Praxis Note 58. Reflections on Building CSO Capacity to Integrate Gender and Diversity Equality

Civil society organisations (CSOs) throughout the world are making efforts to enhance organisational and staff capacity with regard to gender and diversity equality, as part of the overall effort to raise levels of effectiveness of development and humanitarian interventions. Such efforts have been concerned with how to secure the greatest long-term sustainability of their impact, but are also based in organisational objectives to promote women’s human rights. This Praxis Note provides an overview of current thinking about capacity building of CSOs in this area. It explores practice to date and identifies key areas for further exploration based on the author’s experience of over 20 years working on the issue, particularly with the UK development sector.

This paper highlights gender capacity building as that is where most effort has taken place up to now, but other strands of diversity are covered where work has been carried out. It also includes much information about donor aid agencies, about which we have currently the most information. However, INTRAC intends to develop a new Praxis learning theme on this issue, bringing together civil society practitioners from around the world.