An Interculturalist’s Lens with Rose Wilder
Tell us what led you into International Relations & Development work and what the lens of women has been in it?
Experiencing adversity in my childhood showed me that there were different ways of being in this world. I grew up quite poor with a single mother and was placed in foster care at the age of nine. I was later adopted into a middle class family; these experiences highlighted how families in the same state/area could have different approaches to living/being in the world. After a high school trip to Nicaragua, I knew I wanted to see the world and experience living in places and cultures different from my own. I naturally gravitated towards a career in international development, especially towards marginalised populations, such as women. In reflection, this is likely due to my own upbringing and questioning whether the social services system was well tailored to the needs of my birth mother; as well as my own identity as a woman.
What have you learned about women and girls over the years?
Women experience time poverty — so it’s important to factor this into design to further minimize it
Women can multitask at much greater capacities than men, and while that is a bonus, it’s important to remember that many of these tasks on their plate are unpaid care labour, which is not monetised. This is often due to inequitable gender norms around household responsibilities, inclusive of childcare. Women globally experience time poverty and as a result, they have less time for themselves (socializing), less time to rest and sleep, etc. In my current work around women’s economic inclusion, for example, we are always asking the question: what extra responsibility will women be shouldering if we design it in this way? Some recommendations to factor in designing to mitigate further time poverty could be to explore labour saving technology or inclusion of behavior change messaging around more equitable household responsibilities.
Women thrive with collective power
Although this is a generalisation, women and girls are below men and boys in most social and cultural hierarchies in the world. The manifestation of this in everyday life – in the form of major or minor transgressions — leads to normalising, and thus women often internalising this lower social status. But when you bring women together in a community, it can give them a collective bargaining power to work against the same transgressions. They’re able to share tactical tips with each other about how they went about addressing or resolving different challenges. Further, it creates a peer support network, and women no longer feel alone with their challenges, which can be empowering. They know that they’re not alone and can go to others to ask for help navigating issues they may face.
What advice would you have for someone creating a product, service, or community for women?
Acknowledge the role of men
Although a lot of development programs are designed to target women because data shows that when you empower a woman, you’re empowering the household (since she’s more likely to re-invest into her family), it’s key not to forget the men of the family. Because there are social hierarchies and cultural dynamics involved, programs that exclude (or do not factor) men can create tensions or put women in precarious situations. Whether it’s a product, service, or program, it’s important to evaluate how the experience will affect her relationship with the other household members, especially male members. And further, if your program or service is designed to be delivered to spouses together, you should factor the scenario that male counterparts do not attend/show up. Thus, equipping women of the household to transfer the knowledge intended from the program or service or identifying alternate pathways to ensure male members receive the necessary information. It’s also important to design for men in a way that piques their interest and allows for shared responsibilities in the household (and wider community) that are equitable and empowering. For example, we delivered a sexual violence sensitization recently and feedback indicated that many of the men who attended had the perspective that this doesn’t affect them as they did not experience sexual violence directly. Thus, the missed connection of this being perpetuated against their wives, mothers, sisters, female community members, by male counterparts was lost in the message; feedback for us to improve in future iterations! Gender norms are deeply ingrained and take time to shift, but these are realities we must factor into design.
Factor in (and be aware of) preferred communication styles
It’s important to note that not all cultures/people have the same preferred communication styles (i.e. how they convey meaning — verbally/non-verbally). This preferred style of communicating is learned and informs our culture and world views. There are cultures that prefer direct communication and others that prefer indirect communication. Other dimensions are power distance (hierarchical vs. egalitarian), universal vs. particular, time orientation, high or low context communication. Communication preferences play a big role in behavior change, as the behaviors we can observe are informed by deep-level culture—values and beliefs that we cannot see, but have been learned from birth. An example, would be developing a conflict management sensitization and designing/delivering it from a preferred direct communication style, when the culture you are operating in has a preference for indirect communication styles--such a blunder could actually create more tension. This is a significant gap in development programming. For example, despite billions of dollars in aid investment in Africa, there is scant literature on country or culture-specific communication styles--instead current literature generalizes at the continental level for the whole of Africa.
Understand (and factor) who will deliver your message/product
In a community or household program designed to improve equitable gender norms for example, we hired and trained community members to deliver the curriculum messages to participants. Thus, in addition to the end-user/audience, the product we designed also had to factor the profile of who will deliver that messaging. As we know, gender norms are deeply ingrained, thus we also had to factor that our community staff may hold inequitable knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) around gender. Thus, we designed to include trainings, refresher trainings, and supervision structures to support community staff, as well as monitoring structures to assess both participant and staff changes in KAP on gender. From experience and internal monitoring, we have noticed that men can often be the catalysts of change around gender norms given their higher social standing in both the household and community, and thus have the power to create change and act as a change-maker in these forums. That said, they also have the power to reinforce harmful norms, thus it is important to factor that community staff (male or female) are supported in this work and are equipped to deliver the information/product that has been designed as intended to the end-user.
Where else in the world do you wish to see more intentionally designed offerings for women?
The digital divide
With the advent of everything becoming digital in the age of COVID-19, there is a key population that’s left out of that—women, especially poor/hard to reach women. This boom in digital solutions to address the needs of individuals in a remote/safe manner, is missing a key and significant segment of the population. There is a general assumption in these solutions that individuals:
Have access to mobile devices and control over these devices, and
That they know how to use them.
The gender digital divide was wide pre-COVID and it is only growing with the onset of new services and products being launched. It is imperative that women are able to gain access to mobile devices and retain control over them, and are equipped with the digital literacy skills to use them to their maximum potential. A mobile phone can be a conduit to other services that can support women, such as social services, access to healthcare, access to information to support their economic empowerment (i.e. market prices, weather, technical skills, etc.). However, if women do not have access or the know-how to use digital devices the digital divide will grow and women will be left behind.
What are some examples you’re seeing that are truly designing for women?
Telehealth
While I can’t point to a service that is doing this exceptionally well, I believe that telehealth has a huge potential to serve women and increase their access to healthcare services. Women are so often constrained by mobility and time, so being able to connect with a medical professional digitally can be a huge plus. Due to cultural taboos, it can also create improved confidence to reach out to a healthcare professional virtually as you can speak with them by phone, instead of being face-to-face or having to go to a community health facility. However, contextual factors need to be accounted for to understand key challenges end-users may face using the service/product (i.e. literacy, access to digital devices, etc.).
About Rose Wilder
Rose Wilder is an interculturalist and international development practitioner, originally hailing from the East Coast of the United States. She has over 10 years’ experience providing management and technical assistance provision to development and humanitarian initiatives, predominantly in the Horn of Africa. Working across various sectors from social protection, human rights, economic inclusion, gender mainstreaming, and child development, she considers herself a generalist. A social scientist by training, she is passionate about ensuring culture and context-specific knowledge are integrated within all elements of programming, from design to evaluation, to maximize impact and effectiveness. When designing programming or services for communities, she feels strongly that multiple sector and cultural perspectives should be blended to address the multifaceted realities of individuals, households, and communities. Rose holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Relations and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and currently resides in Kampala, Uganda.