Chapter 3: designing a PRSP workshop.

• Author: Kakande, Margaret
• Position: Training Manual: Gender Mainstreaming in the Macroeconomics, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs

This chapter is a step by step process of organizing a PRSP workshop. The PRSP process has three stages (design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation) and preparation for each has to be done for the workshop. The workshop participants may be taken through the three stages or some depending on the stage of the in-country PRSP process. If the workshop is before the PRSP is designed, then all three stages have to be covered. To enhance women's participation at each stage calls for the following deliberate steps of preparations:

(a) Technical Preparations

These include what has to be done to ensure the technical delivery at the workshop. At each stage the following are required:

Preparation of the PRSP

1. Avail adequate research findings to inform the design process. The research studies should clearly illustrate what the gender issues that the PRSP should be addressing are. Efforts should be put in exploring the use of national data sets that are available by carrying out gender analyses of the statistics.

2. Study the subject matter for example the macroeconomic framework. It is important to "speak the language" of the stakeholders that one is trying to influence. This has been one of the reasons why the macroeconomic frameworks are gender blind.

3. Use Technical Expertise to guide the process. Employ the services of Gender Technical expertise to ensure that objective research and analyses are done. This is critical to ensure acceptability of the research findings and therefore proposals of the analytical work.

4. Effective Coordination. Agree on a Coordinating Institution(s) for the process. For example, in Uganda this was a shared responsibility between the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development and the National Machinery-the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development.

5. Have a Critical Mass of Gender Advocates. Establish a core team of gender advocates with complementing expertise to enrich the workshop.

6. Prepare Tools to guide the gender advocates. Develop some guiding tools to be applied by the gender advocates. In Uganda, Guidelines for Gender mainstreaming were developed and these had a National Summary Gender Profile with handy statistical data.

   The guidelines answered the key guiding questions for gender mainstreaming in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) that doubles as Uganda's PRSP. These were four questions:

   * What are the key gender issues in each of the PEAP pillars? (Identification of...