Community based participatory research on Economic Gender Based Violence

Introduction

The Community based participatory research (CBPR) on Economic gender-based violence (EGBV) is a regional community-driven study that ensures the meaningful representation and engagement of communities affected and/or involved in EGBV, by the consultancy team. In a nutshell, CBPR is an approach to research in which researchers and community members share power, resources, and decision-making at every level of the research process, working together to enhance the understanding of a given phenomenon and integrating that knowledge with action to improve the condition of those most affected.

The Consultancy team will support an inclusive and innovative research agenda that is responsive to community needs as well as programmatic priorities that are aiming at understanding how EGBV – with a focus on informal work and its related lack of social protection – is performed and experienced by young women with various intersecting identities; how communities, institutions and private sector are reproducing the inequalities; and solutions and remedies.

The research will serve as a baseline for the evidence-based advocacy strategizing and messaging.

Context

The community-based research has to be executed in the framework of a 5-year program that is named FEM PAWER: MENA FEMINIST POWER IN ACTION FOR WOMEN’S ECONOMIC RIGHTS. The Program is seeking gender responsive accountability for E/GBV especially in holding the duty bearers accountable for improved conditions for young working women in informal sector in the MENA specific countries (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Tunisia). Indeed, the Program aims at strengthening full diversity of young women voices – both at national and regional level – to be the leader for change through Lobby and Advocacy (L&A) related activities including networking and improve conditions for young women working in the informal sector. Intersectional approach is the Program foundation.

Working in the informal economy leaves women often without any protection of labour laws, social benefits such as pension, health insurance or paid sick leave. They routinely work for lower wages and in unsafe conditions, including risk of sexual harassment, in the most vulnerable forms of informal work where costs and risks are high and protections often non-existent. The lack of social protections has long-term impact on women. For example, fewer women receive pensions globally, and as a result, more elderly women are now living in poverty.

Within the informal economy, women are located in invisible areas such as domestic services, piecework at home and unpaid work in small family businesses or agriculture.

The informal economy exhibits strong gender segmentation, with women disproportionately concentrated in the types of occupations which have a higher chance of low returns. They are also facing discrimination and violence based on disability, age, socio economic status, urban/rural, etc. and have poor and limited access to information, protection, and inclusion infrastructure and services.

Objectives and Target group

Main Topic

Economic gender-based violence with a focus on Informal work, (Lack of) Social Protection and other related issues for full diversity of young women in the MENA Region.

Global Objective

Influence gender responsive Accountability and Policies and Social Justice

Purpose

Strengthen diversity of young women voices, their organizations, and networks voices to address EGBV

Audience and use

• Young women working in the informal sector, their community, their organizations and Movements
• Local government, Private sector, Trade union, Media
• International Community

Methodology

Community Based research

Time frame

May – July 2023

Research questions

Research questions will be defined together with the community. Still, main topic is on Informal work, (Lack of) Social Protection and other related issues for full diversity of young women in the MENA Region.

“How EGBV – with a focus on informal work and its related lack of social protection – is perpetrated and experienced by young women with various intersecting identities; how communities, institutions and private sector are reproducing the inequalities; and solutions and remedies.”

It may include consideration such as: feminization of informal work, home based work, global care chain, gendered labour markets, gender wage and workload inequalities, push factors, working conditions, risks, threats, denial of rights, agency and autonomy, patriarchy and informal work and overcoming it, financial (in) dependence, skills acquisition, social autonomy, raised expectations, self-organizing for change, safe spaces, awareness, intersection informal work and reproductive health, etc.

Methodology

CBPR is a framework for conducting research, rather than a specific methodology. It is characterized by the nature of the partnership between researchers and community partners, with the aim of full partnership and equal control. In other words, community members and researchers in partnership co-create opportunities to name what is to be researched, how it should be researched, and what should be done with the knowledge gained. Further, CBPR has the potential to produce research findings that could not be determined through the exclusive reliance on traditional approaches.

Compared to conventional research, CBPR also leads to (1) a more meaningful research process for all stakeholders; (2) more ethical research; and (3) generates richer and more rigorous evidence. This is largely because involving community members as partners encourages a research team to pay closer attention to ethical issues, capture voices from people that are not accessible by conventional recruitment and data collection processes and leads to ongoing iterative community validation processes that enhances analysis and validity of the data collected.

