Addressing Gender Equality Challenges in Compassion Fund

Gender Equity 1
GENDER EQUITY
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Gender Equity 2
Executive Summary
The Compassion Fund is a large international non-governmental organization, which seeks to
help over 30 million people every year. Large groups of charitable people all over the world
support it and therefore it works on long-term community development to address the cause of
poverty and contribute towards self-sufficiency. Gender mainstreaming is a means of achieving
gender equality and therefore Compassion Funds Gender mainstreaming strategy for 2016 to
2019 seeks to promote the development of gender equality in compassion Funds policy. Gender
mainstreaming focuses on the issues of gender equality, analysis and policy decisions for
Programme budgets as well as for mid-term project plans. However, the Compassion Fund has
been facing increasing challenges associated with culture that is discriminative of women and
hence has become a primary challenge in achieving gender equality. One of the findings from the
focused group discussion was that culture does not permit some people to participate in certain
activities and that male members of the society perceived gender integration as a threat. In this
case, achieving gender equality is the goal of the strategy while gender streaming is the strategy
to achieve the goal. The success of the Compassion Fund policy will depend on its effectiveness
to address the challenges of gender perspectives in the society and the cultural perspectives,
which does not permit women to participate in some activities by perceiving gender integration
in activities as a threat, which is caused by illiteracy. It is critical to understand that while gender
mainstreaming has become critical for promotion of human rights as well as social justice for
men and women it has also been identified that incorporating gender perspectives in different
areas of development promotes efficiency in achievement of social economic goals.

Gender Equity 3
The purpose of this position paper is therefore to generate support on the needs to address
gender equality issues in Compassion Fund that have become a crucial challenge towards
successful achievement of its long term goals. Integration of gender perspectives in the
Compassion Fund policy is critical in achievement of its economic and social goal. The position
paper seeks to promote the development of understanding of how gender perspectives can be
identified and addressed to improve efficiency and success of the Compassion Fund activities.
To achieve greater equality between men and women will a lot changes in attitudes and
relationships towards gender integration and the role of women in promoting social
development. The position paper therefore seeks to promote the development of a strategy for
promoting gender equality as endorsed in Compassion Fund Gender Mainstream strategy for
2016 to 2019. This strategy recommendation seeks to ensure that across all the aspects of the
Compassion Fund policy, the analysis of the issues as well as the formulation of the policy is
informed by a consideration of gender differences and inequalities. It also seeks to ensure that
the opportunities in the Compassion Fund strategy are sought for both men and women to narrow
gender gaps and support the development of greater equality between men and women.
Situation analysis of the Compassion Fund
There are a number of challenges that the comparison fund organization is facing which needs to
be dealt with. For the organization to have favorable working environment that is free of gender
inequalities, the firm needs to deal with the issue of training. The gender audit identified that lack
of training is among the challenges that the stocks of competence face. Most of the staff
members have not been trained completely on gender issues thus leading to mishandling of
clients based on gender. The staff does not fully appreciate importance of gender equality in the

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organization. Apparently, the staff as seen from the survey lacks gender sensitive skill due to
lack of training. This raises the need of the organization to prioritize building the gender
sensitivity skills of all staff through recruiting and training qualified women and men. This
should aim at enabling them to take leadership positions (Nielsen 2017, p. 298).
Additionally, it clearly came out that the comparison fund organization faces many challenges
when it comes to office culture/environment, prioritization of gender by the organization. The
data obtained from the focus groups and the survey audit further shows that no financial
resources have been allocated for gender activities. This makes it nearly a tall order for the firm
to progress in advocating for gender equality (Maume et al. 2018, pp. 1058).
According to the Gender Audit Survey and the Focus Group data provided, different issues have
been identified to be of significant concern to the success of the Compassion Fund programs.
The Audit survey has been able to identify successfully institutional strengths and challenges in
integration of gender equity in programs and their organizational structures and processes.
Therefore, the survey provides that it is essential to integrate gender equity in its programs and
organization structure. According to the gender integration framework political will,
organizational culture, technical capacity and accountability are critical factors that determine the
successful integration of gender equity (Vokić, Ćorić & Obadić 2017). This is because the
framework provides that most of the organizations that exhibit the requisite level of political will
as well as positive organizational culture, promote institutional accountability and technical
expertise is able to integrate gender equality successfully in their management as well as human
resource and the entire program (Ylöstalo 2016, p. 554).