You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have: Intervention Agencies and Gender Dynamics in Beneficiary Communities

Interventions are meant to improve people’s lives; however, they can fail to do so and at times even worsen situations. Gender equality is one area that needs improvement in societies, but which interventions can inadvertently impact upon negatively. The study assessed the impact of the Niger Delta Development Commission’s (NDDC) interventions on gender dynamics in Odi Community. A case study design was adopted for the study. Data collection and analyses were iterative. Findings showed that although gender sensitivity is articulated in the mandate of the Commission, however, the NDDC lacks institutional capacity for it. Hence, it did not appropriately mainstream gender in its interventions, and thus, impacted gender relations negatively. This it did by inadvertently entrenching traditional power disequilibrium and gender roles between females and males. Also, it did not include women in its community engagement meetings and unconsciously allocated more financial resources to males. Finally, the Commission did not make provision for women’s needs to encourage women participation and entrenched women’s traditional reproductive activities. It takes more than policy to make intervention agencies to support gender equality: institutional capacity and sensitivity are required.


Introduction
Gender refers to cultural roles, attitudes and values that a society assigns to its women and men, girls and boys, which define their behaviours and relationships. Gender roles are created and maintained by social institutions, which have been more favourable to the male members of the society at the expense of their female counterparts. Indeed, women have been peculiarly disadvantaged as a result of subjugation by the mandolin most societies. Movements to redress this inequality culminated in the idea of gender mainstreaming. There are documented efforts by individuals and groups, spanning millennia to address the issue of inequality between men and women. In this instance, the international community first showed special interest on women issues in 1946 when a Commission on the Status of there was a shift from WID to Gender and Development Approach (GAD). GAD is an approach to development that focuses "…on social, economic, political and cultural forces that determine how differently women and men participate in, benefit from, and control resources and activities." From the foregoing, it is important to mention that, "Gender mainstreaming" was first coined at the United Nations' third World Conference on Women in Nairobi in 1985 and then explicitly endorsed with the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) ten years later at the Beijing Conferencethe Fourth World Conference on Women. Gender mainstreaming is defined as: [t]he process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies or programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women's as well as men's concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated (ECOSOC Agreed Conclusions, 1997, p. 2 in King, 2003 3).
[a] set of processes and strategies that aims to ensure the recognition of gender issues on a sustained basis […] an approach that situates gender equality issues at the center of broad policy decisions, institutional structures and resource allocations, and includes women's views as priorities in making decisions about development goals and processes' (NCRFW).
To further explain gender mainstreaming, Heyzer (2003) insists that every aspect of a given activity be assessed for its gender implications. The process of gender mainstreaming, in the words of Heyzer "…requires persistent effort, including regular monitoring, reporting, follow-up training, and evaluation of progress made and obstacles encountered, as well as systems for holding the operation/organisation accountable for achieving its goals. All of this requires resources and, above all, www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape Advances in Politics and Economics Vol. 3, No. 2, 2020 89 Published by SCHOLINK INC. political will at all levels". Gender equality and gender equity are two key goals of gender mainstreaming. Gender equality means women and men should have equal value, enjoy the same status and conditions and should be accorded equal treatment. It refers to the full equality of men and women to enjoy the complete range of political, economic, civil, social and cultural rights, with no one being denied access to these rights, or deprived of them, because of their sex. It means, they should benefit equally from the results of development (CEDAW, 1979). On the other hand, World Health Organisation (WHO, 2001) defines gender equity as "fairness and justice in the distribution of benefits and responsibilities between women and men" It refers to giving to the disadvantaged gender on the basis of needs, taking steps to compensate for historical and social disadvantages that prevent women and men from operating on a level playing field.
Therefore, gender perspective becomes imperative in the discourse of intervention in whatever context, linking gender to intervention in this study is justified. Interventions, which in this paper covers development aid, humanitarian assistance, or peace building, refer to a range of deliberate initiatives or activities, which aims at positively influencing a situation to bring about an improvement or to forestall deterioration. However, in the last two decades there has been growing realization that interventions in contexts characterized by conflict, though intended for good, can also influence the situation negatively.
Hence, interventions in such context, especially, have the potential for negative and positive impacts.
This idea, coupled with the notion of gender mainstreaming, makes gender one of the areas assessed for potential or actual impacts when assessing impacts of interventions. Other areas include conflict impacts, peace impacts, economic impacts, social impacts, cultural impacts, and environmental impacts.
