Who Benefits? Gender Analysis and the Role of Nonprofits in Affecting Public Policy.

This paper discusses the use of gender analysis to ensure that economic development policy has equitable consequences for women and men, and describes the role of nonprofit community organizations in promoting such analysis. Gender analysis assumes that role differences between men and women are socially defined and therefore open to change. Planners of a public policy initiative must understand the sexual division of labor and the differences in access to benefits and resources in specific situations. Questions that are key to gender analysis, or to any social analysis, focus on who does what; who has access to or control of resources and benefits; what factors influence activities, access, and control; and who is included at each project stage as informants, decision makers, service providers, and beneficiaries. Social and gender analyses ensure that more of the benefits of development accrue to the disadvantaged than the privileged, and that benefits are socially sustainable beyond the term of a project. In the past 12 years, a number of nonprofit community-based organizations have emerged that focus on women and economic development programs. Their activities include job placement and training programs, advocacy for nontraditional jobs, microenterprise training, and loan programs. As an example of the process of moving from practical needs to strategic action, the Coal Employment Project helped Appalachian women break into coal mining--nontraditional for women but one of the few decent-paying jobs in the mountains. (SV)