KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

KWDI has been conducting a multi-year ODA research project since 2011 aimed at establishing political and social infrastructure for gender equality policy in the Asia-Pacific region. During the year 2011-2012, KWDI partnered with Cambodia and Indonesia and carried out various programs including baseline surveys, policy dialogues and capacity building training. From 2013, KWDI expanded the project to include Myanmar and Vietnam as additional partners.

The current report is an analysis of KWDI’s research results for the past four years from a perspective of development consulting. Development consulting is a means of conducting development assistance which provides policy, institutional and technical consulting, utilizing experts in the fields of economics, social and science. Various programs that KWDI has conducted with partner countries can be framed as development consulting based on knowledge sharing, and this report tries to elucidate this aspect.

The report begins with an analysis of the ODA system of the partner countries. It analyzes the general ODA receiving system and procedures, the coordinating mechanism and the ownership status of each partner government. In these countries, ODA is usually handled by finance, planning and foreign affairs ministries, and there is usually a focal point for coordinating foreign assistance. Each country has a coordination mechanism to oversee and adjust incoming development assistance. As for gender ODA, coordination mechanism also existed, although the level of coordination varied according to each country.

The next part analyzes the actual needs for achieving gender equality in political, economic and human rights aspects of the partner countries, and South Korea’s ODA strategy towards these countries. Across all three fields of politics, economics and human rights, discriminatory culture and tradition has been pointed out as major obstacles in realizing gender equality. This implies that in order to realize gender equality, cultural issues such as social prejudice against women and gender stereotyping needs to be tackled in a proactive way. The lack of implementation of laws that promote women’s political participation, economic participation and ending violence against women has been identified as another major problem. South Korea’s Country Partnership Strategy for Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia includes gender situation but in a cursory level. CPS on Vietnam and Cambodia includes women’s rights issues such as discriminatory tradition, domestic violence and human trafficking. These issues are congruent with the findings of this research.

This report then introduces, from the perspective of development consulting, the project’s main programs—the annual capacity workshop and joint research, The annual training workshop titled Set and Share the Agenda for Gender Equality, SSAGE) has been designed as a participatory program actively reflecting the local needs identified through baseline surveys, expert interviews and policy dialogue. It was also planned to provide networking opportunities for gender policy makers and experts within and among the partner countries. In addition the SSAGE participants identified gender agenda of their own country, which can be reflected in South Korea’s gender ODA planning. As a part of the project, joint researches were also conducted with three partner countries with an aim of strengthening local research capacity. These activities can be identified as policy consulting, which is one method of development consulting.

The concluding part summarizes the current research from a development consulting perspective and ways to promote South Korea’s gender ODA in the Asia-Pacific region. KWDI has created, through this project, a platform for knowledge sharing and development consulting of gender policy. Second, it increased awareness for the necessity of gender policy research. Third, it established network among policy makers within and outside South Korea and has contributed to promoting gender ODA.

The report concludes with several policy recommendations. First, it suggests integration of gender-sensitive perspective in Country Partnership Strategy(CPS) of South Korea and usage of gender disaggregated data in ODA planning and evaluation. Second, it advises incorporation of gender perspective in development consulting projects. Third, it recommends participation of South Korean government in the donor coordination mechanism in partner countries. Third, it recommends an increase in the volume of women-specific projects and also expansion of program assistance for gender ODA.