For instance, assessing peace and conflict impact led to the emergence of Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA) area. From the early 1990s literature on PCIA include methodologies, frameworks, approaches and tools to map, assess or evaluate the potential and actual impact of interventions on their contexts and vice versa (Barbolet, Adams, Rachel Goldwyn, Hesta Groenewald, and Andrew Sheriff, 2005). The overarching purpose of these approaches is that interventions will build rather than weaken or destroy peace; and reduce rather than exacerbate conflict. A thorough analysis of conflict and identification of areas of potential or actual impact are generally common features of PCIA approaches.
Gender is a regular issue that arises both in these conflict analyses and impact assessments. It is within the larger context of a PCIA of the NDDC interventions this study was carried out.
Introducing gender sensitive lens to impact assessment helps us understand women and girls, men and boys' roles as actors (participants in planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation and beneficiaries) and victims of intervention programming. King (2007) opines that engendering intervention this way makes it more efficient, effective and delivers maximum good. According to Bush (1996Bush ( , 1999Bush ( , 2004Bush ( , 2005Bush ( , 2009, interventions can impact traditional gender roles positively or negatively. An intervention can entrench the traditional subjugation of women, cause tension between female and male gender, and/or build a gender's capacity or inadvertently allocate more resources to a gender at the expense of the other. Alternatively, it can empower women and girls and/or promote Region (NDR) and the fourth largest in Nigeria. Also, at the time of the fieldwork, the community was not involved in any violent conflict, which makes it safe for the researcher and respondents. Moreover, preliminary investigation revealed that the community has enjoyed relatively high number of NDDC interventions. Furthermore, it is a home to one of the major NDDC consultants on its agricultural support programme-the Biotechnology Resources Development Centre (BIODEC). ATLAS. ti 7.0 was used for data analyses. Data collection and analyses were iterative.

The Study Area
The NDR, the third largest body of wetlands in the world, is located in the southern part of Nigeria and is home to about forty ethnic groups speaking two hundred and fifty languages and dialects (Master Plan, 2006 a Gender-based assessment of the interventions of the NDDC and its implications for the context of the interventions has also not been adequately covered. Also, the institutional capacity of the NDDC for gender sensitivity has not been empirically assessed. Odi is an Ijaw community in Kolokuma-Opokuma LGA (with headquarters in Kaiama), Bayelsa State.
It is located beside one of the tributary rivers of River Niger, bordered in the north by Odoni and Agbere, in the south by Sampou and Kaiama along the River Nun bank. Its western neighbors are Patani and Abari, while in the east is OkordiaZarama. Its built-up area is 3.85km north-south and 2.6km east-west. Odi has twenty-seven communities (essentially compounds but rechristened for political reasons) and divided into north (Asanga) and south (Tamanga) parts. The community has three wards.  There were no open conflicts, however, low intensity dissatisfaction thrived.

Gender Sensitivity in Intervention Programming
Gender sensitivity encompasses the ability to acknowledge and highlight existing gender differences, issues and inequalities and incorporate these into strategies and actions (European Commission, 2013).
Borrowing from the concept-conflict sensitivity, gender sensitivity in intervention means understanding the gender dynamics in the context for which the intervention is intended, understanding the interaction between the intervention and the gender dynamics of the context (that is, how the intervention will affect and be affected by the relationships, including power relations, between female and male in the community), and the capacity to act upon this understanding to promote gender equity and equality.
Gender sensitivity attempts to ensure consistent and systematic attention is given to the differences between females and males in the intervention, with a view to addressing structural gender inequality in the context of the intervention. This is the rationale of frameworks such as Gender-Responsive Development Planning (aka Gender-Responsive Planning, GRP), and the Gender and Development Approach that attempt to ensure and assess gender mainstreaming in an intervention. The core assumption of such frameworks is that mainstreaming gender makes development planning and programming more people oriented and people focused, emphasizing their impacts on women in particular.
Assessing an intervention for its gender sensitivity is a multistage activity. Since "…you cannot give what you don't have", the first stage assesses the institutional capacity for gender sensitivity.
