Approaching Gender Equity Through Indigenous Knowledge and Customs

(Photo by iStock/Gerrit Rautenbach)

International community development has changed significantly over its history, shifting from primarily responding to disaster events to improving communities using a sectoral approach to issues like health, agriculture, and water and sanitation. Then came an awareness that many of these responses heavily benefitted men and were neglecting women and girls and so an emphasis on women and girls developed to directly deliver various benefits under the banner of gender equity. This has largely been through legislation and/or gender-targeted programming that benefits women while better informing and sensitizing men.

While this evolution has contributed somewhat to improving certain metrics of gender equality in certain situations, we have heard from both men and women that this segregated approach often has negative outcomes after a development agency program ends. This should not be surprising, as anytime one segment of a population is favored over another it is likely to create resentment. How visible that resentment is depends on the power of those not benefiting or being penalized.

In late 2021, a small Zimbabwean community-based organization, Score Against Poverty (SCORE), with help from the Canadian government, decided to test out a different approach. We believed that, as social behavior is based on culture, perhaps the road to behavioral social innovation lies through leveraging culture as a positive disrupter of negative gender norms. We also saw an opportunity to test this theory in our work with Shona men and women in the staunchly patriarchal rural area of Mwenezi, Zimbabwe. We thought that, if husbands could be actively engaged in a community-designed program that (a) respected their culture and (b) recognized and reinforced their importance to the family and community in new ways, then not only would this address the weakness of previous approaches but it would assist men in redefining masculinity and associated norms in a positive and supportive way. Further, we thought that the most powerful context in which to do this would be that of household labor and family care. Working with the Fund for Innovation and Transformation, Global Affairs Canada, within ten months, this locality and cultural approach was quickly supported by the evidence in practice.

Walking Within Local Culture

SCORE primarily uses two lenses to highlight and address barriers to equity: locality and a gender strategy for the organization. This article is mostly about the use of a locality approach. To us, this means taking Indigenous knowledge and customs seriously, and believing that within this broad ancient cultural landscape are some elements that are useful and beneficial as well as some that can be harmful and destructive. By walking within this landscape, honoring the positive tools of the culture rather than trying to persuade or coerce people out of it, we can foster change that is more sustainable because the core root structure has not been pulled out. Rather, customs and culture are utilized to support and strengthen the community by pointing out the damage that harmful norms can cause. In a very real way, locality is to social change as psychographics is to business; it takes into account the attitudes, interests, personality, values, opinions, and lifestyle of your participants and their community which in turn allows you to tailor your interventions for sustainability.

Over time, by demonstrating that a community’s cultural ways as well as individuals’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are valued, this process builds trust. That trust is rewarded by engagement and learning on the part of participants. They become more willing to critically evaluate which cultural norms are harmful and which norms patriarchy has manipulated to fit its dominant narratives. This new willingness to consider new ideas leads to experimentation and innovations which are a syncretic blend of ancient norms-customs with modern knowledge, and to new ways of learning and being, which often address the problems of the community.

Men Can Cook

The “Men Can Cook” program test worked with 60 self-selected couples in Mwenezi, with the men committing to participate in both an all-male guided forum and in learning to cook with their wives. This design utilized the cultural tradition of a men-only, safe location, where men can moan and complain without fear of recrimination. The forum would be a place where they could both be vulnerable and be challenged by peers to consider other ideas. In this case it was made known that the issue to be addressed would be gender equity in the home. The couples met every two weeks, coming into a central area by foot or donkey cart. The first week was the men’s forum on gender roles within Shona society. Two weeks later the session was on cooking skills. This pattern was repeated for 10 months.

Quickly, the men identified that the biggest impediment in this arena of family and household equity was the institution of Labola, or bride price, which must be paid by a man or his family to his prospective bride’s family. They were allowed to openly voice how they felt that Labola was unfair and how this affected relationships with wives and children. For example, if a wife dies, all the cattle and belongings that came as part of the bride’s dowry are taken back by the bride’s family. If the bride dies before the full Labola has been paid, however, the husband is not allowed to bury the wife until the bride price has been fully paid, and the man becomes a pariah in the community as a person who cannot bury his wife. Outsiders would never be told this level of detail and therefore their “solutions'' to gender inequality would not be as durable.

SCORE was able to steer this discussion by having local male champions in each group to ask questions and, while not lecturing or criticizing, push beyond the complaint to reach an understanding that this dissatisfaction was not one-sided. Using pictures and drawings, a cultural way of knowing and understanding, the concept of unfairness was expanded to see the unfairness of the expectations placed on a wife. Once the pain and perceived injustice of Labola was acknowledged and openly discussed—not solved, but at least openly looked at—ideas on how to moderate or adapt the practice for their sons and daughters began to emerge. Then the men could move on to other issues and areas within the family, which they could control and change.

On the flip side, from the very beginning, the wives were meeting with a female gender specialist and women champions. The women devised topics they felt the men needed to be aware of for the next meeting, as well as processing and responding to feedback that was raised by the men the previous week. At the same time the wives were introduced to discussion topics like “Are we participating in our own oppression by raising our girls to be good subservient wives,” “Is putting up with abuse part of being a woman?” and “We say we are overworked, but are we willing to let men into our ‘sacred kitchen space’ in return for a better partnership?”

These discussion sessions were essential for both men and women in order to explicitly understand the cultural norms of gender and the effect they have on both genders. When men see other men as role models discussing difficult issues like bride price, cattle, and joint land registration, they find it much easier to adopt alternative, positive norms. In the same way, when women participated in both forum groups and in the cooking training, they were assisted by skilled female gender specialists and by female gender champions to understand what their husbands are trying to say and do and how they, as wives, could facilitate more dialogue and skill development in the home.