More concretely,

• Topics and research questions are defined in collaboration with community partners.
• Community members are seen as participants or partners (focus/unit of analysis).
• Researchers and communities work together to improve study design and data collection instruments, increase participation, and interpret results.
• Researchers and communities collaboratively obtain new knowledge and skills
• Data are shared; community and researchers agree on dissemination plans (return of results)

When researchers work in partnership with those most affected by the issue at hand, the knowledge gained is more relevant to those communities, and more likely to be adopted and used.

Steps to be taken by the consultancy team

Self-reflection together with Steering Committee

Because the tenets of traditional research approaches do not always align well with CBPR, it is essential that the Consultancy team describes its clear vision on CBPR, including values and key principles.

Indeed, Accessibility of the research tools, deep authentic Collaboration, Inclusion and Participation of the community, Intersectionality, Ability to balance traditional academic savoir faire with community knowledge to reduce bias and tensions, Rigor and Transparency as well as Feminism and Justice lens are key for this CBPR.

“The very foundation of CBPR’s philosophy and practice is the idea that researchers must engage with community members, not as targets of research, but instead as research partners with valuable skills and knowledge to contribute To that end, CBPR does not mean simply “offering” something to a community, taking something from the community, or sharing resources; instead, it means that researchers and community partners co-create knowledge of relevance to communities, building on their respective strengths and resources.”

Identify community of interest with Steering Committee

The community of interest shall be recommended by the POs (subgrantees) after a discussion with the Consultancy team who will explain the CBPR principles and set the community of interest’ criteria. Indeed, the community of interest shall include a majority of young women with different identities, experiences as well as struggles of EGBV. A limited number of “stakeholders” can be part of the community as well, if needed, to enrich the inputs.

For obvious reasons of facilitating the research implementation, the members of the community shall be located in the same area, allowing members and Consultancy team to meet physically and work together. The POs, together, with the Consultancy team will have to find the most suitable community to serve the CBPR.

The community of interest can not be selected by consortium members for avoiding conflict of interests.

The community targeted needs to include young women experiencing EGBV as well as their community. People who fall within this community of interest shall have fluid, multiple and interconnected identities. The goal of identifying community of interest is not to pigeonhole people into static categories but rather to identify community members who are potentially affected by the issues at hand and may be interested in collaborating to investigate the issues that affect them.

The Consultancy team shall also get an appreciation for the history, diversity, boundaries, tensions, power structures, or dynamics of the community of interest in the field of EBGV.

Best practice is to start by engaging a few community members, build trust with them, and take their advice on how to identify and reach other community members. But when doing so, it is important to keep in mind the social position of these community members since they may intentionally or inadvertently act as ―gatekeepers to exclude certain groups. Be sure to ask community members about diversity, inequalities and power relations within the community and recruit community members who can offer critical and thoughtful insights on EGBV.

Develop a community engagement plan (3.1) including design and delivery of adequate training and capacity building to community peer researchers (3.2) so that they can successfully fulfill their roles and responsibilities in the Research.

3.1 – The community engagement plan needs to include the following: numbers of community members to be involved; their selection; their capacities and roles (some community members may be involved in the project in an advisory capacity while others can be involved as co-researchers/peer researchers who are actively involved in the day to day planning and implementation of the CBR project); compensation; how the research benefit from their involvement; how will their contributions be acknowledged? (for example in the research reports); Potential challenges to be faced and how these challenges can be addressed?

3.2 – Anybody can do research but with appropriate preparation. The success of a CBPR project lies in how the consultancy team train and empower community members to take on a leadership role as co-researchers in the project in the field of research, analysis, writing and dissemination, as well as in the field of EGBV.

Consultancy team should develop a training plan together with community members that incorporates the needs identified by FEM PAWER and by community members. This way, community members are better able to participate with other partners when designing the research or during data collection.

Ongoing training and mentoring should be offered in an equitable way throughout the Research to ensure that different community members (from diverse background and varying previous research skills) can participate meaningfully in their expected role as co-researchers in important phases like research design, analysis and writing.

