By: Sushmita Mukherjee, Director, Gender and Adolescent Girls at PCI India
Rajib Nandi, Vice President, Sambodhi Research and Communications 

Posted: September 2024

Bringing Change Closer to Home 

Despite years of development efforts, the goal of global gender parity remains distant, with the World Economic Forum estimating it will take 134 years to achieve. This underscores the urgent need for more effective solutions to close the gender gap.

To that end, USAID’s Agency for All Project and the South Asia Social Norms and Agency Learning Collaborative hosted an immersive three-day workshop in July in New Delhi, India, to encourage more collaborations among young and mid-level social and behavior change practitioners and researchers from South Asia.

Organizers of the SBC Programming: Integrating Agency, Social Norms, and Gender Workshop also sought to enhance the ability of participants to address entrenched gender norms that limit women and girls. One of the major focus areas of the initiative was to facilitate strengthening stakeholders’ ability through capacity-building formats.

Participants were members of the South Asia Social Norms and Agency Learning Collaborative with diverse experience working in consulting firms, grassroots or civil society organizations, global development banks, and international organizations.

The course was designed and structured by incorporating insights from the inaugural event in Kampala, Uganda. The event zeroed in on the aspirations of adolescent girls from marginalized communities, highlighting various issues such as declining child-sex ratios, women’s stagnant workforce participation, and rising informal labor.

In the New Delhi workshop, participants explored social norms, gender dynamics, and individual agency, focusing on their impact on behaviors in South Asian communities. They discussed ways to include gender and social identity in SBC strategies, aiming to support marginalized groups like adolescent girls. Organizers addressed societal power imbalances, showcasing their effects on women’s and girls’ decision-making. Participants used human-centered design (HCD) and theory of change (ToC) to create culturally relevant SBC programs. They also established a WhatsApp network across South Asia for ongoing collaboration. Energized by the workshop, many are keen to pursue future projects and partnerships using their new skills.

Some of the participants expressed their views on the session:

 “This course has given me the confidence to incorporate gender-sensitive approaches in our community work, especially with marginalized groups.”

“Engagement with members from the community and going through the first-hand experience of the girls was the best part of the session.”

“We learned that creating lasting change means not just tweaking behaviors, but also shifting power. This means understanding who benefits from the status quo, who’s missing from the table, and how to amplify the voices of the communities. It’s about understanding that change is a journey, not a quick fix, and that solutions should be tailored to each unique context.”

What lies ahead?

Through these comprehensive sessions, a greater understanding emerged about how to move closer to a gender-equitable future.

1. Practical application: Assimilate the course concepts—agency, social norms, and gender—into projects, targeting young women and adolescent girls.
2. Collaboration: Form networks to exchange insights and further develop region-specific SBC strategies to enhance impact through shared learning.
3. Monitoring and evaluation: Implement robust monitoring to measure effectiveness and optimize strategies.
4. Capacity building: Follow-up training sessions to deepen understanding of SBC for more practitioners. Additionally, sessions on the measuring social norms can be designed and conducted.
5. Policy advocacy: Actively engage with policymakers to integrate these concepts into broader public health, education, and gender policies, prompting systemic change.

By forging impactful partnerships and fostering inclusive capacity building, this initiative is a significant step forward in empowering stakeholders to catalyze sustainable and gender-equitable behavior transformation throughout South Asia.

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About the Authors

Sushmita Mukherjee is the director of Gender and Adolescent Girls at PCI India. She leads in crafting transformative strategies that foster gender equity and address social norms, agency, women leadership, and adolescent empowerment. Mukherjee ensures that human-centered designs evolve as scalable models for bringing progressive shifts in social and gender norms and SBC that includes meticulous measurement and knowledge management.

Rajib Nandi is the vice president at Sambodhi Research and Communications and holds several other positions, such as chair of the Community of Evaluators, South Asia. Nandi is co-founder of the Evaluation Community of India and a board member of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation. He specializes in strengthening the evaluation ecosystem, particularly in gender and agency, through gender-transformative evaluation approaches that bring more equitable practices and beliefs into the ecosystem. He has led multiple capacity-building initiatives in advocating consistently for progressive and gender-inclusive approaches.

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