Institutional capacity for gender sensitivity will be seen in whether or not, and the extent to which gender is mainstreamed in the agency. A good place to start is to determine whether the agency has a www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/ape gender policy. Having a gender policy indicates a deliberate effort for gender sensitivity in an organization's structure and culture. An agency with a gender policy is likely to have a gender policy for its interventions as well. So, it follows, the next stage is to determine whether the organisation has a gender policy for its intervention programming. However, an agency without a gender policy may still have a gender policy for its intervention. For instance, gender sensitivity may be part of donor's requirements, hence, "forcing" the agency to mainstream gender in its intervention. Assessing an intervention policy for gender sensitivity or assessing a gender policy of an intervention involves assessing each stage of the intervention programming cycle-conception and planning, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation for sensitivity to gender dynamics in the beneficiary community. This provides a framework for determining the degree to which gender is mainstreamed in an intervention or how gender sensitive an intervention is.
What happens at the Conception and Planning (C&P) stage is very important. The extent to which this stage is gender sensitive will potentially impact on gender sensitivity of the subsequent stages. Hence, the gender must be mainstreamed into (and at) this stage by involving gender experts (at the micro and macro levels) and, importantly female and male representatives of the intended beneficiary community.
Gender sensitive community participation means ensuring that both genders understand the need for gender mainstreaming in the intervention programming. It emphasizes the involvement of women and girls and community-based women and girls' groups having representative quota and includes ensuring that women and girls participate in setting goals and objectives for the intervention (Bunch, n.d.).
Gender mainstreaming in community participation involves setting a representative quota for both sexes to participate as individuals and groups equally or equitably. This may necessitate employing innovative and non-traditional means to mobilize and enrol women and girls, who studies have shown to be disadvantaged, at each stage of the intervention programming. Bunch (n.d.) cites examples of innovative means such as holding planning sessions where women traditionally gather, providing services and incentives to women so they can forgo their daily tasks in order to participate.
At the implementation stage, gender sensitivity involves employing representative quota (equality or equity) for both sexes to be selected as beneficiaries of the intervention. This involves affirmative action. In case of physical project involving physically tasking unskilled labour, conscientious effort should be made to bring willing women and girls on board or create alternative or compensatory benefits for them. Equitable participation may involve special empowerment programmes for women and girls where need be. However, care must be taken to distinguish between those programmes that truly empower women and girls and those that reinforce their subordination to men. At the level of monitoring and evaluation, women and girls should be part of the monitoring and evaluation team and should be consulted as participants in the evaluation.
In addition to gender sensitive community participation, other ways to mainstream gender in an intervention include gender sensitive communication/facilitation, gender sensitive logistics and gender equity at each stage of the programming cycle (Bunch, n.d. communication/facilitation means that facilitators or conveners must be trained on gender sensitivity. This is to ensure gender sensitive language while addressing participants. This also ensures reinforcement of gender sensitivity at different stages of the intervention programming. Also, instructional materials must be gender sensitive. Gender stereotypes in narrations and illustrations should be avoided. Gender equity in intervention involves ensuring that activities at every stage of the intervention address power imbalance between the sexes. Deliberate effort must be made to empower women and girls in role playing, task assignments, sharing of responsibilities, group leadership, selection of beneficiaries, leading group discussions and other innovative ways. Gender-sensitive logistics ensures that in selecting time, venue, and other logistics, convenience and safety of women and girls should be put into consideration. Special considerations should be provided for women on child-care and conveniences and other things (e.g., transportation) that will ensure their full participation at each stage of the programming.

Gender Impact Assessment
Gender Impacts Assessment (GIA) refers to analysing or measuring how an intervention, policy or programme will affect or has affected female and male differently within a given context. It "…is a process which allows decision-makers and stakeholders in a project to understand the current situation and context that will be affected by the project, and what changes and results may emerge based on that project. It uses gender criteria to inform that understanding of predicted and realised impacts". (Oxfam Australia & CPWF, 2013) In addition, to the indicators in gender sensitivity above, the gender impact A sound planning process has to be based on participatory decision making. This entails meaningful involvement of the "Active" and "Passive" stakeholders-public sector, private sector, community and NGOs-and ensuring that their respective needs and constraints are taken into consideration when policies and proposals are formulated, including attention to issues such as gender and youth. In spite of the above quote, none of the study participants knew of any NDDC gender policy on its intervention programming or of any deliberate attempt by the Commission to ensure gender equity in its intervention programming. In other words, there appears to be no framework to ensure that women and girls, men and boys participate equitably in the conception and planning, implementation,  come to the community, highlight the council, sensitize the, the people ever before they start. They just say they have so-so-so program, they can write to the community or they announce over the radio. "…when they tell the town crier to announce, they didn't say anything about only female or male. But they talk about the both people. The both, not only one group of people, or not only youth, or not only women, or the men or something like, no. Everybody should be there, so that they will benefit." -A female programme beneficiary (Federal Government Worker) "It is open for everybody, of which, maybe, they said they want to train hundred so they will put it in quota form. And the quota, anybody can come to represent their community." -A male programme beneficiary (Graduate of Political Science, Niger Delta University) In fact, not giving women special encouragement to participate generally lowers women's participation in the NDDC intervention. For instance, researcher's direct observation in the field, show that during the day, Odi women were busy, perhaps, more so than their men. A number of men-game men-were seen playing draft. However, throughout the five days in the community, hardly was any woman seen idle. Women were usually engaged in agricultural and economic activities such as small-scale farming, fishing, frying gaari, collecting firewood, retail business, among other endeavours. However, this does not imply that all Ijaw men do is play draft, as some scholars erroneously concluded. Rather, men are usually involved in more physical activities such as large scale farming and fishing in the high sea.
