| Abstract: | While in recent years, many nongovernmental development organizations (NGDOs) have committed themselves to addressing gender inequality in their development work, little is known about the gender-related practices of small NGDOs with annual budgets of less than 1 million pounds. It is known, however, that larger NGDOs tend to have developed more gender-aware policies and practices than smaller ones. Findings are reported from an exploration of the gender-related awareness and practices of 13 small NGDOs, 8 based in the UK and 5 based in Cameroon. The study found that at the organizational level, all studied organizations were aware of the concept of gender and acknowledged its importance, but had a wide range of ideas of what gender actually means. Most organizations had not devised any specific way of incorporating gender into their programs because they had neither a specific person nor unit responsible for gender issues. Male NGDO employees were not really involved in gender issues. Policy- and project-level findings are presented, followed by consideration of the problems encountered by small NGDOs, the advantages of such organizations, how to ensure gender-aware practices, gender and development versus women in development approaches, and recommendations for good practice. |
