Gender equitable norms
Indicator Name
Indicator ID in PRIME
Definition
This indicator looks at support for gender equality and measures the percentage of community members who report a positive change in attitudes toward equitable gender norms. This indicator uses a gender equality scale to measure individual attitudes toward gender norms. It can be applied to multiple actors depending on the project target groups, including at the family, community, and broader societal level.
It is essential for the indicator to be disaggregated by sex/gender and age at minimum, and ideal to disaggregate for other grounds of inequality (e.g. race/ethnicity, disability, nationality and internally displaced, refugee and migrant status, slum residency) wherever possible.
Numerator
Number of surveyed project participants who report a positive change in attitudes towards equitable gender norms
Denominator
Total number of surveyed project participants
Data collection and Survey Design
The indicator is measured through baseline and endline surveys. A midline survey may also be conducted depending on the project duration and available resources. In the surveys, participants are asked whether they agree or disagree with a set of statements related to gender roles and norms. For adolescent participants, the survey is conducted using a participatory card activity to ensure engagement and easier understanding, but the statements asked are identical to those for adult participants. The statements are not standardized and should be selected and adapted based on the thematic focus of the project, such as education, child marriage, or sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), as well as project objectives and context. Some statements may be relevant across different themes and are recommended for use in all projects, such as:
· “The most important role for a girl is to become a wife and a mother.”
· “A woman has to have children in order to be fulfilled.”
Instructions for participants and examples of statements can be found here.
To ensure meaningful analysis and data quality, it is recommended to use 10-15 statements and no more than 30 statements. Each statement is answered using the following codes:
· 0 = Disagree
· 1 = Agree
· 97 = Don’t know
· 99 = Refused
Data Analysis
Participants are considered to hold a positive attitude toward equitable gender norms or roles if they agree with a positive statement or disagree with a negative one. If an individual responds positively to 75% or more of the statements, they are classified as having strong gender equality attitudes; 50-74% is considered moderate; and less than 50% is considered weak.
‘Don’t know’ and ‘refused’ responses should not be discarded as missing data, as they reveal meaningful insights into participants’ attitudes. These responses should be coded as not holding a positive attitude toward the given statement.
To determine change, results from baseline and endline (or midline) are compared. When individual responses can be matched across time points, positive change is defined as an increase in the participant's proportion of positive responses or a shift to a higher classification category (e.g., from weak to moderate, or moderate to strong). When responses cannot be matched, the indicator may be calculated by comparing the percentage of participants in each attitude category (strong, moderate, weak) at baseline and endline (or midline), and reporting the increase in the proportion with ‘strong’ attitudes.
To ensure deeper understanding, it is recommended to examine individual statements besides the overall results to identify areas for improvement.