The importance of including a broad range of qualitative and quantitative indicators to evaluate the impact of post-conflict reconstruction and development programmes on local men and women has become a recurring theme in recent international dialogues on gender, peace and security. In this, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the concept of Human Development as reflecting:
...the profound conviction that what matters in development is not quantities pro
duced, but the quality of life lived by human beings.
(UN, 1998a, p. 1)
Viewed from this perspective, assessing the impact of gender mainstreaming in post-conflict settings represents a complex methodological issue. This chapter outlines the components of the methodological framework developed for this study. This outline opens with a brief review of the main methodological approaches which have influenced the overall design of the fieldwork and data-analysis. This discussion includes an overview of the critical feminist approach and the rationale for relying on mostly qualitative methods supplemented by a range of quantitative data. Following this, this chapter also explains how data collection and analysis were influenced by and, in turn, influenced the relation
ship between the researcher and research participants. This discussion includes a review of the ethical and representation/validity protections built into the overall research frame.
The main focus of the present research - the impact of the renegotiation of gen
dered power dynamics on Kosovo Albanian women’s access to decision-making - informs and addresses the need to sensitise contemporary research approaches by incorporating the voices of culturally diverse populations, including the voices of various groups of men and women diversely situated in post-conflict settings (Edwards and Ribbens 1998, p. 2).
Drawing on this approach, this study takes on the view that traditional research approaches are not always suited to the examination of the complex challenges that culturally diverse populations face (Potocky-Tripodi and Rodgers-Farmer 2001, p. 445). The decision to in
clude and draw on multiple voices, representing various groups of women often excluded from the male-dominated discourses on democracy-building in post-conflict societies, led to the need to construct a mixed methodological framework able to ‘make sense’ of these voices. Employing a combination of research strategies and methods allows the broadening of the scope of any research project, enabling the researcher to grasp a broader picture of human behaviour and experiences (Morse 2002, p. 189).
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The ‘doing of the research’ was organised and perceived as (in Maxine Birch’s words (1998)) a ‘research journey’ with its immediate outset, development and culmina- tion resulting in the production of the final report, the PhD dissertation. Analysing the con
tent and meaning of feminist research narratives, Birch (1998) identified three key research i
^'As one of the examples o f such research see, for example, Fukuyama (1998, pp. 27-28) concluding that the prospects for re-socialising men to be less violent are dubious: ‘What is bred in the bone cannot be altered easily by changes in culture and ideology’. See also Evangelista (2003) commenting on Fukuyama’s research approach.
stages - intertwined and interpenetrative but distinct in their structure and content; ‘going T there’, or theoretical exploration before the fieldwork; ‘being there’, or actual participation,
involvement in the ‘field’; and ‘being here’, or production of the final piece of work. Over the course of the present research, the boundaries between these three stages remained fluid, with the researcher continuously locating himself within the imagined and real loca
tions of the ‘field’ and ‘academic research world’ and being ‘...a participant in concrete social relationships in both areas’ (Birch 1998, p. 172). The final section of the chapter is structured around these three milestone research phases, providing further insight into the content of the methodological framework and the research contexts within which it was designed to operate.
This study seeks to overcome the typical limitations of male-centred gender-biased % research,^’ which often includes only male respondents, raises exploitative relationships
between the researcher and those researched, makes claims to false objectivity and over
generalises findings (Letherby 2003, p. 68). To this end, a number of protections were built into the research design. These include the methodological de-construction of the research framework in the form of a multi-layered research matrix; the reliance on qualitative data obtained during fieldwork in Kosovo, supplemented by available quantitative data; the re
searcher’s self-reflection on the nature of the relationships between the researeher and re
search participants; and the consideration of ethical surrounding the gaining and analysing of primary and secondary data. The reminder of this chapter reviews these protections in greater detail.
