
A proxy indicator is simply a substitute
indicator. What is being proposed above is something different, a proximate indicator. That is, evidence
which is more immediately at hand - because it is closer to us in the chain of
causation between what we do and what we hope will ultimately happen in the
lives of people we are trying to empower.
In addition to the practical arguments put
forward above, a proximate indicator has an additional "theoretical"
advantage. In order to identify a proximate indicator, as above, we have to pay
some attention to theorising how our intervention will have an effect. If we
find our proximate indicator shows no evidence of empowerment, then there are
two possibilities. One is that we failed, and did not manage to empower anyone.
The other is that our theory of how empowerment comes about was incorrect. If
we change the theory of expected cause-and-effect and come up with other
proximate indicators, then we might still find some evidence of
empowerment.
2. What to look for?
In this section I will outline three types of
indicators of empowerment, where evidence should be close at hand. They are all
qualitative indicators, and they are all based on the concept of difference.
The base assumption is that for a person to be able to say or do something
differently involves some degree of choice. Having more choice, compared to the
past, implies empowerment. This view can be related to Jo Rowlands (1997)
concept of "power to", as mentioned in Oakley's review.
Three types of difference will be considered:
·
Differences of opinions between
individuals
·
Differences between the activities
undertaken by individuals
·
Differences in organisational structures
2.1 Differences of opinion.
In a healthy relationship between two
individuals we might expect that both are able to freely express their
opinions, including their differences,
without putting the future of that relationship at risk. Similarly, if
clients are empowered in their relationship with an NGO then we might expect
them to be able to freely and openly express their differences of opinion with
that NGO. The larger the NGO and the number of clients it is working with, the
more differences of opinion we might expect to find, if those clients are
empowered in relationship to that NGO.
In the mid 1990's I was working with a large
Bangladeshi NGO which had offices in many different parts of the country. Each
of these offices was working through a number of large structures known as
"people's organisations". There were more than 70 such organisations
spread across the country. Given the number and scale of the organisations
involved it seemed inevitable that many kinds of differences of opinion would
exist between that NGO and the various people's organisations they were working
with. However, when I asked some individual senior staff about the existence of such differences I was
told, rather surprisingly, that there were none. The same opinion was repeated
again more strenuously in a large meeting between this NGO and its donors. If
this reported lack of difference was really true, then the implications were
very serious. Either the organisations concerned were either failing to
communicate their members views, or worse, they were not even recognising their
members' views. If the difference of opinion actually existed, but were not
being reported by staff, this would also be dis-empowering of the people's
organisations and their members. At the very least it would discourage any
macro-level differentiation of assistance being provided to those people's
organisations. This argument could be tested.
This unwillingness to disclose difference could
of course be seen as primarily a reflection of that staff member's perception
of his relationship with me as an outside consultant hired by one of their
major donors. At the field level there may well have been many areas of
disagreement which most of the staff were all too well aware of. However, if
this was the case, then it suggests even more serious problems. In what should
have been one of the most supportive relationships the organisation has with
various organisations in its institutional environment these staff members
still felt defensive and were unable to assert the truth as they knew it,
without fear of any repercussions. If senior staff were not empowered to do so,
then to what extent should we be expecting them to be empowering their own
field workers?
In other more recent settings, in the Cameroon
in 1999, I have found field staff of a development project ready and able to
talk about the most significant differences of opinion between their team and
the communities they were working with (as represented through various
committees). I have also found they were willing to talk about the most
significant disagreements within their team. The senior management of this
project has subsequently taken steps to institutionalise the reporting of such
differences in the team's six monthly reports, along with a number of other
changes to the project's monitoring system. I have since learned that one of
the four field staff teams were now unwilling to report differences of opinion
within their own team. In my judgement this team was one of the less effective
of the four area team's of field staff. The other area teams were willing to
report on internal differences and appeared to be more capable in their work.
The actions of the non-disclosing team suggested vulnerability rather than
empowerment.
2.2 Differences in behaviour
At the population level, diversity of behaviour
can be seen as a gross indicator of agency (of the ability to make choices), relative to homogenous behaviour by the
same set of people. Diversity of behaviour suggests there is a range of
possibilities which individuals can pursue[2].
At the other extreme is standardisation of behaviour, which we often associate
with limited choice. The most notable example being perhaps that of an army. An
army is a highly organised structure where individuality is not encouraged, and
where standardised and predictable behaviour is very important.
Like the term "NGO" or
"non-profit", diversity is defined by something that it is not - a condition where there is no common
constraint, which would otherwise lead to a homogeneity of response.
Homogeneity of behaviour may arise from various
sources of constraint. A flood may force all farmers in a large area to move
their animals to the high ground. Everybody's responses are the same, when
compared to what they would be doing on normal day. At a certain time of the
year all farmers may be planting the same crop. Here homogeneity of practice
may reflect common constraints arising from a combination of sources: the
nature of the physical environment, and the nature of particular local
economies.
Constraints on diversity can also arise within
the assisting organisation. Credit programs can impose rules on loan use,
specific repayment schedules and loan terms, as well as limiting when access to
credit is available, or how quickly approval will be give.
Ideally, the diversity of economic activities
undertaken by an NGO's clients, with the assistance of NGO credit, will be greater
than that which existed before or without the NGO credit. We could then
theorise as to which of the NGO imposed constraints make the biggest difference
to the diversity of activities undertaken with that credit. Timing of credit
availability may, for example, make a bigger difference than the absolute
amount of credit available for any one loan. The removal of that constraint
would then become one proximate indicator of empowerment in that setting.
What we then need are ways of separating out the
sources of constraint, at different scales of analysis. At the more macro level
there are constraints arising the assisting organisation, versus the economic
and physical environment. At the more micro-level there are the constraints
arising from different requirements associated with agency services. One way is
to look for differences in diversity
across different settings. This issue will be returned to later in this
paper.
2.3 Differences in organisational structures.
As Fritz Wills (2000: 6) has pointed out,
"the subjects of empowerment - the ultimate beneficiaries - can be both
groups and individuals". One way of identifying the absence of empowerment
in a set of organisations is to look for homogeneity in their structures and
processes. One interesting example are
the peoples' organisations of the kind that have been promoted by the large
NGOs in
One candidate proximate indicator of
organisational diversity is the degree to which the control over financial
resources is decentralised, or not. To what extent do they have control, if any
over grant funds, and to what extent do they make final decisions over loan
authorisations? In the past, the evidence for significant devolution of financial
control has not been very impressive. In 1991 IIED sent a questionnaire out to
more than 1,000 rural development organisations in 50 countries. The main conclusion of their research was
that "local community participation
in problems assessment and analysis is fairly common...[but] substantially less
so for the monitoring and evaluation phases and more notably, there is very
limited complete financial control given to the local community in all four
phases of the work" (Guijt, 1991).
3. How to monitor change?
3.1 Differences in opinions
In the
This table was constructed by the members of a
Natural Resources Management Committee. This is an apex group representing a
wide range of different stakeholders interested in the fate of a nearby forest
area called Bimbia Bonadikombo, in southern
|
|
Most Significant Disagreement in the
last 6 months |
|
|
Resolved |
Unresolved |
|
|
Internal
(within NRMC) |
Definition of who is a stakeholder: This
affects who is represented in the NRMC, and thus how their interests are
addressed. |
When to conduct a farm survey in
northern Bimbia Bonadikombo:
If neglected, people in that area may
feel marginalised |
|
External
(with
others) |
Location of Inner Core boundary of
the forest reserve. (northern
part): (Consequences not
detailed) |
Low incentives paid to Management
Committee members during field work: (Consequences not
detailed) |
Each cell was expected to contain information -
in the form of a "difference that makes a difference" The difference
of opinion that was identified as most significant is in bold. The consequences
of that difference are given in italics. It is expected that this information
will be collected on a six-monthly basis. At the end of a six-monthly reporting
period three different forms of change are possible:
·
The worst possibility will be that the
contents of all the cells are the same. Unresolved issues remain unresolved. In
the face of this problem, no other important issues have emerged and been
resolved.
·
A better result will be that the contents
of half the cells remain the same and half have changed. Either: (a) The
unresolved issues remain the same, but other important issues have arisen and
been resolved. These will be visible in the first column. Or: (b) The most
important unresolved issues from the previous 6 months have been resolved, but
other important issues that have arisen have not yet been resolved. In this
case the contents of the second column would have moved to the first column,
and there would be new contents in the second column.
·
In the best case the contents of all
cells will have changed completely. Previously unresolved issues have been
resolved and new more important issues have arisen and been resolved.
These three grades of evidence could be made
more substantial by providing more cases. Additional rows representing
differences between other types of stakeholders could be included. The relative
significance of resolved and unresolved differences in any row could in turn be
weighted, by ranking rows such that the most important relationships were at
the top, and the least important at the bottom of the table.
3.2 Diversity of behaviour and organisational structures
Some changes in diversity are self-evident. In a
savings and credit groups new
economic activities may be undertaken for the first time, and easily be
reported on by the members themselves, or others. The range of activities undertaken by one group compared to another may
also be easy to identify in many circumstances. This aspect of diversity has been
described as "variety", by
A more sophisticated assessment might look at
the degree of concentration, in terms of numbers of people involved, or amount
of money invested, in one category of activity versus others.