Research (questions) design

Once the selected community is trained, the Consultancy team needs to discuss the EGBV issue/problem to be addressed around “understand how EGBV – with a focus on informal work and its related lack of social protection – is perpetrated and experienced by young women with various intersecting identities; how communities, institutions and private sector are reproducing the inequalities; and solutions and remedies”, – based on community need, strengths, interests, mission and capacity to take action -.

Discuss questions such as: What do you want to know? What hypothesis do you want to test? What do you want to highlight or draw attention to that is not already known, or if known, not sufficiently demonstrated? What can you feasibly act upon? Most likely the process will end up generating many potential research questions. The next step then is to collaboratively screen/develop the questions and pick the one that fits best with the overall goal of FEM PAWER program.

The Consultancy team shall also decide with the community what research methods will be used such as quantitative methods (eg survey) or qualitative methods (eg interviews, focus groups, case/life story) or arts-based method (eg photovoice, digital storytelling) or a combination of these methods including sampling technique and size.

Research Question Refining Phase

• Is research question clear? (Simple, clear, accessible language)
• Is research question detailed? (Clearly specifies issue, target community, place, time)
• Is research question inquisitive? (triggers curiosity and critical inquiry; ‗What-Why-How‘questions result in richer answers)
• Is research question sensitive? (Questions are non-judgmental)
• Does research question contain any unsubstantiated claims? (Assess the quality of your research question).
• Who to ask to? (Identify data source/research participants, study sample)
• How to ask? (Select research method)
• Survey, interview, focus groups etc?
• Individually or in a group setting?
• Verbal, written, non-language based medium (arts-based etc.)
• How to reach our target participants? (Outreach and Recruitment Strategies including building additional partners)
• Specific questions to ask? (Development of questionnaire or interview/focus group guide)
• How to analyze the data?

Info collection (including data collection methods such as structured, semi, open)

The Consultancy team will discuss and decide the best participation format for collecting data and who on the team can skillfully facilitate hospitable, respectful and effective research methods with the larger community. Moreover, the Consultancy team shall explore how the community anticipate using the findings. Translation, Validation, and Pilot Testing are also part of the Consultancy team responsibility.

Make sense of data’s

The Consultancy team will facilitate the plan for analyzing collecting data in considering how to look for clear patterns; how the data analysis address research question; interests beyond data analysis (organizing, advocacy, etc.) and how/if these elements can work together. The consultancy team will involve the community researchers in organizing, processing and analyzing the data.

Community members ‘reflection and insight on data can be incredibly valuable. Their lived experience lens on the data provides an added level of analysis, while their presence during data collection provides knowledge or clarification on data collection events. Last, collaborative data analysis is one way of building validity into the research process by having multiple eyes on the data and analysis while including community members ‘voices increases ownership over knowledge production.

The Consultancy team will make sure the results of the community’s work is considered and published in a way that renders their own contributions visible and their expertise reflected.

Finding and Actions (knowledge sharing and mobilization)

This CBPR is driven by a commitment to concrete social change outcomes, with the final aim of impacting service or policy at a local and structural level. The findings and actions are aiming at influencing gender responsive accountability and decision-making; therefore, the findings and actions section will include a public engagement strategy to explore how community members, elected officials, the media, etc. will be engaged. The findings will be presented to community members and other stakeholders to gather support for advocacy.

In term of designing the research itself, sometimes all parties will want to make decisions collaboratively at every step of the process (1-7). Sometimes this will feel burdensome, and a decision will be made to divide decision-making power across stakeholders according to expertise, interest, time, or impact of the decision at hand.

Final report

The final report by the Consultancy team shall include an executive Summary, Background including CBPR approach, key Facts, Finding, Recommendations, An inclusive summary, accessible to all, Appendices (if any).

Roles and responsibility

The Steering Committee

* Compared to conventional research projects, CBPR projects are much more resource and time intensive. Thus, effective project planning is crucial to the success of it. Steering Committee will develop a thorough and thoughtful understanding and plan that clearly identifies all the core activities and outcomes, the level and nature of community involvement, total costs and resources required, resources and support available, as well as potential risks and how they can be addressed.