Fishing in the high sea is seasonal and the fish migrate during the season. The migration of fish determines the location of the men-in or out of town. Also men fish in the night. So during the day when they are in the town, most of them engage in leisure activities to relax until the night time when they embark on their vocation. At times, they leave the town for a number of days. However, women are usually involved in reproduction activities, which often require such personal involvement.
The traditional division of labour in the community, therefore, naturally favours men's participation in the NDDC intervention. Women would therefore require special encouragement and accommodation within the NDDC programme schedule, in order to be able to participate. They typically find it difficult to abandon their responsibilities and attend the NDDC HCDPs. Although the Commission pays stipends to participants, and equal stipends are paid to women and men, both complained that the stipends paid after the training is usually lower than what was promised. For instance, they claimed that they are paid between one and two thousand naira (instead of fifteen thousand promised) after participating in a two to three day workshop. For women, this amount is too low incentive to make them leave their agricultural and economic activities which yield greater incentive. Past records of the Commission in not living up to people's expectation or in fulfilling its promises in stipend payment and not providing post-training financial and material empowerment seem to further discourage women and girls' participation.
She say the people that they came to train they promised them that they would give them because…they delay them in their farming work, they said they will give them 15,000 [Naira] each, but they only bring one, one thousand to them. And they said that they hear, that they have paid the money into their account and they contributed some amount of money, but still they have not seen anything.-A female beneficiary (speaking through an interpreter) To further confirm relatively lower participation of women in the NDDC interventions, community participants reported the following.
As I told you, the list came out and there were a lot of women but most of the women did not participate hoping that this is something that we have been seeing. What is there? And they did not go further…there were less women, you see. Because a lot of these women feel that these things they are not relevant. So, probably in a hundred you see about ten or fifteen. homemakers. This HMBS initiative has the potential of entrenching women in their traditional roles as homemakers and preventing men from benefitting in such programmes. So it will likely lock women and girls, men and boys in their traditional gender roles. According to an NDDC staff, But on the other hand, we do design programmes specifically for the girls and women. We call them home management business skills, basically designed to cater for the needs of our ladies, girls and ladies. Bearing in mind that if you have a wife and a mother that is being engaged, it might contribute to the well-being and stability of the family, so we do have programmes specifically designed for women. That's not to say that we are shutting women out of the other ones…They select the very best, the most qualified and I do see a couple of ladies there. But the home management skills is specifically designed for our girls and women. So if you see a few men there, it's just by accident.
-NDDC Staff, Headquarters The response of the NDDC Staff, "…if you see a few men there, it's just by accident" shows that already men are being seen as misfit in such HMBS. Men interested in such programmes may be discouraged or reluctant to apply for such programmes because the HMBS is "…specifically designed for our girls and women." This implies that the Commission by its intervention is suggesting that there are some business skills for women, which men do not have to acquire. And from the list of the HMBS programmes, they are skills for less paying, inferior, women jobs like baking and sowing. This inadvertently indicates the NDDC endorsement for labelling low paying, low skill home management jobs as women's jobs, which are not meant for men. This implies that the Commission supports the view that men deserve more rewarding, high profile or highly skilled work, thus strengthening the traditional view of men as the superior sex group. Findings also, show that while women are not exempted from other NDDC interventions, special provisions or considerations are not made for them to be able to compete favourably with their men counterpart in benefiting in the programmes. Literature on gender equality and feminism assert that women have been disadvantaged by the dominant patriarchal structure in the society (Aina, 2009;Mejiuni, 2012). This makes it slightly difficult for them to compete favourably with their male counterparts. Hence, there is need to recognize their disadvantaged position and make deliberate attempt to make them benefit equitably from social programmes. However, this is not the case with the NDDC intervention. According to a high ranking officer of the Commission, As I speak to you there is a[…] in the programme we are running in Turkey, and em, it's an international welders' em prop, you know, preparation(?)…, I saw a lady there, she came there on merit.
She passed the aptitude test. Yes, at the maritime trades. The ladies that came on merit, they, they did not come as ladies. They came because they were qualified. They passed the aptitude test and every other test that was required. Those kind of things, I wouldn't say they are not gender sensitive, but they are gender blind.

-NDDC Staff, Headquarters
Empirical evidences reveal that mainstreaming gender in intervention programming is not strange in Odi community, participants reported that NGOs do bring women empowerment programs and they do involve women in the intervention programming. According to the community people Our women leader and her group, they have many projects…programs that they used to attend na [now] and then they have some projects which they want the government to help them. This last two quotations show that mainstreaming gender in the NDDC interventions in the community is not an impossible task. The question then is why is gender not mainstreamed? Is it a consequence of ignorance or nonchalance?

Discussion on Implications of Gender-Neutrality of the NDDC Interventions
The gender-neutrality of the NDDC interventions has implications for the context of the intervention.
These were evident in four main ways. First, it sometimes brings tension between female and male community members; and often brings tension and suspicion between the women chief and the Traditional Council. As noted earlier the women chief (a member of the Traditional Council herself), claimed she has never been called upon to participate in any meeting between the NDDC and the Traditional Council (The meetings are briefings in the real sense as NDDC only comes to inform the community leaders of their intervention and introduce the contractors to them. This is strictly about the IDPs and occurs shortly before the commencement of the intervention). women chief), reported been unable to attend such meetings in some cases, but at least he was informed when the NDDC officials came in for the impromptu meetings. The women chief interprets this situation as a continued deliberate subjugation of women in the African society, especially the Ijaw culture. The second quotation shows that she feels that the council makes deliberate effort to make her redundant.
"You know, in everything there is monopoly now. In our African society, even this eh…especially Ijaw culture everybody want to bring women down. Everybody wants to put women down. They feel if women come out they will usurp our power. I think that's my belief. So most of the things they refuse to involve women, unless women will react on it." The quotation above also hints at deliberate male subjugation of women. She became so reflectively and distant when she made the statement above. (As if it is something she has contemplated upon and confirmed many times) The tone of her voice suggested to the researcher that men are so afraid of women's power that they have successfully invented several ways to tame them to satisfy men's selfish ends (As a male interviewer, the way the respondent described the situation made the researcher somehow ashamed as a man. At the same time, I felt slightly jittery of a fleeting thought that the respondent was going to make me a scape goat because of the concealed and controlled anger that seemed to course through her at this point in the interview) (Although not directly linked to the NDDC intervention, the researcher gathered from some members of the community that the Ereamini da-arau women leader), a former head teacher in a public primary school was recently demoted to a class teacher. Her demotion was punishment for her political party affiliation. The Labour Party of which she is a member ousted Peoples Democratic Party in the election for the House of Representatives. The PDP-controlled state and local government therefore decided to punish her for her political activities).
Second, not involving women in the conception and planning has a tendency to impact negatively on women cultural and economically and consequently leading to conflict. For instance, there was a case of communal conflict involving the traditional ruler, the NDDC contractor and the community women.
An NDDC contractor-the Elite Company-has been awarded the construction of Odi-Trofani Road.
The road would pass through a channel of river where women harvest fish, lobster, and firewood for home use and sale. In short, the channel has been a source of household food and income for women for generations. Thus women have higher stake in the channel. However, the Elite Company decided to block the channel since that was cheaper than constructing a bridge. When the community women realised that the men and the Traditional Council were not going to do anything about this, they took their fate in their hands and reacted. According to the Ereamini da-arau, They wanted to block the place instead of making bridge so that even this rainy season people can pass through. They were blocking it-the Elite Company-because they think that will be cheaper for them. The community women reacted…Yes the women reacted. So we were called to the king's palace, because we find out that they were not doing anything. So we…we reacted. And actually we went to the Elite, eh the company had to take the complaint of the women and they had to do it. Though the bridge was not properly done, but at least, people can pass through (even this [rainy] season) to go and bring whatever they want to bring.
