GlobalKnoT · Knowledge Transfer in Global Gender Programmes: The Case of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting and Gender-Biased Sex Selection

Knowledge Transfer in Global Gender Programmes: The Case of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting and Gender-Biased Sex Selection

Globally, hundreds of millions of women and girls face harmful practices such as child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), and gender-biased sex selection. These practices violate fundamental human rights and hinder gender equality and sustainable development. Despite some progress, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.3, which targets the elimination of all harmful practices by 2030, remains off track. To address these challenges, the international community, supported by the European Union and the United Nations, has launched global gender programmes. These multi-stakeholder initiatives unite governments, international organizations, NGOs, and communities to raise awareness and build political commitment to end harmful practices. However, the mechanisms by which these programmes influence policies across diverse socio-cultural contexts remain underexplored. The GlobalKnoT project investigates how global gender programmes mobilize and transfer knowledge to influence policies addressing harmful practices. Its key objectives are to: • Advance understanding of global governance and transnational knowledge transfer. • Provide empirical insights into knowledge diffusion in global gender programmes targeting child marriage, FGM, and gender-biased sex selection. • Share findings with academics, policymakers, and the public to identify factors enabling or hindering knowledge translation into policy. The project employs the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to study the constantly shifting networks of relationships in global gender programmes. It uses mixed methods such as key informant interviews, participant observation, and social network analysis to reveal how harmful practices—commonly seen as regional or cultural-specific—are framed as global public challenges requiring global collective action. Knowledge transfer plays a vital role in justifying global action through: 1. Demographic Evidence: Demonstrating the global nature of harmful practices. 2. Best Practices: Identifying ‘solutions’ to be ‘scaled up’ and transferred across contexts. 3. Collective Knowledge Sharing: Facilitating multi-stakeholder, multi-level collaboration. The Global Programmes to End Child Marriage, Female Genital Mutilation, and Gender-biased Sex Selection followed different approaches to knowledge transfer: • Localization: Outsourcing to regional hubs faced challenges related to quality and sustainability. • Centralization: Internalizing transfer within international agencies yielded mixed results due to limited public accessibility. • Co-creation: Collaborative efforts with influential partners proved most effective in fostering knowledge uptake. While similar actor networks operate across programmes to share knowledge and resources and facilitate learning, global programmes face challenges in adequately measuring the efficacy of their interventions. Investments in robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems and attention to the unintended consequences of social norm change interventions are crucial. Emphasizing feminist, youth-led evaluations can help strengthen evaluation efforts and better capture community-level impacts.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз