Gender, Power and Progress: How Norms Change

"The deep-set nature of gender norms explains why change is slow, and why it demands more than a few individuals changing their own attitudes and behaviour - change is needed across society."

Gender norms are the implicit informal rules about appropriate behaviour for people of different genders that most people accept and follow. This report from Overseas Development Initiative (ODI)'s Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALiGN) platform examines how gender norms have changed in the 25 years since the United Nations (UN)'s Beijing Platform for Action on women's rights was set out in 1995, and their role in progress and setbacks to achieving these rights. Drawing on global data and learning, it also explores what has supported and blocked changes to gender norms in a number of sectors, and how to ensure that change is faster and robust enough to resist backlash and crisis.

This report makes the point that gender norms in many settings and cultures, which appear "normal", are based on the exercise of privileged male authority. Examples include norms allocating care work primarily to women, or stereotypes suggesting women are less capable than men, which are then enacted in work or other institutional or informal settings. These norms also intersect with other forms of oppression; per ALiGN, recognising the overlapping aspects of people's identity, such as race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality is critical to understand how gendered norms develop, evolve, and apply differently to different groups. As the report argues, this recognition is often missing from current knowledge and data. ALiGN's conceptual framework graphic [PDF] shows the path a current norm takes, overcoming barriers (visible and invisible) to change into a new norm. This framework illustrates how important it is to make invisible gendered norms visible. It also recognises the opposition that must be overcome if norms are to change, including the sanctions or rewards that encourage the maintenance of norms. Per ALiGN, changing norms also means defying unseen and informal (yet often highly organised) laws, codes of conduct, moralities, and resistance - all of which maintain patriarchal authority.

The report makes three observations about the nature of norm change:

• Shifts in gender norms often take a long time to develop, and progress often stalls and plateaus before moving on (hence the need to be realistic about the speed of change).
• Changes in gender norms often take place at unequal speeds, with the most disadvantaged often left far behind (hence the need to attend to issues of intersectionality).
• Progress often seems to stall at the very point when women are poised to achieve significant change or power (hence the need for persistence).

As noted here, where norms start to change, this can act as a trigger for change in other areas, creating a virtuous cycle. A family, for example, may overcome attitudes that a girl should marry instead of going to secondary school. They may defy what is seen as normal, and either disregard or overcome the sanctions imposed locally, such as gossip, ostracisation, or harassment. But if they prevail in the face of these challenges, and if they also overcome other barriers, such as poverty, then small shifts in attitudes about a girl's education can be sparked. And, coupled with the benefits to the educated girl herself, these shifts can eventually influence further norm change in her community.

This report identifies not only education but several other key areas where it is crucial to shift norms if we are to achieve lasting change:

1. Education, which has the potential to drive changes in norms across other areas. ALiGN considers education to be the bedrock for development, supporting and continuously building human capacities and potential. The proportion of children and young people with some secondary education has increased substantially over the past 25 years worldwide, but girls in low-income countries and households (particularly in rural areas) still account for most of the children who will never go to school at all. Key actions to foster education systems with the potential to speed up changes in gender norms include:
   • investing in physical and financial access to education;
   • improving the quality of education, and giving more attention to a wider range of knowledge and skills;
   • institutionalising gender-equitable curricula, teaching, and learning materials; and
   • supporting all schools to develop gender-equitable environments that are free from all forms of discrimination and violence.
2. Sexual and reproductive health and rights, which enable women in particular, and families as a whole, to make their own choices by controlling fertility and limiting family size. Such decisions further enable women to enter paid employment. Norm changes since the Beijing Declaration can be seen in greater access to, and use of, contraception, as well as a falling global fertility rate: down from 2.9 to 2.4 births per woman between 1995 and 2018. Major differences remain, however, across and within regions, and control over women's bodies remains a battleground for those who support and those who oppose the wider rights of women. Key actions to shift discriminatory norms around sexual and reproductive health and rights include:
   • continuing to expand access to quality health services and contraception, including through mobile technologies for women and girls in rural and remote communities;
   • providing comprehensive sexuality education for all, particularly curricula that address issues of dominant patriarchal gender relations and that empower girls and women;
   • facilitating mobilisation and social movements that aim to change norms at the individual and community level, as well as through legal systems; and
   • leveraging mass media, popular culture (e.g. soap operas), and the ubiquity of the internet to foster more gender-egalitarian norms by portraying new behaviours for women and men.
3. Women's paid and unpaid work, which can be a stepping stone for their wider economic empowerment and helps give women autonomy for their own life choices. The greater their economic autonomy, the more women are able to challenge other norms, leading step-by-step to progress on their political rights and their other rights as citizens. While global figures show little change in the proportion of women in the workforce over the past 25 years, data for some countries show notable increases, while there have been substantial declines in others. Key actions to shift discriminatory gender norms around paid and unpaid work include:
   • offering community-, school-, and workplace-based education to shift norms around gender equality, equal care roles, and gender-based violence;
   • using mass and social media to build momentum for norm change, particularly around equal care roles, and to normalise women's engagement in paid work;
   • facilitating the development of good-quality, affordable childcare services; and
   • enabling the expansion of decent work opportunities.
4. Women's political voice and representation, without which women cannot vocalise their need for equality. Gendered norms shape the ways in which male candidates are treated differently from women, and how men and women are held to different standards by the media, voters, and other political actors. There are, however, promising signs: Women's representation in the world's parliaments has, on average, doubled since 1997, rising from 12% to 25%. Key actions to shift discriminatory norms in women's political voice and representation include:
   • creating mentoring and civic education initiatives for women and girls who aspire to political roles and activism;
   • offering skills training and capacity building activities for women in political roles;
   • implementing targeted political violence prevention and protection measures, alongside gender sensitisation for actors engaging with and covering politics; and
   • supporting women's groups and movements to enable women's collective social and community voice and action.

Concluding with the message that there are reasons to be hopeful, ALiGN writes: "One key message of this report is that for norm change to be sustainable it must capture the hearts and minds of individuals and transform society as a whole. In other words, it is not only personal social expectations, attitudes and behaviour that must shift, but also the ways in which these are represented and enforced in wider society, across all the formal and informal rules and laws and practices that govern the way human beings behave. Changing hearts and minds means supporting behaviour change among individuals, in communities and society. Therefore, civic action and community dialogue, mentoring and training schemes need to work alongside the efforts of, for example, social movements and mass media to influence social norms, attitudes and behaviours."

Note: This report was launched in a webinar (see video, below) in which the authors and guests shared and discussed key findings from the report in relation to four key areas critical to shifting gender norms to achieve lasting change: education, paid and unpaid work, political voice and representation, and sexual and reproductive health. Click here to view the webinar slides in PDF format (25 pages).