The women's "reaction" was a nonviolent demonstration involving almost all the community women.
Men felt unconcerned and the sincerity of the king's committees set up to look into the case before women intervened directly was questionable. According to the Ereamini da-arau: They [women] are concern. They are in the kitchen so they're concern. So if the easy means to go and bring their woods is being blocked and in this [rainy] season, this lobsters that they bring, this season, they make a little money out of it. And even the family they will eat part of it. But most of our men they are feeling unconcern. If not, the channel is for everybody but you know at least if something happens some people will be touched the most. So the women feel, felt that it is their right because they are the people going there more, you know the population of the women are more. And people using the place…, is women that uses the place more than the men, so…we went there later and we succeeded in making that bridge. Also, in its ad-hoc responses to agitations arising from its interventions, the NDDC has not been gender sensitive. The Commission's "settlement" usually takes care of the males who are more likely to champion such violent agitations, either against the NDDC or their contractors. As noted by an NDDC Staff in the quote above, young female seldom participate in agitations and since the agitations yield fruit for the "head ones", that is, the leaders as referred to by a programme beneficiary, females are not likely to reap the fruit of such agitations. Thus male youths benefit exclusively from NDDC as reapers of tangible fruits of violence-in cash and in kind.
Finally, gender neutrality of the NDDC intervention misses opportunities for women and girls empowerment, especially through its HCDPs. Women involvement in the entire intervention programming are good avenues for empowering women and promoting gender equity. If as noted by the Ereamini da-arau, the Ijaw culture subjugates women, affirmative actions to empower women and girls would be a worthwhile goal for the Commission to pursue. However, the Commission fails to exploit this opportunity in programming its intervention. This probably is a case of underutilization or a skewed prioritization of the NDDC resources. Empowering women this way may reduce the likelihood for violent agitations in the Niger Delta. Casual observations on the pattern and dynamics of agitations in the Niger Delta reveal that it is engendered. It appears that violent and nonviolent agitations are characteristic of male and female agitations respectively in the NDR. In other words, the NDR women are more likely to be involved in nonviolent agitations, while their male counterpart is more likely to employ violent tactics. Militants are essentially males. And empirical women's nonviolent tactics appear to be more effective. As noted by the Odi youth president, At that time point in time, are you going to bring police there, when women are taking action? Now because of that action now, that led to the construction of bridge at that place. If not for the women they would have closed up the place. People are now passing there, to go and fetch firewood and do their farming activities.
The underlined shows the strategic effectiveness of nonviolent agitation by Niger Delta women. Hardly can any government justify the use of force against women engaged in nonviolent protest. As the case of Odi Community shows, women appear to be able to get result for their agitations than youth. Also, the outcome of women's protest is more likely to produce result for the benefit of all. The phenomenon of settling the 'head ones' syndrome did not come up during the women's protest, unlike the youths.
Hence it was difficult to discredit their movement. If in their present relatively subjugated state, women are able to achieve this feat, one wonders what they will achieve in their empowered state. Although, this aspect of the study is inconclusive, the potentials of women group taking the lead in improving the interventions of the NDDC is worth exploring.

Conclusion
In spite of the popularity of both international and national policy frameworks on gender equality, the NDDC does not have a gender policy. There is also no such policy for its intervention programming.
Hence both the NDDC and its interventions are gender-neutral or gender blind. Despite this, women are well represented in the Commission. Gender-neutrality of the interventions, however, has negative implications for gender equality in the study area. The NDDC interventions entrenches the power disequilibrium between females and males in the community. The programming of the interventions systematically give males more benefits at the expense of their female counterparts. Also, it engenders conflict between the roles and discriminates against women. By not mainstreaming gender in its intervention, the NDDC loses on the unique perspective that women could bring to enrich its interventions. In cases where intervention impacted negatively on their livelihood and income, community women took collective nonviolent action to demand a change in the implementation, and they succeeded. Women nonviolent collective action achieved better result than the usual violent agitations of the youths (essentially male). Hence the women's nonviolent approach offers a potential source of leverage for communities in negotiating intervention with the NDDC. With abysmally low capacity for gender sensitivity, the NDDC cannot deliver gender sensitive intervention in the NDR, rather it entrenches the traditional power imbalance and roles between female and male members of the beneficiary communities.

Notes
Note 1. The Odi Massacre was a recurrent theme in the discussions with all the community people.