New publication on Gender responsive procurement

SAPIENS Network ESR 10 Dibya Rathi has recently published an open-access article titled: “Does gender equality matter? Gender responsive corporate procurement efforts of inter-governmental organizations“. The article has been published by Women’s Studies International Forum, a highly impactful Q2 journal focused on gender and women issues.

Dibya’s article investigates the corporate gender responsive procurmenent (GRP) efforts of 4 prominent inter governmental organizations (IGOs) : UN Women, World Bank Group, Asian Development Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The article uses a mix of in-depth key informant interviews and interpretive document analysis, to form comprehensive case studies.

What is the Contribution?

Through this research, which is one of the few to focus explicitly on gender-responsive corporate procurement of IGOs, Dibya first wanted to investigate how the gender mainstreaming agenda is being fostered via gender-responsive/supportive procurement within four prominent IGOs to populate the literature on research beyond the United Nations and to incorporate the often-overlooked corporate procurement side of IGO spending. Second, by documenting the attempts of IGOs to foster GRP, the paper added to the limited yet expanding body of research linking GRP, gender mainstreaming and IGOs. Third, her study identifies potential tools the selected IGOs use for GRP. Doing so contributes to understanding diverse actionable tools/approaches which can also be embraced by other organizations, public or private, aiming to foster GRP. Moreover, Hafner-Burton and Pollack (2001, pp. 15–16; 2002, pp. 352–353) advocate for the adoption of procedures that introduce a gender viewpoint into the formulation of policies and distribute information regarding gender issues and accountability throughout the bureaucracy. This encompasses collecting gender-disaggregated data and other indicators; gender training; gender impact assessment and genderproofing (a comprehensive examination of proposed policies to identify any unintentional gender-discriminatory language or disparate impacts on men and women); checklists, manuals, and handbooks; monitoring and performance assessment. This paper also examines if these five procedures for integrating a gender perspective to complement gender mainstreaming efforts are part of the corporate GRP across the selected organizations.

Overall, the following research questions were analysed:

1) Are the selected IGOs applying gender-responsive corporate procurement practices?

2)What are the key strategies and practices adopted by these IGOs to effectively implement/support gender-responsive procurement?

3) Do they collaborate with other organizations/NGOs to foster GRP?

4) How well do the IGOs adhere to the Hafner-Burton and Pollock procedures for gender mainstreaming?

What are the findings?

Key Findings are summariesd below:

Several additional insights were unfolded in the full article.