Call for Proposals: Resisting Gender-Restrictive Actors in Education (Pakistan and Sierra Leone)

ALIGN is a digital platform and programme of work that is creating a global community of researchers, practitioners and thought leaders, all committed to gender justice and equality.

They envisage the research and methodology of this project will be developed in a collaborative way between partners from the two selected countries and ODI’s ALIGN programme with the purpose to promote cross-learning and partnerships.

The Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) team at ODI is currently studying how the influence of the anti-rights movement is impacting global efforts to build gender equality and justice. As part of this workstream, they recently completed a review of literature on how gender-restrictive actors and their organisations resist, curtail and roll-back gender inclusivity in the education sector. Reviewing existing literature that draws on contexts from Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, they identified three main areas of focus. These are efforts to influence access to education, curricular content, and school practices. They identified some strategies which gender-restrictive actors, such as religious organizations, use to achieve their goals, and, where applicable, how progressive policymakers and civil society groups were resisting their influence (D’Angelo et al., forthcoming).

CSE is challenged by gender-restrictive actors which include religious groups, political parties, parental groups and civil society organisations, who have achieved some success in reducing or blocking content in educational materials.

Objectives

• The research will involve two case studies: one in Pakistan and one in Sierra Leone. These aim is to understand the process of building sufficient stakeholder support to achieve these policy breakthroughs, specifically how advocates for reform initiatives earned support from government and civil society stakeholders to achieve their goals.
• Both countries are fragile or hybrid democracies, have high rates of gender inequality and gender-based violence, and low human development indicators. In both countries the framing used for the curriculum content was ‘life-skills based education’ (LSBE), rather than ‘CSE’. Religion is an important part of public and social life in both contexts, however in Pakistan religious authority may play a more direct role in policymaking.

Funding Information

• The available budget of this project is £20-30,000 British pounds per country, which should cover researchers’ time, primary research costs (including travel and write up of the report) and dissemination activities.
• Duration
  • The expected timeline for the project is May 2024 – March 2025.

Eligibility Criteria

• Proposals should outline the rationale for the proposed research, key research questions, indicative methodology (e.g. sample and methods for research and analysis, proposed locations), proposed outputs and dissemination activities, timeline, budget (in British pounds) and experience of staff.
• The indicative budget must show activities and their associated costs (e.g. desk review, field work, data analysis, report writing, and communication expenses).

Note: Applicants are expected to develop proposals to cover one country only. Successful applicants will conduct the research and analysis with respect to one country (Sierra Leone or Pakistan).

For more information, visit ODI.