Scope the Analysis Around a Decision
A gender analysis should help explain how roles, responsibilities, power and access may affect a particular program choice. Counting women and men at a meeting will not by itself explain who can attend, use resources or control benefits.
Start with problem analysis and the general assessment guide. This tutorial supplies a bounded terms of reference for a fictional livelihood-training decision, rather than a country-wide gender assessment or a universal research design.
Read the Fictional Request
All organizations, people and arrangements are invented. Harbor Skills plans four adult repair-business sessions. Staff propose weekday mornings and shared equipment. Existing attendance records describe users of an earlier course; they do not cover people unable to attend. The program manager asks whether timing, support arrangements and equipment rules should change before enrollment opens.
The analysis must address both access to sessions and practical use of any resulting opportunity. It must not assume all women provide care, all men control income or all households make decisions in the same way. Age, disability, income, location and other circumstances may produce important differences within groups.
A Bounded Terms of Reference
| Element | Filled Scope for This Exercise |
|---|---|
| Decision | Recommend feasible timing, participation support and equipment-use arrangements before the manager finalizes the course. |
| Questions | Who can reach the proposed session and at what opportunity cost? How do paid work and care interact? Who can use, maintain and make decisions about shared equipment? Who would receive and control business income? |
| Existing evidence | Review permitted aggregate course records, relevant local analyses and documented equipment rules. Check group, location, dates and whether each source measures attendance, access or control. |
| Expertise | A competent local gender/context adviser works with the assessment lead, access and safeguarding roles and people with differing experiences. Confirm relevant language and livelihood knowledge. |
| Methods | Develop safe, voluntary and usable consultation appropriate to the question; do not choose a fixed sample size from this example. Hear nonattenders as well as past users. Use separate discussions or private routes when a group setting would constrain safe answers. |
| Outputs | A finding-to-option brief with contrary evidence, missing perspectives, resource implications, risks, responsible owners and decisions still needed. |
| Limits | No representative prevalence estimate, abuse investigation, legal ownership judgment, empowerment score or income-effect claim is commissioned. |
The manager confirms resources for the inquiry and enough design flexibility to act on it. The assessment lead agrees recruitment and analysis before collection, while the safeguarding role establishes how an unsolicited concern would be handled. Do not invite personal accounts of violence or household conflict in a general design workshop.
Keep Questions Safe and Decision-Relevant
Ask which session arrangements are workable and what support a person would choose. Avoid asking someone to justify a private relationship or reveal who controls their bank account in front of others. Collect only what the actual decision requires, explain voluntary participation and the real confidentiality limits, and keep sensitive material in its approved process. Participation must not be presented as a promise of selection or assistance.
If current attendees report mornings are convenient while nonattenders describe a conflict with care or paid work, preserve both accounts. The first group is selected partly by its ability to attend. Adding more of the same respondents would not resolve the missing perspective.
Carry the Analysis Into Design
Suppose a bounded inquiry identifies two incompatible attendance windows and unclear equipment authority. The brief should compare duplicate sessions, shorter modules or another arrangement, and ask who can approve equipment rules. It should cost staff and participation support rather than ending with "encourage women to attend." A finding can justify a more precise question while leaving the final design unresolved.
Use time and care analysis, resource access and benefit control and funded design changes for those next steps. Actual specialist decisions and permissions remain local.
Source and Scope
UNIDO's Guide to Gender Analysis and Gender Mainstreaming the Project Cycle, 2021, sections 5.1-5.5 and Annex 3, is the methodological reference. It concerns industrial-development projects; its institutional forms and timelines are not mandatory for every NGO. This terms of reference is original fiction, with documented desk review rather than claimed practitioner or field validation.