Methodological Framework: Qualitative Research Supplemented by Quantitative Data
This study is primarily based on results gathered through a qualitative research methodol
ogy. However, its qualitative dimension has been complemented and supported by a range of quantitative data. By relying predominantly on qualitative accounts, this research has sought to avoid what Agozino has called ‘the fetish which conventional methods make of statistical analysis’ (Agozino 1995, p. 294). Various statistical evidence, although scattered
and incomplete in the context of post-conflict Kosovo, was not rejected outright. De
scriptive statistical measures, summarised in tables, were used as a means to support or contest the qualitative evidence. Given the absence of unified and reliable official gender- sensitised publications, this research relied on independent publications, direct observation, report of surveys of individuals and group discussions. Departing from strictly qualitative or quantitative approaches and relying on a combination of quantitative and qualitative data, this study sought to overcome the conceptual division between problem-solving and critical approaches articulated by Sandra Whitworth in her recent study of the UN peacekeeping. Reflecting on the statically descriptive nature of quantitative research, the problem-solving approach is often described as taking the world:
...as it finds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institu
tions into which they are organized, as the given framework for action.
(Cox and Sinclair 1996, pp. 88-89)
A critical plane, offered by qualitative methods challenging the idea ‘...of an objec
tive reality that can be understood through simple observation’, treats the material condi
tions of people’s lives as important and worthy of being documented. It is centred around the fact that ‘...knowledge about the world and all human activity is produced through the discursive practices associated with particular phenomena, issues, or events’ (Whitworth 2004, pp. 22-26).
One of the criticisms of the over-reliance on quantitative data is that gender equal
ity policies should be a matter of principle rather than presenting some guide to the number of women elected or the a number of men and women affected by various manifestations of inequality:
I do not think the very precise figures are important at the moment. Everyone knows that women in Kosovo are often discriminated against and are not equal to men. Even if there were ten or fifteen women only - it is already bad, it is an injus
tice and it would have to be remedied. We are talking about thousands and thou
sands.
(Interview with JQ, female, Kosovo Albanian, Kosovo women’s group, March - April 2004, Kosovo)
Most of the interviewees in this study agreed that having ‘hard data’ was important in requesting the re-allocation of public funds at regional and municipal levels to gender equality initiatives. They agreed that most of the decisions were guided by an estimate of need, which was often difficult to prove without some quantitative support. It was also suggested that central authorities, including UNMIK and to a lesser extent PISG, were not in a position to work out funding priorities based on available data. Meanwhile,
gender-structures. In order to establish the gender profile of Kosovo municipalities, each profile was examined and categorised by gender according to the entrants’ names on the list. This was completed with assistance from Naim, a member of my host family in Kosovo, who was helpful in identifying male and female names on these lists.
In order to investigate the availability of gender-disaggregated information, a meet
ing was organised with a representative of the Kosovo Statistical Office. During this meet
ing I was provided with a number of general statistical overviews and forecasts, however disaggregated statistics on the numbers of male/female candidates and those elected of59
ten fails to portray the complex pictuie of available ‘decision-making capacity’. More de
tailed evaluations, conducted locally with the involvement of local expertise but relying on uniform methodology and data-collecting techniques, could fonn the basis for regional pol I icy and the distribution of funds and technical assistance. Such evaluations should consider
questions like ‘how many women would take part in local elections if they had sufficient t training/time/resources?’, and ‘what is the most acceptable training format for various
groups of women?’
No sets of quantitative data were generated in the course of this study due to the
fact that no questionnaire-based representative surveys were administered. However, a ) number of statistical summaries have been developed, including a gender-disaggregated
statistical profile of political participation at the municipal level of regional selT- governance. Meanwhile, a number of diffieulties were eneountered in accessing other sta
tistical data on the topic at hand. On several occasions, statistical data, which was meant to be freely available in public domain, was not accessible in practice. This ineluded ‘Women and Men in Kosovo’, a special report summarising gender-disaggregated statistics in Kosovo. It was published by UNMIK’s Office of Gender Affairs (OGA) in 2003. Accord- / ing to the OGA, this report was ‘the first complete survey of all available sex- I disaggregated statistics’. However, none of the organisations interviewed were in posses
sion of this document at the time of interviewing (March-April 2004). The official presen- | tation of the report was held in June 2004. However, despite numerous references to the
‘recently published’ document on UNMIK’s web site, no copies were made available for downloading. Another example of a gender-insensitive approach to collecting statistical data can be found in a series of ‘Municipal profiles’ published by OMiK. Published for each of the thirty Kosovo municipalities, these profiles provide a description of the politi
cal, economic and social landscape, contacts of local administration and international ac
tors, organisations active in civil society, and the judicial and public services systems. Each profile lists the names of municipal assembly members, members of boards of directors and municipal departments, yet no summaries are provided on the gender balance of these
no gender-disaggregated data was available. Indeed, the mandate of the Office does not include a responsibility to collect and analyse gender-disaggregated statistics. From the Kosovo Statistical Office I was referred to UNMIK’s Office for Gender Affairs and OMiK,
while the latter referred me back to the Kosovo Statistical Office. ÿ
‘Going There’
Methodoiogical de-composing of gender-mainstreaming policies:
structurai and institutional levels
Several faetors influenced the decision to pursue a multi-method approach to evaluate women’s access to decision-making in Kosovo and the overall impact of gender main- streaming policies in the context of provincial post-conflict reconstruction. In this, the
‘Gender mainstreaming continuum’ influenced both theoretical and methodological frameworks of the study: gender mainstreaming was considered as a dynamic and complex process. As Acuner and Kardam have explained:
It is more useful to think of ‘mainstreaming a gender perspective’ as the process of assessing the implications for women and men in any planned action including leg
islation, policies and programmes in any area and at all levels.