In the case of human activities
However, in an earlier unpublished paper I have
spelled out a "tree mapping" method which can be used to elicit
peoples' classification of other people, places or events, (Davies, 1997). This
method leads to a nested categorisation structure, of the same kind as shown
above.
Furthermore, the subjectivity of this method is
not necessarily a problem, if it is applied in an appropriate context. At this
stage it is useful to return back to the idea of proximate indicators,
discussed in section 1 of this paper. Diversity may exist to some degree in
reality, but what matters also is the extent to which that diversity is recognised or not, especially by key
actors within the assisting NGOs. If field staff, or middle managers, do not
recognise important differences between their clients (in their behaviour or
opinions, for example), they cannot respond differentially. Their denial of
difference is effectively dis-empowering.
On the other hand, the ability to differentiate
clients' opinions and behaviours to a great degree of detail (i.e. using many
categories and sub-categories) holds out the potential to be empowering.
Clients different needs and opinions may be responded to in an appropriate manner.
If differences are recognised in great detail, then we can go on to check less
proximate indicators of empowerment.
The tree mapping method was designed to elicit
informal and almost tacit knowledge. We can also go on to explore whether NGO
staff recognise client differences in other ways. We can look at an
organisation's formal representations of its world, including its client
population. We can look at progress reports and annual reports and examine the
type of differences that are prioritised in the form of the report structure:
its headings and sub-headings, and even the structuring of paragraphs within
those sub-sections. To what extent are major differences between clients the
basis of this structure, or are they even visible at all? My own experience
with this sort of analysis over the past few years is that clients differences
are rarely the basis of report structures, and instead the focus is on
differences between the various activities the NGO is implementing[4].
This experience reinforces my view that James' concern about organisational
myopia on power issues was not misplaced, but rather that he was seriously
underestimating the scale of the problem. The lack of recognition of
differences between clients suggests that many organisations have serious
difficulty with the most basic of empowerment tasks, that is simply listening to people.
4. Wider issues: The limits to empowerment
There are clearly limits to the scale on which
empowerment can take place. Some differences of opinion between individuals
cannot be expressed without undermining the future of their relationship. Some
differences in needs between clients cannot be responded to by an NGO because
those responses are seen by itself, or its donors, as being outside the NGO's
ambit, its raison d'être. At the level of larger groups and societies the
extension of some forms of choice (e.g. gun ownership) may diminish other forms
of choice, and even threaten a larger scale collapse of choice (e.g. via civil
war). In the biosphere, the diversity of ecosystems can be degraded, rather
than extended, through the introduction of new species (e.g. cats in the
Australian bush). The relationship between individual and collective
empowerment is obviously a complex one.
When we are talking about empowerment we are, by
definition, not able to specify particular desirable outcomes at the level of
individuals. Such an approach contradicts the very notion of choice. But we can
define desirable outcomes in their collective form, at a population level. In
the paragraph above, the implied ideal is a sustainable
expansion of diversity. Such a view can even be applied as an ideal beyond
the human sphere, to the wider biosphere. Doing so is a salutary exercise, to
say the least, since homo sapiens is believed to be responsible for the most
recent "great extinction" of species (
--o0o--
Afterword
Proximate indicators may be helpful in advocacy
work, where the chain of causation is often long and intermeshed with the
influence of many other actors. For example, NGOs could start by looking at
those who have been the immediate recipients of their advocacy communications
and ask what types of changes would they would expect to find in that persons
knowledge and attitudes if advocacy messages were beginning to have an effect.
Do the people concerned know more than they have been originally told? In what
areas have they developed more knowledge and what does that signify?
References:
Davies, R.J. (1997) Tree Maps: A Tool for Structuring, Exploring and
Summarising Qualitative Information. Unpublished paper. http://www.mande.co.uk/treemap.htm
Guijt, I. (1991) Perspectives on Participation: Views From
James, W. (1999) "Empowering
Ambiguities" in Cheater, A. (1999) The
Anthropology of Power: Empowerment and Disempowerment in Changing Societies.
Oakley, P. (1999) The Monitoring and Evaluation of Empowerment. Resource Document for
the 4th International Workshop on the Evaluation of Social
Development,
Rowlands, J. (1997) Questioning Empowerment.
Wills, F. (2000) Empowerment and its Evaluation: A Framework for Analysis and
Application. Prepared for the 4th International Workshop on the
Evaluation of Social Development,