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What are the steps to ensuring culturally relevant GBA Plus?

The purpose of culturally relevant GBA Plus is to uncover and address the unequal effects of policies and programs on diverse groups. It combines an intersectional analysis with specific attention to the historic, ongoing, and evolving effects of colonization. This approach is inspired by the key steps graphic from Status of Women Canada (now Women and Gender Equality Canada, WAGE) and adapted to the context of culturally relevant GBA Plus, as well as guidance from the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada’s document, Gender-Based Analysis Plus in Impact Assessment. To implement culturally relevant GBA Plus, we propose the following six (6) key steps, ensuring that each incorporates culturally relevant dimensions as outlined in the work of the NWAC. Each step must be conducted through co-creation, engagement and partnership with the impacted communities, centring their voices in the process.

Designed by Josée Daris and co-created with Leah Fusco and Natasha Dixon, inspired by the IAAC guidance for GBA Plus and Status of Women Canada, now Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE) key steps graphic and then adapted to the culturally relevant GBA Plus context:  https://women-gender-equality.canada.ca/gbaplus-course-cours-acsplus/assets/modules/Demystifying_GBA_job_aid_EN.pdf, and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada,  Guidance: Gender-Based Analysis Plus In Impact Assessment: https://www.canada.ca/en/impact-assessment-agency/services/policy-guidance/practitioners-guide-impact-assessment-act/gender-based-analysis.html

Additional details

The six steps outlined above are critical for IA practitioners to ensure the application of culturally relevant GBA Plus to their work. Each step should be carried out through co-creation, engagement, and partnership with the impacted communities, ensuring that their voices are centered the process.

1. Understand culturally relevant GBA Plus in IA: This step emphasizes the need for practitioners to understand how intersecting identities, power, and privilege affect communities. It involves being aware of various cultural, social, and gender dynamics that can influence the effect of a project. This foundational understanding is essential for practitioners to conduct a culturally relevant GBA Plus. Assumptions about the roles, cultural practices, and social norms of diverse groups can often be embedded in policy development and implementation processes and result in some people in communities being overlooked and/or harmed. This step requires actively paying attention to the experiences of diverse community members and challenging both individual and organizational assumptions about how gender, culture, ability and other dimensions of identity intersect to shape peoples’ experiences with resource projects. It involves critically examining the potential biases that might influence the initiative, questioning the uniformity of population groups, and ensuring that the analysis does not perpetuate stereotypes or overlook the unique challenges faced people with diverse identities including women, Black and racialized people, Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit and gender diverse peoples, people with disabilities, young people and others. A key goal of understanding culturally relevant GBA Plus in IA is to avoid making assumptions that misrepresent or oversimplify complex realities of affected communities.

2. Know impacted communities: Practitioners must gain a deep understanding of the communities affected by the project. This includes insights into the community’s history, culture, and experiences with projects or changes in their environment. Recognizing these factors helps in addressing specific concerns and fostering mutual respect between practitioners and community members. This involves understanding the communities involved and how their unique culture intersects with gender and/or other identities as well as structures of power and oppression. It requires a deep dive into the broader socio-economic, historical, and cultural contexts that may shape the experiences of the people who are likely to be affected by the project or initiative being assessed. By identifying intersectional and culturally relevant issues early on, the analysis of effect will be more precise and tailored to specific groups impacted. 

3. Practice meaningful engagement: Engagement goes beyond mere participation; they require creating spaces for genuine dialogue where community voices are heard and valued. Practitioners should involve community members at all stages, allowing them to share their concerns, preferences, and traditional knowledge, ensuring their perspectives shape the project.

4. Establish a context-sensitive baseline: Establishing a context-sensitive baseline involves collecting data and information that reflect the current state of the community’s social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental contexts. Baseline data may also sometimes be connected to a historical state rather than present circumstances, providing insights into how past conditions and changes have shaped the community’s current realities. This step is crucial for assessing any future changes and helps to set benchmarks from which the project’s effects can be measured. A context-sensitive baseline respects knowledge from diverse community members and acknowledges existing disparities. Gathering facts through research is essential for applying culturally relevant GBA Plus. This step focuses on collecting data that are disaggregated not just by gender but also by other intersecting identity factors, such as ethnicity, age, disability, etc. Decisions about which data to collect and/or use should be informed through engagement with diverse members of the communities involved, ensuring that their voices and experiences are central to data collection and analysis. This step is about gaining a comprehensive understanding of how effects on those directly affected might be uneven and ensuring that the data reflects their lived realities.