(Acuner and Kardam 2003, p. 98)
In this light, following Ramazanoglu’s (2002, pp. 153-154) suggestion that the in
vestigation of gendered lives, meanings, representations, power or relationships can be conceptualised in terms of a number of interrelated analytical ‘levels’, the first, structural, line of the methodological de-composing has been identified. This reflected the unique po
litical organisation of post-conflict Kosovo society with formal and informal political authorities deposited at the levels of international administration (UNMIK), central (or re
gional) administration and local municipalities (ICG 2005a, 2005b).
In order to map the ways in which the institutionalisation of gender-based exclusion affects provincial development agendas, gender mainstreaming has been further de
constructed at the institutional level in order to:
...locate gendered experiences within more general conceptions of material condi
tions of existence and their histories.
(Ramazanoglu 2002, pp. 153-154)
The combination of institutional and structural lines of the methodologieal inquiry, reflecting specific levels and locations of analysis, allows the examination of gender and power relations in particular sites. This, in turn, enables the researcher
Letherby (2003, p. 101) observes in this respect: ‘A postgraduate funding her or himself doing a small- scale qualitative project has very different resources from a team o f researchers working on government- funded, large-scale multi-method longitudinal research projects’.
The latest large-scale survey ‘Kosovo Mosaic’ conducted by UNDP in January 2003 (UNDP in Kosovo 2003) included 6000 respondents from all Kosovo municipalities. While some o f the data resulting from this survey was disaggregated by gender, the survey design failed to incorporate is as an operational value. Some of the questions were clearly worded in a gender-biased manner. For example, a question regarding respon
dent’s occupation, provided the following options: ‘housewife’, ‘working’, ‘student’, ‘retired’, ‘ disabled’,
‘unemployed and looking for work’ and ‘unemployed, but not looking for work’ (UNDP in Kosovo 2003, p.
95).Kosovo Human Development Report 2004 acknowledged that ‘Efforts to calculate human development indicators, as well as other standard statistical indices for Kosovo, are hampered by the lack of comprehen
sive, up-to-date and reliable data...Today, even basic statistics in Kosovo, such as population size, are hotly debated. In KFiDR 2002 four different estimates for population were presented, varying up to 25%’ (UNDP in Kosovo 2004, p. 12).
...to target what data you want to produce, and so help to specify what research 61
subjects of sources of data will be most appropriate, and how far your resources will stretch.
(Ramazanoglu 2002, p. 156)
Time and financial constraints^^ affected the inclusiveness of the overall research s framework, denying the possibility of conducting large-scale quantitative surveys focusing
on the involvement or exclusion of various groups of Kosovo men and women from formal and informal political networks. Further to this, the lack of any previous Kosovo-wide sur
veys which meaningfully incoiporated gender into the survey design and analysis,^^ along with the general lack of reliable statistical information,^'* also influenced the decision to rely on qualitative data collected and analysed by the researcher.
De-composition of the provincial gender-mainstreaming policies at the institutional level into ‘institutional segments’ was essential to the process of acknowledging the diver
sity amongst the various actors involved in the broad range of activities located under the provincial ‘gender-mainstreaming’ umbrella. These actors inevitably possessed varying levels of authority, political influence and financial resources, and often pursued overlap
ping strategies and policies. Initially, no particular preference was assigned to any of the institutional segments. Nevertheless, it was acknowledged that varying degrees of accessi
bility, motivation and willingness to participate in this research would inevitably impact on the availability of data.