This ongoing feedback loop was reinforced in family meetings in the couple’s homestead on alternating weeks. These visits by a gender specialist to the homestead were also an important cultural element, giving honor and status to that family within their community. This in turn provided shade as the couple disrupted cultural norms of what good Shona men and women do or do not do in terms of household chores.

Both genders needed to learn new skills in order to address the shortcomings of the traditional approach. The skills element for the men involved learning to cook. This was hands-on learning about everything involved in cooking, from collecting water and firewood to cleaning the fire area and onward to prepping ingredients, cooking, and serving. The cooking sessions were facilitated by the local home economics teacher but guided by the wives. The program was capped off by a big cooking competition which was a way of showcasing to the community a new social norm.

Using Causal Analysis

Listening to and implementing the desire of wives to directly participate in the cooking component of the program was a pivot that proved extremely powerful. By having the wives at both the forums and the cooking classes, a lot of behavior was able to be modeled and guided in terms of respect. Around the halfway point of the project, a visible change occurred in the wives’ behavior; instead of ridiculing their husbands for mistakes, they began to collaborate. Because of the joint cooking classes, men were not only more comfortable integrating their newfound skills into daily family life, they were encouraging their sons to learn the new skills with them.

All of this meant that the couples spent more time together, which was also a cultural shift. Between traveling and the sessions, they likely spent four to six hours together every other week with new ideas to discuss. They reported this was key to learning how to value each other as partners, rather than the wife being seen simply as an asset, useful for reproduction and labor but no more. Together, the two elements of the program, discussion and skills, combined to address some key causes of the gap between what women would like to change and what men are willing to change.

Two other cultural values were utilized. First, the cultural value of spirituality was introduced, but only at the right time, in the right way. In the final forum session of the program, the chiefs were asked, “Many of the taboos of old times have been broken in this project when it comes to gender norms. Men are now cooking, helping with chores, looking after children, sharing assets. Women are participating in family decisions, working outside the home, becoming leaders in the community. What do you think your leaders, who have passed on, are thinking as they look down on this new way?”

The answer from the chiefs was unequivocal and unanimous, “They would be happy! Otherwise, we would not have been allowed to proceed; the weather, illness, and circumstances would have kept the couples from participating. They are smiling at the happiness of the families.” For the participants to hear their leaders say this was and will be the key to sustainable gender transformation. Nothing an outside organization could do would be as effective as this.

Lastly, the cultural value of leadership was acknowledged by always inviting the community and state leadership to attend and be involved in the program sessions.

The result of using this approach showed astonishing transformational changes in just 10 months, including:

• a positive multi-generational impact on gender equity
• increased family social/emotional well-being, and
• increased family income generation.

Beyond gender equity in the home, various community leaders, relatives, and participants noted several other unexpected dividends as a result of the program:

• Women are now allowed and encouraged to participate on village committees and are appreciated by leaders when they do so.
• Gender-based violence has decreased significantly in the communities.
• Men are continuing to participate in social disruption, advocating on behalf of women in various situations, opening themselves to questions from the community, and signaling to other men to consider new ways of thinking as well.

For Northern Consideration

In order to obtain authentic buy-in from communities and for local community-based organizations (or NGOs) to have effective, sustainable gender-equity programming, donor agencies need to be willing to relinquish more control of programs, giving it over to the community and local CBO to work out. When this happens, unconventional interactions can lead to unexpected positive outcomes. Results emerge which we could not have expected beforehand. Sometimes, to outsiders, things seem to go sideways, and don’t fit our boxes, but in reality, things move up to a higher, healthier, unplanned plane while maintaining the best of the cultural values of the community. From these detours, the community and we eventually see new exciting truths, meaning-making, and possibilities emerging. The magic happens during the process—cooking classes, forum discussions, etc.. That is where anger and control melt away and understanding connects and binds with a new emotion. Change starts flowing and beautiful results emerge.

Implementing agencies, like men, have to be willing to give up a fair amount of control and power in order for this to succeed.

• For implementers/donors, it means partnering with hyper-local partners or, at the very least, the implementers (gender specialists, in this case) need to be from the tribe/culture where the programming is happening, so that they are very aware of the cultural norms.
• It means implementers need to trust the design of the programming to the local community. Not as part of a consultative process, but literally. The donors' job is to keep the project on the financial rails, and to advocate and interpret any requested changes up the line to other donors if needed, but not to control the program in the traditional sense. For us, this meant the leaders of the organizations had weekly WhatsApp check-ins to discuss personal, cultural, and programmatic items. It meant involving the leaders of SCORE in every embassy visit, every conversation that was requested by the Canadian government project officer to work on reports or updates. We also trained the local staff on ways to harvest data and report, especially finances to meet the needs of the donor. All of this builds the capacity of the local agency.
• Donors and agencies should also understand that, for projects involving social change, the standard charts laying out well in advance of a project exactly what will happen if an intervention is applied are NOT useful. Rather, participants should be given an opportunity to define and narrate what the solution looks like for them as part of the process.

Where can we go from here? This localization approach has many applications. We have already used it successfully on a small scale to assist the Zimbabwean ministry of health in negotiating a much stronger buy-in from the community for using COVID-19 protocols, to assist police in rural areas when their job involves enforcement of health or emergency mandates, to increase equity in traditional male fields like construction, and in small-scale agriculture projects. The largest challenge now is finding donors who will help extend this locality approach to other communities.

A lack of gender equity in the home is prevalent globally, although it presents very differently across different geographies. The principle of locality, when implemented authentically, can assist in developing powerful ways to address this.

Read more stories by Vurayayi Pugeni, Caroline Pugeni & Dan Maxson.