* Also Steering Committee shall be the guardian of the CBPR principles by using indicators of excellence for community engaged research during the selection of the Consultancy team as well during the CBPR implementation and reporting. Some examples are found here below:

• Has the community of relevance been clearly and appropriately defined?
• When and how was the community engaged?
• How was the research framed and focused to be meaningful to communities?
• Were community-consultancy partnership principles defined and respected?
• Was there a shared understanding of the co-creation of knowledge by communities and consultancy partners?
• Were critical research questions developed collaboratively to address community issues?
• Were processes established to promote and sustain collaboration?
• How was community knowledge valued and incorporated in the research design?
• How was community expertise acknowledged and incorporated into the management and conduct of the research?
• How were roles and responsibilities for collaborative knowledge mobilization determined?
• How was knowledge mobilization for policy development understood and advanced?
• What means were used to share lessons learned from the research process and outcomes to advance best practice in CCCR?
• etc.

* Steering Committee shall support the process of selecting the community of interest. Doing so, it shall be critical of social categories that have been constructed by dominant groups to reproduce power inequalities: it shall strive to achieve equitable representation of community members and make extra effort to involve community members whose voices have not been heard (hard to reach‘groups) and who face exclusions even within their community.

* The SC will review all documents as drafted by the Consultancy team.

Deliverables

• Briefing meeting with/by Steering Committee of FEMPAWER
• Inception report
• Desk review analysis of all relevant data
• Conduct field visits, interviews, workshops, focus groups, and so on.
• Submission of the provisional report
• Submission of the comments on the provisional report
• Final report
• Regional online presentation
• In country presentation and discussion of findings

Timeline – Planning

The expected number of working days is around 45, divided as below:

• 5 days preparation including briefing and inception report
• 25 days research including its preparation, implementation, together with the community
• 5 days regional and in-country presentation of findings
• 8 days reporting

Composition and Profile of the Consultancy team

• Team shall be composed of one regional team leader and then 4 local researchers (one per country of implementation) and involves both university-based and community-based researchers if possible. The latter shall have connection and accountability to the community they are working with and willing to learn about the rich and diverse histories, philosophies, and knowledge of the community on EGBV. We also recommend having experienced facilitators to help with large group meetings where collaborative decision-making process is essential.
• Consultancy team needs to be properly oriented and trained in participatory and collaborative methods of doing research. Implementing democratic and collaborative processes of doing things is a lifelong learning process and shall be demonstrated in the technical offer of the Consultancy team.
• Committed to CBPR principles and able to translate them practically in all research steps.
• Shall have several CBPR in their portfolio, if possible in women rights and gender issues.
• Consultancy team needs to have theoretical and practical knowledge on EGBV and women rights and gender issues in general.
• Fluent Arabic and English.

How to apply

The Offer shall include a Technical Offer, a financial offer as well as the CV of the team and examples of CBPR. Both the technical and financial proposal shall not exceed more than 25 pages.

They must be submitted by April 9, 2023 at the following email address [email protected], mentioning “CBPR on Economic Gender Based Violence” in the email subject.

The Technical proposal shall include:

• An understanding and interpretation of the context and terms of reference
• The description of the process, the approaches, and the methodology to perform the CBPR
• The composition of the team: presentation, their experience, and modalities of work
• Detailed timeframe for the final evaluation.

It shall also:

• Clearly demonstrate the indicators of Excellence (see section ‘Roles and responsibilities/Steering Committee’)
• Refine the methodology and clarify the research questions if needed
• Demonstrate the reasons/rationale for choosing and using participatory methods
• Demonstrate Application of the principles (page/section ‘Steps to be taken by the consultancy team/ Self-reflection together with Steering Committee’)

The Financial Proposal shall:

• Include the Consultancy fees, transportation, insurance, taxes, etc.
• Details eligible costs in Euro

The Criteria for award are

Criteria 1: Participatory and Community based Methodology; understanding and interpretation of the terms of reference and the context; relevance and realism; compliance with the timeframe

Criteria 2: Financial bid

Criteria 3: Profile of the Consultancy team (training, skills, experience) and modalities of work

Criteria 4: Clarity and presentation of the bid