Decomposed on structural and institutional levels, gender mainstreaming policies located within particular institutional sites at various policy levels were then related to each other through graphic representation in a form of multi-dimensional matrix representing the methodological framework of the study - see Table 3.1. Divided by rather fluid and relative boundaries, all nine elements of the matrix, related to each other in a multiplicity of stronger and weaker links, represent both subordinate and dominant, intra- and over- sectoral relatedness and inter-dependency. This reflects the complexity and
multidimen-7
Ï-??"
i:
___
sional nature of gender mainstreaming in regional post-conflict reconstruction contexts and its immediate and long-term impact on women’s access to and participation in formal decision-making.
Table 3.1: Methodological matrix: sectoral representation of gender mainstreaming
— Segments UNMIK PISG Kosovo Albanian
Women’s Groups
Levels A B C
UNMIK admini 1 A1 B1 Cl
stration
Central Level 2 A2 B2 C2
Local Level 3 A3 B3 C3
Exploring the impact of gender mainstreaming policies on women’s access to for
mal decision-making at these three institutional levels was organised through the synergis
tic combination of qualitative research and available gender-disaggregated quantitative data on political participation.^^ Organised in a form of ‘exploratory investigation’ (Ta- shakkori and Teddlie 1998, p. 53), this study followed what Morse described as ‘the induc
tive theoretical drive’, suggesting that ‘...the most important projects within the research will probably be qualitative’ (Morse 2002, p. 196).
The complex nature of gender mainstreaming leads to a number of implications for monitoring and evaluating gender and ‘gender sensitivity’ of post-conflict reconstruction.^^
The methodological complexity of accessing gender mainstreaming policies is sometimes addressed by introducing and analysing limited sets of quantitative indices, such as the number of women in national parliaments, municipal assemblies, the public service, or women to men ratios in secondary/tertiary education. This approach to quantitative data feeds into an ‘add and stir’ interpretation of gender mainstreaming policies adopted by some international development agencies. In the context of post-conflict reconstruction, for example, the quantitative approach to quota-based increase of women’s representation in official governmental institutions might create an illusory pictuie of women’s political empowerment. This, in turn, might overshadow women’s ‘qualitative’ exclusion from for
mal and informal networks existing within and outside the quota-defined representative bodies.
Similar approach is advocated by Andjelka Milic (Milic 2004, p. 73). In her overview o f Women’s Move
ment in Serbia and Montenegro she distinguished a number of ‘circles o f women’s involvement’.
In this respect Stiehm (2001, p. 42) notes ‘...gender mainstreaming is not well understood and it is difficult to measure. Further, it is important to note that gender mainstreaming is the responsibility o f both men and women, and requires analysis of the concerns and experiences of both men and wom en’.
Methodological segments: qualitative and quantitative dimensions Within the methodological matrix (as shown in Table 3.1), Segment A1 represents the im
pact of UNMIK’s gender mainstreaming policies on UNMIK itself. This includes the con
tent of the policies originating from within the organisation and their relevance and com
patibility with international gender mainstreaming agendas. It also incorporates UNMIK’s Office of Gender Affairs, a special unit tasked to mainstream gender horizontally and ver
tically throughout UNMIK activities.^^ It was plamied to generate qualitative data by means of in-depth interviews with senior and mid-level personnel at UNMIK and OGA;
quantitative data was sought in the form of gender-disaggregated mission deployment sta
tistics and annual/quarterly reports produced by the Office of Gender Affairs.
Segments A2 and A3 represent the overall gender mainstreaming policy in Kosovo viewed through the prism of regional legal and institutional frameworks. The latter fall within UNMIK’s executive, legislative and judicial authority secured by Resolution 1244 (1999) (UN 2004a). These two segments involve: (a) qualitative legal analysis of relevant pieces of regional legislation, and (b) dynamics of institutional developments aimed at es
tablishing gender mainstreaming institutions and increasing the representation of local women within these institutions.
Segment B1 represents institutional and financial support links between UNMIK and Kosovo’s PISG, defined by the gradual transfer of responsibilities from UNMIK to local constituencies. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments were considered rele
Segment B1 represents institutional and financial support links between UNMIK and Kosovo’s PISG, defined by the gradual transfer of responsibilities from UNMIK to local constituencies. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments were considered rele