Mayoux, Linda

Beyond naiviety: women, gender inequality and participatory development

This article focuses on gender aspects of participatory projects. It draws on the author's own research as well as secondary sources and states that gender inequalities in resources, time, and power, influence the priorities and framework of participatory projects as much as "top-down" development and market activities. Increasing the numbers of women involved in participatory projects cannot, therefore, be seen as a soft alternative to specific attention to change in gender inequality.

Thinking it through: using diagrams in impact assessment

This document presents an overview to different diagram that can be used as visualisation tools for assessment and research. The document introduces webs, networks and flow diagrams, e.g. cognitive maps, indicator trees and livelihood diagrams; trees, analysing coast and benefit/ income and expenditure/empowerment/vision/ problem and effects/problem and solution; road journeys to the future/from the past/empowerment; Venn diagrams for stakeholder/institutional/decision-making analysis; diamonds e.g.

Participatory programme learning for women's empowerment in micro-finance programmes : negotiating complexity, conflict and change.

Micro-finance programmes are currently promoted as strategies for both alleviating poverty and also empowering women. However, a number of recent academic studies have questioned the benefits of such programmes for women. Given the need to examine their gender impact, this paper proposes an alternative to the traditional costly quantitative and qualitative impact studies. A participatory approach is proposed which integrates empowerment concerns with ongoing programme learning, which in itself contributes to empowerment.