5. Assess effects: Practitioners use qualitative and quantitative data to assess both positive and adverse effects of the project on diverse groups within the affected communities. This involves examining how effects may vary across genders, age groups, or other identity factors and identifying strategies to mitigate adverse effects. Understanding the potential range of effects also requires drawing on Indigenous Knowledge and community knowledge, which help to ensure that assessments are comprehensive and respectful of local values. The Impact Assessment Act (IAA) understands ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ as a term that refers to a set of complex knowledge systems based on the worldviews of Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Knowledge reflects the unique cultures, languages, values, histories, governance and legal systems of Indigenous Peoples. It is place-based, cumulative and dynamic. Indigenous Knowledge systems involve living well with, and being in relationship with, the natural world and have been passed down since time immemorial. Indigenous Knowledge systems build upon the experiences of earlier generations, inform the practice of current generations, and evolve in the context of contemporary society. Different First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities have distinct ways of describing their knowledge. Knowledge Holders are the only people who can truly define Indigenous Knowledge for their communities.

6. Monitor and evaluate: The final step is to design an evaluation framework that is culturally relevant and ensures continuous monitoring of the project’s effects on different groups. This involves developing mechanisms to track the effectiveness of proposed mitigation measures (i.e., specific strategies or actions implemented to reduce negative effects) over time. To ensure intersectional and culturally relevant commitments are maintained, the evaluation should include feedback loops where diverse community members are enabled to provide input, allowing for adjustments and improvements that reflect the experiences of those affected. The objective is to ensure that changes in the project’s effects are identified and mitigated or enhanced accordingly, particularly to ensure that marginalized groups do not experience worsening effects. 

Communication and documentation: Throughout all these steps, it is essential to document the analysis and communicate the findings and decisions transparently to all stakeholders. Clear documentation helps ensure accountability and provides a record of how intersectionality and cultural relevance were considered throughout the process. Communicating the results effectively also fosters trust and collaboration with the communities involved so that they are heard and respected.

Examples

The DEMUJERES project in Guatemala, focused on advancing rights and justice for Indigenous women and girls, applied a culturally relevant GBA Plus, though not within an impact assessment. This example is still helpful for highlighting how culturally relevant GBA Plus can reveal and respond to intersecting factors affecting diverse community members, including Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit and gender diverse people.

  1. Understand culturally relevant GBA Plus: This project recognized intersecting factors affecting Indigenous women, such as cultural, language, and age-related barriers in the justice system. This focus acknowledges that younger and older Indigenous women may face unique challenges within these systems. Key culturally relevant issues impacting Indigenous women and girls in Guatemala were identified by engaging with local communities to understand their specific barriers to accessing justice, safety, and rights. The focus was on addressing their unique contexts, such as legal invisibility or intersectional discrimination. The project needed to challenge institutional and organizational assumptions, particularly those that overlook gendered Indigenous perspectives. This involved questioning systemic biases in Guatemala’s legal and social structures and how they affect Indigenous women and girls.
  2. Impacted communities’ knowledge: The project focused on three regions with high levels of violence against Indigenous women and girls and involved local Indigenous organizations and authorities to ensure a deep understanding of the impacted communities. 
  3. Engagements: Engagements were constant throughout the project. For instance, regional focal points were established to maintain ongoing engagements with Indigenous organizations and Indigenous women’s organizations involved in the project. This approach ensured that the voices and insights of Indigenous women and girls were continuously integrated into project activities and decision-making. 
  4. Context-Sensitive baseline: The project’s baseline considered intersectional data, recognizing the diverse experiences of Indigenous women based on factors such as age, culture, and socioeconomic background. The baseline process gathered key facts on each region helping to tailor interventions to the specific needs and conditions of each area. Additionally, it assessed both hard and soft skills components, allowing the project to identify areas where capacity building was needed so that supports could be tailored to the unique strengths and needs of each community. Fact-based research, grounded in Indigenous Knowledge systems, was essential. The project gathered data on how Indigenous women experience issues related to rights and justice differently from other groups, and thus could tailor their analysis to specific cultural and gender-based realities. Legal biases included the failure to recognize Indigenous legal systems, language barriers that prevent Indigenous women from accessing legal representation in their native languages, and discriminatory practices within the formal justice system that often disregard Indigenous customs and community-based conflict resolution mechanisms.
  5. Assessing impact: There were regular meetings to assess the effect of each component of the project, ensuring that adjustments could be made to meet community needs. The project was led by Indigenous women staff, who brought invaluable knowledge of their culture, regional geography, and community-specific dynamics, enabling culturally sensitive and relevant impact assessments throughout the project. By working in close collaboration with Indigenous groups, the project co-created solutions that respected their values and legal traditions. For example, recommendations included advocating for legal reforms that aligned more closely with Indigenous women’s rights.
  6. Monitor and evaluate: Ongoing engagement with Indigenous women has focused on whether the project’s recommendations were effective. The project ensured that evaluation was conducted using culturally relevant GBA Plus, adjusting interventions as needed, from the baseline to the final project evaluation. The project included mid-term and annual learning meetings, regular monitoring and evaluation (M&E) field visits, and a final evaluation. These structured check-ins allowed the team to track progress, address challenges as they arose, and ensure that the project outcomes remained aligned with the needs of Indigenous women and communities.

The approach to culturally relevant GBA Plus in this project helped the implementation team – similar to a team undertaking an IA – complete its work in a way that advanced more equitable experiences for diverse members of the affected communities. 

Citations and useful resources

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